Assign multiple groups simultaneously for a group assignment

[chal]

Hi,

Apparently, if you create a group assignment and select a group set (let's say you have 25 groups in the set), you need to assign the assignment manually to each of these 25 groups. Or is there a way to add all 25 groups in the set manually? The point of adding all the groups is to remove the "assign to everyone" default setting in order to prevent students to submit without being member of a group in the designated group set. 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello @chal ...

You can create your group sets within the "People" area of your course.  For example, you might name the group set the same as your assignment name.  Then, you create the 25 groups within the group set...as you've described.  Your group names within the group set might be different colors or sports teams or whatever.  When you go to create your assignment in Canvas, the assignment details will allow you to choose whether or not it is a group assignment (select the "This is a Group Assignment" checkbox).  If it is, then you will be selecting the group set name that you created via your "People" page.  You aren't selecting each of the 25 individual groups.

Here are the instructions for you on how to create group sets and groups within the "People" page of the course:

• How do I add a group set in a course? - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)
• How do I manually create groups in a group set? - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

There are other Guides related to groups which you can find here:

Instructor Guide - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

Also, this is the Guide to use on the process I've described above:

How do I assign an assignment to a course group? - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

I hope this will be of some help to you.  Let Community members know if you have any other questions about this...thanks!

[chal]

Hi!

Yes, I'm aware of all of this. But as mentioned, the issue is to remove the "assign to everyone" default setting of the assignment, as this seems to be the only way to prevent people from being able to submit an answer without being member of one of the groups in the group set?

Or am I missing sth obviuos here?

[Chris_Hofer]

@chal ...

But if you initially set up your groups within a given group set so that students are all assigned to a specific group (such a group color or a group with a team name), then there wouldn't be anyone that is not part of a group.  You can leave "assign to everyone" just like it is.  On your "People" page, click on a group set tab, and then you'll see an "Unassigned Students" area on the left part of the screen with a number behind it.  That number of students are listed below it.  If there are any unassigned students for your group set, assign those students to a group in the group set.  So long as you have zero unassigned students, things should work just fine with "assign to everyone".

Does this help to answer your question?

[chal]

Thx again for the reply.

Well, not really. What if we want to allow the students to choose who they wants to be in group with? Which is normally the case. Then the "assign to everyone" might still be a problem. Of course, if we automatically assign all students to groups, then I guess we could leave the "assign to everyone", but the students will not be very happy with this.  But by assigning a task to ONLY the groups within a group set we make sure that it is not possible to submit indiviually. Therefore, it is frustrating that you haved to add one by one group of the group set, and not being able to highlight all groups and then add/assign all these. 

Bottom line is that we find the whole group assignment bit really challengig for many reasons. Teachers don't understand the logic behind it and thus does several errors causing them a lot of headache.  And we have many courses where group assignments are part of the mandatory requirements to complete a course. 

I think we just need to educate our teachers better on how to set up group assignments.