Student Groups

Notes for Course Facilitator

Summary: 

 This page provides participants with strategies on creating student and instructor groups specific to Canvas.

Suggestions:

  • This content is provided as an example and should be updated with your institution's LMS materials.

Gentle reminder: Update all content highlighted in yellow to reflect your institution.

Both students and instructors can create groups in <Replace - Your LMS> to serve various purposes. Students may want to set up study groups or workspaces for a team project on their own. Instructors can also set up more structured groups for assignments or team projects. In either case, each Group has its own area with the following tools:

  • Announcements
  • Pages
  • Discussions
  • Chat
  • Files 
  • Conferences
  • Collaborations 
  • Calendar

The Canvas Student Guide has a whole chapter dedicated to Student Groups Links to an external site.. Please review this chapter and consider sharing it with your students if you plan to use the Groups feature in your course. It contains detailed descriptions and instructions on how to access a Student Group area as well as how to use the various tools within a Student Group.

 

Student-Created Groups

Students can create their own groups Links to an external site. to work together or share resources. Students may create an open group where the entire class is free to join or they can restrict it to just those who are invited.  Please share how students can create groups Links to an external site. with your own students!

Note: Instructors can disable the feature that allows students to create their own groups. By default it's turned on, but you can restrict this in the Settings area. Click the Edit Course Details button, click More Options, and deselect Let Students organize their own Groups. 

 

Instructor-Created Groups

As an instructor, you may also want to set up groups for your students. Larger classes can be broken up into smaller groups for discussion purposes, project work, or even study groups. 

There are multiple settings to consider when creating the groups. You may allow students to sign up for groups themselves, assign them randomly, or manually assign individuals to groups. The Canvas support Guide provides detailed instructions on how to create the groups Links to an external site. as well as the various options.

Watch this short video to learn more about instructor-created groups Links to an external site..

Once the groups have been created, you may want to monitor their progress. Instructors do have the ability to access the individual subgroups to see what students are doing in their groups Links to an external site..

 
Creative Commons License

TOPKit Sample Course was prepared by the University of Central Florida (UCF). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Links to an external site..