How do I create groups that aren't associated with courses?

[GraceStephens23]

How do I create groups that aren't associated with any course in particular? My dean wants the capability within canvas to set up communities to send information to without creating a canvas course shell. The purpose would be to send announcements mostly.

[james_whalley]

Hello @GraceStephens23,

At this time it is not possible to set up communities in Canvas without setting them up as a course. You could pitch this in the Community's Feature Ideas area. At our institution though, most groups just set up a course shell as a community hub.

Best,

James

[GraceStephens23 · Accepted solution]

@james_whalley After more digging it looks like admins can create Groups that aren't associated with particular courses under Admin > People > vertical ellipses/hamburger button > View User Groups > +Group Set.

As far as I can tell, you can enroll students and create announcements in these groups. I'm not sure why Canvas doesn't advertise it. Wondering if there are functionality issues I haven't run into yet? 

[james_whalley]

@GraceStephens23 Wow! In five years of playing in Canvas as an account admin, I have never seen this area and see that we have not used it at all. Thanks for finding this. Now I want to explore how this feature might change the way we do things in our instance.

[GraceStephens23]

@james_whalley   Thanks! They really keep it hidden. It's not in the user guides as far as I've found.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @GraceStephens23 ...

Actually, the documentation for groups on the admin side of Canvas are located here:

Admin Guide - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

To get to this area, from the top of any screen here in the Community, I clicked on:

Products >> Canvas LMS >> READ THE GUIDES >> ADMIN >> ADMIN GUIDES

On the page that displays, scroll down to the "People" section, and then look at the Guides:

• How do I view groups in an account?
• How do I add groups in a group set in an account?

Also, I wrote a blog post several years back called Campus Clubs and Groups which you might be interested in taking a look at.

Hope this helps!