[ARCHIVED] What are the best practices regarding grouped sets and discussion boards?

[cbrady]

This summer I have 3 sections that have been merged into one canvas course (around 30 students per section, so around 90 students in all). For the purposes of discussion board activities I only want students to see people from their section so it doesn't get too overwhelming when they read through the responses.

From what I've read here, the best way to do that is to create grouped sets and assign each student to a group with others from theirs section. Then in each discussion I would check the grouped discussion option.  Are these steps correct?

My class starts Monday and I could potentially still have students joining the class until Thursday. If I create the grouped sets on Sunday, but a student joins the class on Tuesday that student will NOT be automatically placed into a group and will NOT see the discussion board assignments (until I manually place them into a group).  Is that correct?

Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks,

Chris

[James · Accepted solution]

 @cbrady ,

It looks like you've done your research. Everything that you said about group discussions is correct.

I would add that if students happen to post to the discussion before they're placed into a group, then their posts can magically disappear in SpeedGrader. Groups also come with a lot of overhead that you may not need and tend to be confusing for students.

As for a better solution, I would recommend this -- at least for the first discussion. Create three identical discussions (except for the name) and then assign each section a different discussion. You won't have to go through and figure out which student is in which section and manually add them to groups and you won't get the overhead that comes with groups.

How do I assign a graded discussion to a course section? 

The downside is that it does add extra columns to the gradebook. If you do this for the first discussion, then you won't have the problem with students joining late in the week since they will already be in the section.