[Groups] Group Enrollments should Match Course Enrollments

[hvaughn]

Groups created from an enrollment within a course should always reflect the current status of that course's enrollment. It is a pain for instructors to have to manually remove students from course project groups, especially in large enrollment classes.

Scenario: Earlier in the semester, an instructor created a group set for an assignment and added five groups. Students were dispersed among those groups at that time. Since that time several students have withdrawn from the course. These students have remained as group members, even though they have been withdrawn from the course. If a student withdraws from a course, the student should also be removed from the group, at least that makes sense to me. So I contacted Canvas support.

Canvas Support's Response: "When a group is created within a course it also creates an entirely separate page or group area for these students within the groups. This area has its own set of people for the course, its own “enrollments” if you will. When they withdraw from the course their enrollment in the course is removed, but the status in the group is retained. You can go under the page for the group and remove the student from the people page if they should no longer appear there. But in short, group pages are kind of like a course in that they have their own set of enrollments and access levels. Users will need to removed from group pages."

My opinion:  Groups created from an enrollment within a course should always reflect that course's enrollment. It is a pain for instructors to have to manually remove students from course project groups, especially in large classes. We have a policy that once a student is withdrawn, they should no longer have access to any future course assignments, materials, etc. If the student remains in the group and new content is added to the group space for new assignments, then the student would have access to materials after they have withdrawn from a course. This is an issue for us. We have several courses that create group spaces to work on projects for the duration of the semester.

[Renee_Carney]

 @jmk50  Thank You for submitting a related idea that prompted us to dig into this a little further

Here are the release notes where we thought there was a solution.  Canvas Production Release Notes (2016-04-02) 

If you got o Bugs > Groups, you'll see 

Inactive Enrollments and Existing Groups
Only active users are shown in an existing group.

Explanation: When a student was involved in a course group but his or her enrollment was deactivated, the student’s name was still displaying in the existing group to other group members. Canvas code has been updated to hide inactive enrollments from other students in the group.

Inactive Enrollments and Auto-Assigned Groups
Inactive enrollments are not assigned to groups that are set to automatically assign students.

Explanation: When an instructor created a group set and auto-assigned group members to groups, inactive enrollments were being included in groups. Canvas code has been updated to remove inactive enrollments from being automatically assigned to groups.

It turns out that bug fix i the release was to hide names of inactive students, but _only_ for other members of the group. Teachers and admins (who are not actually members of the groups) can still see the inactive students listed there.

I am going to change the status on this idea from complete to open for vote.

[chriscas]

That's basically how "inactive" users are in a course though, so I'm not too sure how this can be addressed too much further...  We would definitely want the inactive users to remain associated with any groups they were in before they became inactive, as to retain an accurate record of activity and use.

Perhaps on the groups screen, the inactive tag should show on the appropriate users, and the count shouldn't include the inactive users.  I'd also support "locking" inactive users so a faculty member couldn't remove them from a group or change their group membership once they were inactive, again to maintain accurate historical records or maintain integrity in case the enrollment becomes active again in the future.

[Tasha_Biesinger]

chriscas‌, your ideas about adding the inactive tag to the inactive student name, removing the inactive student from the group count, and locking enrollment (for record-keeping) are spot on!  I can also see being able to toggle between viewing/not viewing the inactive students on the groups page as a tool most faculty would like.

Also, thank you  @Renee_Carney ‌ for reviving this conversation since our institution just turned on inactive student viewing and we've had some questions about these students appearing in groups for faculty.

[hoovenl]

I can't believe we have to ask for this as a "feature". There is often an optimal size for group activities, which I can't achieve until this BUG is repaired. I am in the middle of a course and will have to rearrange my groups. It is causing students problems, and making the group learning experience problematic for some. This process of proposing a "feature" and crossing our fingers it gets prioritized is too long and risky when there is a problem like this one.

[hoovenl]

It's fine to retain inactive student names within a group, but they shouldn't count towards the number of students that Canvas indicates are within a group. How can you evenly divide a class up into groups, when inactive students still count?

[hoovenl]

When students leave the class, the number of students showing in their group doesn't change. If new students come in, I don't know which group is short so I can place them there. It's great to see inactive students in the Grade Book, but I can't divide students evenly into groups.

[carbor]

Please provide user same star rating/view control for groups as is provided for courses. There is no reason I should have to view groups from classes taken two years ago.

[RobDitto]

 @carbor  you may be interested in this feature idea:

• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/14294-allow-students-to-addstar-groups-to-group-menu 

Also, the institution where you're taking courses might want to know that if they take the opportunity to conclude a course at the end of a term, doing so will automatically remove groups for concluded courses from student navigation.

[taylorstevens]

Hello, 

I am still stuck in a group from last semester. I have read all Canvas help pages on how to remove myself but nothing is applicable since I was added by my professor. Is Canvas going to implement this feature to remove yourself as a student? As of right now, I am not seeing that this has been done.

[AvaBerkey]

This has been a suggestion for 6 years now and is still a problem. I'm currently in 4 groups from previous semesters and it just makes my dashboard look horrible. I think that developers should implement simple things like this, especially after the given semester is over.