Creating Categories & Adding Users to Groups in Brightspace

Brightspace group

Introduction:

Groups enable students to collaborate on projects and assignments while sharing files easily. A student may be part of multiple groups within a single course and will still have access to all course content available to other learners.

In this step-by-step guide, we will show you how to create your groups in your Brightspace courses, along with enrolling students into those groups!

Step-by-Step Instructions:

NOTE: Groups have a maximum enrollment of 200 users. If there are more than 200 students in a course, you can create new group categories; there is no limit to the number of group categories within a given course.

Creating a Group Category

TIP: Before creating a set of groups in your course, consider the enrollment type options available in Brightspace:

No Auto Enrollment: Instructor manually enrolls groups members
Auto-Enrollment: Brightspace automatically enrolls groups members.
Self Enrollment: Students enroll themselves as group members.

1. Log into Brightspace to access your course.
2. In your course, go to the Tools tab in your course navigation bar and select Groups
3. In Manage Groups, select the New Category button.
4. Enter the desired name for the Group Category in the Category Name text box. You also have the option to enter a description in the Description text box.
5. Select an Enrollment type from the drop-down menu. See a description of the enrolment type options in th table.
6. Enter the number of groups to create and/or the number of students per group. [a]
7. To apply a distinctive prefix to each group name and code in the category, enter it in the Group Prefix field. If you do not fill in this field, the prefix defaults to “Group”. [b]
8. Under Advanced Properties, you have the option to make category and group descriptions visible to group members. [c]
9. Under Additional Options, you have the option to setup a discussion area workspace, group lockers, or a dropbox folder for each group to submit their assignments in. [d]
10. Select Save to save your settings and return to the Manage Groups page. [e]

Assigning Students

1. Select a group category from the View Categories drop-down list to view all groups within that category.
2. Select the drop-down arrow next to the category name in your groups table, then select Enroll Users.
3. On the Enroll Users page, scroll down to the table listing all users enrolled in your course.
- To add a user to a group, check the box for that user in the appropriate group column.
- To remove a user from a group, uncheck the box for that student in the appropriate group column.
TIP: Search for a student’s name in the search field to jump to a specific student, or select Show Search Options to access more search filters, including the options to view all users who are currently not enrolled in a group.
4. Select Save to save your enrollments and return to your Manage Groups page.

Troubleshooting Steps:

• Restore deleted groups and categories | D2L Brightspace Community

Additional Resources:

FAQ Section:

• What happens when you move users to a new group?
- Discussion posts remain in the old group and do not count towards a user’s grade if the forum or topic is associated with a grade item. The user must satisfy the discussion post requirements in the new section. You can override a grade using the Grades tool.
- Assignments submitted for the old group remain with the old group. The user receives the grade achieved by the new group on any group assignments. You can change the user’s grade back to the original group’s mark in the Grades tool.
  
  Watch: how to modify group enrollment
• What happens when you delete a group or group category?
- When you delete a group, the following things happen:
  - If you've selected the Auto-enroll new users option, users are automatically distributed in the remaining groups.
  - If groups are set up for manual enrollment, you must add users to the remaining groups using the Enroll Users page.
  - Group discussion forums remain available for reference. You can delete them in the Discussions tool.
  - Group assignments and the files they contain are deleted.
  When you delete a category, the following things happen:
  - Users are no longer enrolled in groups because they do not exist.
  - Group discussion forums remain available for reference.
  - You can delete them in the Discussions tool.
  - Group assignments and the files they contain are deleted.

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