How can I remove the Student Groups tab in People

[ctmay]

In Canvas, once there are a self-organized group been created, the Student Groups will be created. the Student Groups tab will then stay in the People page forever.

I can not find a way to remove it even there are no more groups inside.

Can anybody show me how?

It will be quite confuse to users with the tab there.

[kblack]

Hello  @ctmay ​ - I am not aware of any way to remove that GROUPS tab, even after disabling the ability for students to form their own groups.  I do not know what age range you are teaching, but frankly--after teaching undergraduates in college for years--the average student tends not to get very adventurous in a course site clicking places unless they know there's something there.  (It's all I could do to get them to click on Assignments when something was due!)  I understand your concern, however, about the basic design issue of making something available but then having nothing there, so I suppose one solution may be to simply hide the PEOPLE menu item altogether from the student's perspective.  I'm not a big fan of this, personally (since this is one way for students to message you and others in the class) but it's up to you and about the only way I can think of to hide that GROUPS tab.  Information on how to hide a menu item is here:  How do I reorder and hide Course Navigation links?

Hope this helps.

[ctmay]

Thanks Ken for your reply.  We are also teaching university with undergraduates and graduates.

Of cause if no grouping function is required, hiding People from the left menu is one of the option.

But the most confusion will be when formal Group function is required and if the instructors did not disable the student from creating student groups, they may easily go in and create their own group there and thought those are the formal groups.

As the default settings from Canvas is letting students able to create their own self-organize group and admin can not easily changed with the default settings. We already recommend the instructor to turn it off before publishing the course during our trainings or mention in the user guide, but not all of them may aware of this function still.

They will only come to us and ask how can we remove the tab for them after someone have activated it. And we can only tell them, there is no way to remove but can only remove the group created inside., which is quite frustrating sometimes.

[kblack]

Yes, I definitely "hear you" on the ability for students to create their own groups being on by default.  I wish there were a universal setting to turn that off, as well.  I did a very quick search of past Feature Ideas, and I don't spot anything related to that, so it may be worthwhile considering if you wanted to pursue that avenue: How do I create a new feature idea?

That said, if it's any consolation at all, in the 4+ years that we have had Canvas at my institution, I have never had a single instructor complain that students were forming their own groups.  (And I'm pretty sure the majority of our faculty have never thought of checking their Course Settings to disable that ability.)  To be sure, I'm at a fairly small institution (around 5,000 students).  But unless it's somehow hard-wired into your curriculum to do lots of group work, I'm not too sure many students even think of doing it.  But, of course, every institution is different and perhaps others with different experiences will weigh in on that.

[syonker]

Well, three of my students just formed a group, so I went looking for a way to remove the Student Groups tab. If I find a minute, I might request the ability to remove it.

[ayocom1]

Yes, it's hard wired into many curricula to hvae students do at least some amount of group work.

When I have students do projects, I often encourage them to work in groups. I set up a Group Set called "Project Groups" and then for some reason it also sets up a tab called "Student Groups." 

I link students to the Canvas instructions for how to join the correct groups; nevertheless, a handful of students still create their group in the "Student Groups" tab. Then I have two choices: 1) Get in touch with students to instruct them to move their group to the correct place, or 2) do it myself. 

I just finished going through this project for my 218 person class. The process took 36 minutes this time, and I have a routine for it. It took much longer the first time this happened, for the 450 person class I taught in the fall.

So no, maybe you haven't heard instructors complain, but maybe you're not asking the ones who use group work as part of their pedagogies.

[reichard]

I just ran into the same issue - since the "Student Groups" tab shows up as the first group set, other students believe this is the one they should use too. And here goes another team "believing" they signed up for an official group that is required for submission of graded work ...  disabling this feature upfront could save this headache for instructors.

[JDBrewer]

I teach 6th graders and they are already confused enough about using Canvas without adding an extra Student Groups tab. I had created the appropriate tab for them to make groups of 3 by period but 7 rebels decided they would make a group called The Red Girls. They soon became The Dead Girls as I deleted the group...LOL   Oh boy, I can't wait to see what pops up there next with 11-12-year-olds naming new, unauthorized groups.

[rodger-ling]

Good grief, another case of "Canvas knows what's best" that is going to create confusion and headaches.  Instructors should have the ability to delete groups (and assignments, or whatever)!  

[rodger-ling]

I don't even see a way to rename "student groups" that would help.

[berwin]

Guess this was never fixed. 

Even as Canvas Field Admin, there's no way to delete the Student Groups tab.

Why would no one have permission to delete a student created tab?

[berwin]

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Question-Forum/A-student-created-a-group-in-my-course-inst... 

Just in case you navigate here, check out the above thread for more information. 

[cbajorek]

Hello! I have the same problem, even when I went in and changed the settings for student group creation. I am not given the option to delete the Group Set. How else would I eliminate the student group area that was created? Please note that the students do not need this area, as groups were created for them. I have been able to delete the groups pre-set before and this is the first time I have run into this problem.

I was able to change the ability of students to create their groups. In addition, I deleted the groups that were created. Outside of that, I put a group in that states for the students not to utilize this specific group area and to see the group tab that I created for them. This seems to be the only solution at this time.