Groups in Canvas

Overview

Students enrolled in a course can be grouped together for projects, presentations, and other assignments in your course. Once groups are created, the instructor can choose to have each student submit work individually or choose to have only one student submit work for their entire group. In this case, Canvas automatically distributes the grade to each individual within that group, and the first student to submit work sees a warning notice reminding them they are submitting for their entire group.

How to Effectively Use Canvas Groups

You can use Canvas Groups as a collaborative tool for students. Consider these tips when creating groups in Canvas:

• Canvas will allow the instructor to create as many different groups as desired and assign each named group to different assignments. (Not recommended due to difficulty in setup.)

• Groups and configurations do not transfer from semester to semester in Canvas courses and must be remade each semester.

• When groups are created, Canvas notifications will alert students. Check carefully after the groups are created that your students are all assigned.

• It is recommended that instructors post detailed instructions in Canvas for students, including links to Canvas guides, to ensure students can participate successfully.

Additional Features of Canvas Groups

While the Groups tool does allow instructors to divide students up for grading discussions and assignments, it actually has a much larger capability! Groups are like a smaller version of your course and are used as a collaborative tool/collaborative workspace. In Canvas Groups, students can…

• share files,

• discuss assignment tasks,

• work on writing assignments with other students, and

• schedule meetings.

Anyone in the group can post content to share with other members of the group. Many features behave similarly to the main Canvas site. The students can use the group homepage to post announcements, create wiki pages, start discussions, and send files to group members. Additionally, they can create calendar events that are only visible to the group members. The features in Canvas Groups simplify the coordination of tasks and sharing of information between collaborators in a group project.

The biggest advantage of this space is that instructors of the course can visit the group homepages at any point and see how the group is progressing. This can be very useful for ongoing projects that have check-ins with the instructor throughout the course.

Open

While this is a great tool, many instructors and students are not aware of its capabilities. The Canvas Groups Overview (Students) is a valuable resource that you can provide to your students so they understand how to use this feature. We encourage you to consider using it with your students.

Examples

Groups are a helpful way to organize and manage collective assignments in your course. The following scenarios are ways in which instructors might use groups in their Canvas sites:

• An instructor of a lecture course of 160 students is looking to give students a chance to discuss course readings with their peers outside of class. The instructor splits the course into 20 groups of 8 students, and the 8 students are required to discuss the course readings each week in preparation for the course lectures. 

• An instructor of a 25-student course is trying to organize group presentations on five topics related to the course. The instructor has students sign up for topics of their interest, such that five groups of five students each are formed. The instructor then accepts student work via online submission and submits one grade for each of the five groups.

• An instructor wants to give students a place to collaborate on a year-long project for a small group seminar of 15 students. The instructor creates 5 groups of 3 students, and students create group Canvas sites with Canvas Pages, videos and multimedia, and other content to describe their course content. 

• An instructor is teaching a course of both undergraduate and graduate students in the same course. The instructor would like to make some content available to the graduate students without granting access to the undergraduate students. The instructor creates two groups (undergraduate vs. graduate) and restricts access to some advanced readings so that they are only available to graduate students.

Groups allow instructors to organize the work students complete, grant and restrict access to certain students vs. other students and provide a space for student collaboration in a password-protected online environment. (used with permission from Boston College Center for Teaching Excellence).

Related Information

To learn more about Groups, see these additional articles.

• Canvas Instructor Guides: Groups, Instructure

• Groups Overview (Video), Instructure

• Getting Started with Groups, Boston College Center for Teaching Excellence

• Groups vs. Sections

• Online Group Projects

• Group Work