Groups in Canvas are a great way to support collaboration, peer interaction, and team-based assignments. Whether you’re organizing students for group projects, discussions, or peer reviews, Canvas makes it easy to create and manage groups within your course. This article will walk you through the process of setting up group sets, creating groups manually or automatically, and assigning students so they can start working together effectively.
1. Navigate to "People" within the course you would like to make a group.
2. Click on "Groups"
3. Click on "+ Group Set"
4. You will need to name the group {1}. It is helpful to be specific. A good suggestion would be naming it after the specific assignment.
Allowing Self Sign -Up
By checking "Allow self sign-up" {2}, that means students will have to go in an sign up for a group independently. They can do so by following these directions. If you have combined sections of your course, you should select "Require group members to be in the same section" so that classmates are working with someone that meets at the same time as them {3}.
You will denote the number of groups and decide if you want to limit groups to a certain number of students {4}. If you want the groups to have a group leader, check "Automatically assign a student group leader" and select whether the first student to join or a random student in the group is going to be assigned as the group leader {5}. Then click "Save"
Automatically Assigning Groups
You will need to name the group {1}. It is helpful to be specific. A good suggestion would be naming it after the specific assignment.
Click on the dropdown box at "Group Structure" {2b} and decide if you want to split your groups:
If you select "Split students by number of groups", select the number of groups you want, select "Require group members to be in the same section", and set the leadership before clicking "Save".
If you select "Split number of students per group", select the number of groups you want, select "Require group members to be in the same section", and set the leadership before clicking "Save".
You will see your automatic group assignments populate:
You can adjust the groups as you see fit by selecting the person and moving them to another group or by simply dragging and dropping students to new groups:
Manually Assigning Groups
1. Navigate to "People" within the course you would like to make a group.
2. Click on "Groups":
3. Click on "+Group Set"
4. Name the Group, select "Create Groups Later", and click "Save":
You will see your Group set at the top of the screen. Click on "+Group" to create the number of groups you want to place students into:
Name and add group membership. Repeat until all groups needed are formed:
Click and drag the students into the groups. It will show that the group is full if you have limited membership.
Applying Groups to an Assignment
Open or create the assignment you wish to have the groups with and select "This is a Group Assignment".
You can decide to grade the group work individually by selecting the option.
Click on the dropdown box and select the group you have created (or create one on the fly using the above steps)
