Managing Groups

(For a document with screen shots, click here)

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The group feature in Scholar will allow you to create specialized assessments and assignments for these students which can grant these users the additional time they require, while giving the normal amount of time the other students in the class. The following two guides will walk through the usage in both tools and then discuss the connection with the Scholar Gradebook and how it will be affected by groups.

• Introduction to Groups
• Using Groups to Accommodate Special Needs

On This Page

On this page:

• Overview
• Accessing Groups
• Creating a Group
• Editing a Group
• Deleting a Group

These may also be helpful:

• Publishing a Scholar Site
• Guest Access
• TA Access

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Overview

Groups are subsets of participants for a given worksite. Groups are not preloaded with official course data, and can therefore be created by the instructor. Groups are useful to organize study groups, project teams, and other non-official subsets of worksite participants.

Note: When combining sections into a parent site, groups from the original sections will not be brought forward. However, each section behaves like a group on the parent site, i.e., group-aware tools recognize each section as a group.

You can use groups with the following tools:

• Announcements: Post announcements for your group.
  
  
• Assignments: Post assignments for your group. However, you cannot add assignments with group access into the Gradebook.
  
  
• Forums: Assign forum and topic permissions for groups; see Controlling access to Forums.
  
  
• Messages: Send private messages to your group.
  
  
• Resources: Allow specific access to files and folders for your group.
  
  
• Schedule: Schedule events for specific groups only.
  
  
• Tests & Quizzes: Allow specific access to a test or survey for a group by using the "Assessments Released To" setting.
  
  
• Site Info: Create, modify, and remove groups.
  

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Accessing Groups

You can access groups with the Site Info and Site Setup tools.

• To access groups with the Site Info tool:
  1. Click Site Info in your site's menubar.
     
  2. Click Manage Groups.
  
  
• To access groups with the Site Setup tool:
  1. Click My Workspace.
  2. Click Site Setup from the menubar.
  3. Check the box next to the course for which you wish to manage groups.
  4. Click Edit at the top.
     
  5. Click Manage Groups.

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Creating a Group

To create a new group:

1. Access the groups area of your site (see above).
2. Click Create New Group.
   
3. In the Title field, enter a title for your group (e.g., Project team 1).
4. You may also add a text description.
5. Select a site participant to add to the group from the window on the left.
6. Click > .
   • Repeat this step until you've added all the members you wish to the group. To select more than one member at a time, hold down the Ctrl key (in Windows) or the Command key (in Mac OS X), and select the members you wish to add.
   • Click >> to move all site participants to the right-hand window
   • Click < to remove any participants you do not want in the group.
7. Click Add when you are finished.

To create a group containing all users with a specific role, click Auto Groups, check the role(s) that you want to create groups for, and then click Update.

Note: It is not possible to create a new group based on existing group (i.e., duplicate an existing group).

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Editing a Group

To edit a group:

1. Access the groups area of your site (see above).
   
2. Click Edit next to the group title.
3. You may revise the Title and Description fields. You may also add or remove group members as described above.
4. Click Update when you are finished.

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Deleting a Group

To delete a group:

1. Access the groups area of your site (see above).
2. Next to the group you wish to remove, check the box under Remove.
3. Click Remove Checked.
   
4. Click Delete Groups to confirm removal.

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