IST eClass Support

Setting Up Groups

Thu, 08 May 2014 15:26:49 -0600

NOTICE: Please be advised that the content of this article may only be relevant for users concluding the final stages of course work on eClass or for users on the eClass External system. The eClass Learning Management System is currently in a read-only state that prohibits new courses, enrollments, and users from being added to the site. Credit courses and co-curricular courses at the UofA are now being delivered on Canvas, and full articles on how to use Canvas can be found here.

When you combine multiple course sections in a single eClass course, students are automatically assigned to groups based on the course sections they registered in when registering for your course (LEC, LAB, SEM, etc.).

You can also create additional groups to divide students for other purposes such as participation in group projects or, in large courses, to filter and divide grading tasks among TAs.

If students are in multiple groups but need different groups for different group projects, you will also need to create groups of groups called Groupings which we treat in a separate article and, briefly, below.

Activities that have groups enabled allow instructors and TAs to filter contributions with three different group modes:

No groups: All students can view and participate in the activity.
Separate groups: Only students within the same group can see and participate together in this group activity.
Visible groups: Students can see all other groups' activities, but they can only participate in their own group's activities.

There are two main steps to setting up groups:

creating the groups you want to use, and
setting the group mode in the activity or content where you want group participation.

Contents:

1 Creating Groups
2 Manually Adding Users
3 Auto-Creating Groups
4 Setting group visibility in course content (Group mode)
5 Notes
6 Warning

Creating Groups

To create Groups,

1. Click on the Participants tab at the top of your course page.

2. Click on the Enrolled users dropdown menu and select Groups:

3. On the Groups page, you will see two panels: the Groups panel on the left will list the different groups in your course, and the Members of panel on the right shows the members in the highlighted group.

4. Click the Create group button below the Groups panel.

5. Complete the setup with your group information.

'Group name': Name your group; for example, 'Study Group 1'.
'Group description': Give your group a description so you can better remember what this group was defined for.

6. Click the Save changes at the bottom of the page when you are finished.

Manually Adding Users

To manually add users to your group,

1. Click on the name of the group you just created in the Groups column to select it, then click the Add/remove users button beneath the Members of column.

2. On the Add/remove users page, you will again see two columns: the left (Group members) shows the current members of your group, and the right (Potential members) shows the people enrolled in your course.

3. Click on a user's name to select them (highlighted in blue), then click the Add button between the two columns to move them into your group.

4. You may also use the Shift key to select a block of users (click user, hold Shift, click another user). Or, you can use the Control key (Ctrl) (or Command key (Cmd) on a Mac) to select multiple users that are not in a row (hold Ctrl while selecting multiple users).

5. If there are too many users to show all at once, you may use the Search box below to narrow the list of potential group participants.

6. When you finsihed, click Back to groups at the bottom of the page.

Auto-Creating Groups

As an alternative to manually creating groups, you can create groups automatically while adding participants randomly.

1. Click the Auto-create groups button under the Groups panel.

2. In Auto-create groups setup you can specify either the number of groups you would like to create, or the number of members you would like to have in each group:

'Naming scheme': Use @ to differentiate by letters, or # to differentiate by numbers. For example, Group @ = Group A, Group B, Group C. Alternatively, Team # = Team 1, Team 2, Team 3.
'Auto create based on': Choose either 'Number of groups' or 'Members per group'.
'Group/member count': Specify the number of groups or number of members per group.
'Select members with role': Select a particular role if you want to pull only users enrolled in your course in that role. Example: you could use this to create a group out of all the TAs. in your course.
'Select members from grouping': Select students already belonging to a group in the given grouping. Example: you could use this if you wanted to take a specific grouping and create a larger group out of all the smaller groups currently assigned to the grouping.
'Select members from group: Select students already belonging to the given group. Example: you could use this if you wanted to take existing larger groups and further break them down into random smaller groups.
'Allocate members': Randomly, alphabetical (by first or last name), by ID number.
'Prevent last small group': Check this box to distribute members to existing groups as evenly as possible. This could especially be needed if you have specified the number of groups (as opposed to members per group)
'Ignore users in groups': Check this box to have users already belonging to a group not be assigned to additional new auto-created groups.
'Grouping of auto-created groups': If you would like to add these groups to a grouping, you can do so here.
'Grouping name': If you are adding this group to a new grouping, specify the name of the grouping.

3. Once you are done, you can Preview the groups or Submit them:

4. After creating your groups, the Groups page will display a number after each name indicating the number of participants assigned to each group.

Setting group visibility in course content (Group mode)

To restrict viewing and participation in activities using the groups you have created, you have to set the Group mode in the 'Common module settings' for that activity:

1. Go to your course page, and click on Edit mode at the top right of your page.

2. Enter the settings for an activity or resource and choose Group mode under Common module settings:

3. Save when you are done.

Group Mode Examples for Forums

'No groups': Choosing ‘No groups’ for a Forum activity will allow all members of the course to view the forum, as well as post new discussions and replies, regardless of what group they belong to. This is always chosen for every activity by default.
- Example: Help forum (no groups) - Anyone in the class can post a question, respond and see all discussions.
'Separate groups': Choosing ‘Separate groups’ for a Forum activity will essentially create separate discussion rooms for each individual group. Course participants can only see and post to their own group's discussion; all other group's discussions are completely invisible.
- Example: Graded group discussion (separate groups) - These forums will be graded by group so you cannot see any other group's discussion points.
'Visible groups': Choosing ‘Visible groups’ for Forum activities will create separate discussion rooms for each individual group that can be viewed by all participants in the course. However, participants will only be able to post and reply to forums set aside for their own group.
- Example: Group project discussion (visible groups) - These forums are set up for students to discuss their group projects, but all have different topics so they can read about what other groups are doing but can only contribute to their own.

Running multiple course sections in a single eClass course: You can run multiple course sections in a single eClass course and vary the activities while keeping the static content the same by using groups.

- Example: A group is automatically generated for each of the sections in a combined course. You can create a Wiki on Topic One restricted to Group A1 and a Wiki on Topic Two restricted to Group A2. Each student will only see the Wiki Topic of the group they belong to (either A1 or A2). Meanwhile, the syllabus (which is group independent) can be seen by all students.

Notes

Assigning students to multiple groups will create a conflict in any individual activity when the system attempts to assign the activity to all the groups in your course. If you want participants to work with different groups on different activities, then you will need to combine the groups for a particular activity in a Grouping. Please see the article Setting up Groupings.

To limit a specific activity or resource to only the members of a particular group, you will need to set Access restrictions instead of using the group mode.

For eClass courses containing combined sections, a group will be automatically created for each individual section in the course (eg. a group each for LEC A1, and LEC A2).

Any activity in eClass can be set so that it uses visible groups (groups can see each other), separate groups (groups cannot see each other's work) or no groups. In these scenarios, the SAME activity is delivered to students along one of these methods (for giving each group access to their own separate activity or content, you must use Access restrictions).

Ensure that you establish your group settings before your students begin participating in any activities where groups are being used. Changing group modes can cause problems in activities if you change group modes (visible, invisible, no groups) after students have begun to work in the activity. For example, if you set up a discussion forum and posts are made after group settings are added, posts made before the change are replicated in all groups’ forums.

You may wish to have groups set by default for your entire course - you can do this in your course settings. This does not automatically apply the group settings to already existing activities and resources but does apply them to any new ones created. The other benefit of setting a group mode at the course level is that the gradebook can be sorted based on sub-section groups. See Filtering Your Gradebook by Groups for more information.

Unless you have Visible groups enabled, switching a student from one group to another will remove their ability to see posts made to the first group forum while a member of that group. If Student Five was originally a member of Group A, he will not be able to view any posts or replies he made in Group A’s discussion forum after he is moved to Group B.

If a user is not in a group, they will be unable to view or participate in any group activities if group mode is set to Separate groups. If Group mode is set to Visible groups, students not placed in a group will be able to view discussions across all groups, but will be unable to contribute.

Instead of auto-creating or constructing groups by hand, it is also possible to have students self-select their group using an additional block in your course - see Using the Group Sign-up Block.

WARNING in regards to Group Assignments: Once submissions have been made, DO NOT alter the groups or groupings in any way. If groups or groupings need to be updated or changed, we recommend that you create new groups/groupings and re-deploy the assignment with the updated group settings. Failure to do so will result in lost student submission data and glitches with the assignment review.

Setting Up Groupings

Thu, 08 May 2014 15:26:45 -0600

A grouping in eClass is a set of groups.

If you are creating different groups for different assignments and activities, all groups will be assigned to all assignments and activities all the time without Groupings, and students would need to submit on behalf of every group they belong to causing confusion and error conditions.

Once you have created groups, you can create Groupings which can be used in two main ways:

To enable students to be arranged into different groups for different activities (e.g., one set of groups for discussion and another for an assignment).
To assign eClass content to specific groups of users (e.g., assigning a document only to a specific subset of students in your course).

Contents:

1 Creating groupings
2 Adding groups to groupings
3 Enabling grouping restrictions
4 Grouping examples
5 Restrict access

Creating Groupings:

Groupings are 'groups of groups,' so you have to create groups first in order to create groupings (see our article Setting Up Groups).

1. From your course homepage, click on the Participants tab at the top of your course page:

2. Click on the Enrolled users dropdown and select Groupings:

3. Click on Create grouping:

4. Give your grouping a name (required) and a description (if desired). Then, click Save changes.

5. After you have created your grouping it will appear in a row on the Groupings Table. The table shows all course groupings, the groups in each grouping, the number of activities that have been assigned to the grouping, and the editing options for the grouping.

Adding groups to Groupings:

1. To add groups to a Grouping, click on the Show groups in grouping icon in the far right column:

2. Similarly to adding members to groups, adding groups to groupings also gives you a page with two columns: the left, 'Existing members'' shows groups that are part of your Grouping and the right, 'Potential members,' shows the groups available for you to add to your grouping.

3. Click on a group's name in the 'Potential members' column to select it, then click the Add button between the two columns to move them to your grouping.

Note: you may also use the Shift key to select a block of groups (click user, hold Shift, click another user). Or, you can use the Control key (Ctrl) (or Command (Cmd) on a Mac) key to select multiple groups that are not in a row (hold Ctrl while selecting multiple groups).

4. When you are done adding groups to the grouping, click Back to groupings at the bottom of the page.

Enabling grouping restrictions

To use the groups specified by a particular grouping in an assignment or activity, you will have to set the Groupings options. These settings no longer restrict access to members of the selected grouping - see ">Restrict Access below.

1. To change settings to add grouping options, click Edit mode at the top right of your course page.

2. Click the 3-dot dropdown and then Edit settings, to the right of the activity name:

3. Scroll down to Common module settings area and enter the following:

a. Set the 'Group mode,' 'Visible groups' if your students should see but not affect other groups, or 'Separate groups' if your student should neither see nor affect other groups. This setting is not required if your grouping contains only one group.

b. Set "Grouping" to the specific grouping you have set up for this resource/activity.

4. Click Save and return to course.

Grouping examples:

Mixing up the groups for various group activities: if you have multiple group activities throughout your course, but don't want students to be working with the same people all the time, you can use groupings to set up different groups for your different activities.

Example: You divide your class into 3 groups (A, B and C) and add these groups to a grouping called 'Wiki'. You then divide your class into 4 different groups (1, 2, 3 and 4) and add these groups to a grouping called 'Discussion'. When you create your activities, you set your Wiki to use the Wiki grouping (which includes groups A, B and C) and you set your Discussion forum to use the Discussion grouping (which contains groups 1, 2, 3 and 4). Your students will be in one group to complete the wiki and another for the discussion forum.

You can also break the students in each section of a combined course up into smaller groups for group activities.

Example: Divide the students in Lec A1 into three groups (A, B and C) and then add these groups to a Grouping A1 so that groups A, B and C can be used for group activities contained restricted to their lecture section.

Restrict access:

1. To limit an entire activity to a grouping, open the Common module settings in the activity, and click on Add group/grouping access restriction.

2. Open Restrict access settings.

3. Add the grouping from the Grouping access restriction if it has not already populated.

Using the Group Sign-Up block (Students)

Fri, 15 Sep 2017 15:08:54 -0600

This article describes using the Group Sign-up to join pre-existing groups and when students will create their own groups. This is an optional tool that your instructor may enable assigning students to groups for projects or assignments,

For many courses, groups are pre-determined or set up differently so students will only need to follow these instructions if explicitly told to by instructors.

Contents:

1 Group Sign-up block
2 Join an existing group
3 Leave a group
4 Create/Edit a group
5 Enrolling other students in your group
6 Lock your group choices
7 View group
8 Related Article(s)

Group Sign-up block:

If your instructor has enabled group sign-up, students will see the Group-Sign-up block into the drawer on the right side of the main page of your course:

If you do not see information blocks on the right side of your main course page, click the 'Open block drawer' button:

Note: You may have to scroll down the block drawer to find the Group Sign-up block:

Join an existing group:

You will not be able to 'Edit group' until you 'Join existing group.'

If you are joining an existing group, use the 'Join existing group' link.

To join a group, click the check box beside a group:

When you join a group, you will get a confirmation pop-up: 'Successfully joined group'.

If a group is full, you will not be able to see the group.

Leave a group:

If group selections have not been locked by the instructor, you can also leave a group whether it has been created by you, another student or by your instructor.

If you have chosen the wrong group, click on 'Edit group,' then click the 'Leave group' checkbox:

Create/Edit a group:

If your instructor has set up the Group Sign-up block to allow students to create their own groups, you will see the 'Create/Edit a group' link. Click there to begin:

You will have the options both to name the group you are creating and also to allow your classmates to find your group:

Enrolling other students in your group:

Once you have created a group, you can enroll classmates in your group by typing their names or by selecting them from the 'Type a name' dropdown list:

Note: If your instructor has set a limit to the group size, you will see an error message: 'ERROR: Too many members in group' when you try to 'Save changes' to your group. Click the 'x' beside each name to remove a member until you can save your group without an error.

Lock your group choice:

Clicking Lock my group choice will remove your ability to make any changes and remove the ability for anyone but your instructors to remove you from a group.

Locking group choices is not required or recommended under normal circumstances.

View group:

If you wish to see who else is in your group, click on 'View group':

You will see a simple list of your group members:

Group Submission in Assignments

Fri, 27 Nov 2015 14:50:43 -0700

If you wish to have your students submit their work in groups, the relevant settings are available in the Group submission settings area (and not in the Common module settings area where most group and groupings setup is done in eClass).

If you want your students to submit in groups, change 'Students submit in groups' to Yes.
If you want students not in groups to make submissions, change the option for 'Require group to make submission' to No. This should generally not be changed as it prevents a known issue where student's submissions into the 'Default group' block all others from submitting.
If you want to receive only a single submission from the entire group, leave the option for 'Require all group members submit' set to No (which is the default setting and not editable unless the setting 'Require students click submit button' is set to Yes).
If you have a combined course or are using a number of different groups during the term in your course, you will need to specify a grouping to identify the specific set of groups to be applied for this assignment. For more information on creating groups and groupings, please see Setting Up Groupings. Note: if you do not correctly complete this step and have set 'Require all group members to submit' to No, the first student submission will get added to all the students and no one else will be able to submit.
WARNING: Once submissions have been made, DO NOT alter the groups or groupings in any way. If groups or groupings need to be updated or changed, we recommend that you create new groups/groupings and re-deploy the assignment with the updated group settings. Failure to do so will result in lost student submission data and glitches with the assignment review.
Once groups submissions are made, when you are grading you have the option of providing a single grade to all group members at once:

Setting up and Using the Group Peer Assessment Activity

Fri, 18 Aug 2017 13:07:21 -0600

The Group Peer Assessment activity allows students to provide scores and ratings to the other members of their assigned groups in eClass. This tool can be used to monitor team progress, peer assess group work output, or deliver feedback on team project participation. Group members are able to score each other on a series of assessment items created by the instructor.

The Group Peer Assessment is not automatically graded, but you can generate a CSV file to help import grades into your gradebook.

In order to use the Group Peer Assessment, students must have already been added to Groups. See our article Setting Up Groups.

Contents:

1 Adding a Peer Groups Assessment
2 General
3 Assessment items
4 Additional options
5 Activity completion
6 Preview results
7 Instructor's report

Adding a Peer Groups Assessment:

1. To add the Group Peer Assessment to your class, first activate Edit mode at the top right of your class page:

2. Locate the topic under which you want to place the activity and click on Add an activity or resource:

3. Select the Group Peer Assessment activity from the 'Activity Chooser'.

General:

1. A 'Group Peer Assessment name' is required. Make it meaningful to students.

2. The 'Description' should provide instructions they will need to complete their assessments.

3. The groups dropdown displays all of the groups available in your course. You can select as many groups as required using ctrl/cmd-click, but students will only ever be able to assess the other students within their own group.

4. You will see a warning if a student is included in multiple groups for the same peer assessment activity.

Assessment items:

1. You are able to create up to 9 assessment items for your scoring rubric, and a text comments area is included at the bottom of the assessment items.

2. Students will see the title and description when they are assessing their peers.

3. The assessment type offers the choice of Likert: where the students can select from 'Strongly disagree', 'Disagree', 'Neutral', 'Agree', or 'Strongly agree'; and Numeric where the students enter a score from 1 to 5.

4. Instructors can use the standard eClass text editor to create the descriptions for the assessment items where you can add rubrics for the student ratings:

Additional options:

Instructors can also choose from the following options:

Display the peer assessment results to students, or keep them hidden and visible only to the instructors and TAs in the course. If visible to students, the reviews are nevertheles always anonymized.
Allow students to rate themselves. If self-ratings and student-display are both selected, this shows as a comparison between self and peer ratings.
Self-ratings are always excluded from any calculated averages.
Allow students to opt out of questions. This will give them the option to select 'n/a' instead of a particular answer to an assessment item. If 'n/a' is selected, that question is excluded from any calculation of averages based on a student's ratings.
Set a date after which ratings are cut off and peer assessments can no longer be completed. If this last option is used in combination with 'Displaying score/feedback to students', the 'lock/release date' is also the date/time when students will see the reviews from their peers.

Activity completion:

Please note that you will not see the activity completion options until activity completion is enabled for your course. The steps to enable activity completion tracking can be found in our article on Completion Tracking.

Instructors can set automatic activity completion tracking on group peer assessment activities. Activities can be marked complete once a student has completed an assessment of all the peers in their group:

Preview results:

Once the options are saved, instructors see a preview of what the assessment looks like to students (without any students to rate):

Instructor's report:

1. The instructor view also contains a link near the top right to View the Group Peer Assessment Report.

2. The report shows all the groups separately with each student's average over all the ratings they have received.

3. Average scores are calculated out of 5, excluding any items set to N/A.

Likert ratings are converted to a numeric score with Strongly Disagree scoring 1, and Strongly Agree scoring 5.

4. Click the Expand arrow icon to the left of a student's name to show the specific assessment item ratings and comments provided by each group member. Instructors can click Expand all near the top right to overview all the detailed views at a glance.

5. The Group Peer Assessment Report can be exported to a CSV file to be used to import average scores into the eClass gradebook or to perform advanced calculations in Excel.

6. Note that students see a slightly different view. For more details, see Rating Other Students Using the Group Peer Assessment Activity.

Using the Group Sign-Up block (Instructors)

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 11:25:23 -0600

As an extension of the Groups/Groupings functionality, the Group Sign-up block allows students to create or join pre-created groups for collaborating in eClass activities without the instructor needing to manually add them to the groups. The block allows instructors to pre-create groups in a grouping they want students to self-select into or allow students to create and then join their own groups.

This article describes how instructors can use the Group Sign-up block in their eClass course. The block can additionally be used in conjunction with a pre-survey to have students create well-matched teams for group work. For more information on that option see Advanced Use of the Group Sign-up block.

Contents:

1 Initial setup
2 Adding the block
3 Students interaction with the block
4 Final steps: Associate groups to activities

Initial set up

The Group Sign-up block requires that there is a grouping in the course in which the groups will be added/self-created. Instructors must create a grouping - basically a collection of groups to serve a purpose in a course activity (projects/assignments/discussions/etc). This grouping will be used so students can either sign-up for groups or will allow students to create their own groups. Any groups created will be associated specifically with this grouping and will categorize the groups created to differentiate them from other associated activities.

Adding the block

1. Add the Group Sign-up Block. (How to add blocks)

2. Once the block is added, click Edit skills group settings to specify the parameters:

3. The 'Inputs' section is only required if using the advanced features of the block.

4. Under 'Outputs':

Choose the grouping created in the Initial setup
Decide whether students can create groups for themselves, name them, add other classmates, and/or view other group members
Set a maximum group size and a group formation deadline

5. Save changes.

Student usage of the block

After you save changes, students can access the Group Sign-up block. The sign-up block allows them to:

Create (if enabled)/Edit a group
Join existing group

For more information on how students interact with it, please see Using the Group Sign-Up block (Students).

Final steps: Associate groups to activities

1. Create an activity.

2. After specifying the parameters for your activity, scroll down to the 'Common module settings' section.

3. Under the 'Grouping' dropdown, choose the grouping that you created in the initial step.

* Note: If you are using an Assignment activity, you may be interested in Group submission settings.

Filtering Your Gradebook by Groups

Fri, 11 Sep 2015 11:54:26 -0600

If you have set up groups in your course, you might want to enable the option to filter different course administration pages by those groups. The most common use case for doing this is in the gradebook but this also works for the participants page, list of enrolled users, course reports, etc. If you have specified a group distribution on a particular activity, eg. forum, assignment, etc. in your course, the option to filter that particular activity already exists.

This filtering can be especially useful in the gradebooks of large courses that contain multiple sub-sections (where groups are automatically created and updated based on all the sub-sections). This allows different instructors or TAs to sort the gradebook depending on the sub-sections they are responsible for grading.

To enable this filter:

Click on the Settings tab on top your course main page. Expand the Groups section then from the Group mode dropdown box, select Visible groups (leaving the other settings unchanged).
Click on Save and display
In your gradebook, you will now see a dropdown box allowing you to sort by groups.

Example for Use:

A scenario where this could be very useful in large multi-section courses is to automatically sort the optically scored exams into sub-sections for review or offline grading.

First upload the spreadsheet provided by TSQS into your combined eClass course following these instructions: Importing Grades.
Once uploaded, you can view specific sections of grades by filtering the gradebook to a single one of the course sub-sections.
If you want to turn around and export just a subset of the gradebook to work offline, you can similarly filter the export page to include only a single sub-section.
This method could be used to divide a large TSQS spreadsheet into several smaller ones each representing a single sub-section.

Notes:

Whichever option you choose for Group mode will automatically be selected for any new activities you add for the course so you may want to consider turning on groups at the course level AFTER you have completed course construction if the bulk of your activities or resources do not need to be split into groups. This is also the reason we recommend Visible groups as this has slightly less effect in case you create a new activity and forget to adjust the group settings for it specifically.
Either Separate groups or Visible groups will add the filter option to your student lists.
The option to Force group mode should be set to No unless you are still constructing the course and know that you want activities to be split up into groups.
By default, the filter dropdowns will contain ALL the groups in your course - if you have a number of groups that you want to strip out of the gradebook filter, you can create a grouping of those required and specifying it in the Default grouping dropdown. This would also be the required process to display only the groups in a specific grouping on the course participants page, for example to only display the 'public' groups in a course. For more information, see the article: Setting Up Groupings.
Important note: both group mode options will allow students to see a filtered list of the groups in the course (all groups if the setting is Visible groups; only the groups they are enrolled in if Separate groups.) This means that if instructors are also using a group to apply overrides for accommodations since the users could see other student's private information. Instructors should can prevent students from viewing the participants page if they need to BOTH filter their gradebook by groups AND are using a accommodations group for overrides.

Calculate per-Grader Assignment Averages in Large Sections

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 09:50:25 -0700

In large courses where multiple TAs mark a single assignment, it can be useful to see a per-grader average to compare how different graders have graded students. This article will walk through setting up a course to view per-grader averages and suggest a couple of best practices for setting up assignments with multiple markers in mind.

Contents:

1 Initial setup
2 Course setup
3 Assignment setup (optional)
4 Splitting assignment grading by group
5 Viewing per-grader averages

Initial setup

First, you will need to set up groups of students in your course. Each group is representative of the group of students that one marker is responsible for grading.

If these groups will be different for each assignment, you will need to create a unique set of groups for each assignment. Setting up a Grouping for each assignment can be helpful when grading assignment submissions. Be sure to use unique and descriptive group names: e.g., Assignment 1 Group 1, Assignment 1 Group 2, Assignment 1 Group 3, Assignment 2 Group 1, Assignment 2 Group 2, etc.

Course setup

Setting a course-level group mode is required to see the per-grader averages for assignments. To set a course-level group mode, click on the Settings tab on your course main page, then scroll down to the Groups area of the settings and change Group mode to Visible groups.

Assignment setup (optional)

Note: If students are to submit in groups, the assignment should be configured for group submission.

There are two ways to configure an assignment which can help markers keep track of which students they are responsible for grading.

The easiest way is to enable a group mode for the assignment. To set an assignment’s group mode, click on the Settings tab on your assignment page, then under Common module settings, change Group mode to Visible groups then Save at the bottom of the page. This area is also where you can specify a grouping if you will have varying marker allocations throughout the course.

It is also possible to explicitly allocate specific markers to a specific set of students using marker allocation but this is not a prerequisite for viewing per-grader averages. For more details on marker allocation, please see Splitting up Grading of Assignments in Large Sections.

Splitting assignment grading by group

After completing the steps outlined above, each grader will have the ability to filter assignment submissions by Group. To do so, click on View All Submissions in the assignment that is being graded.

Then select a group from the Visible Groups drop-down at the top of the page. This can help graders keep track of which students they are assigned to grade.

For an overview of using the assignment grading table, please see Grading Student Assignments.

Viewing per-grader averages

Per-grader averages can be viewed from within the gradebook which is accessed by clicking on Grades tab at the top of the page.

Similarly to assignments, the gradebook can be filtered by group. To do so, select a group from the Visible groups drop-down.

After selecting a group, both the Overall average and Group average are displayed at the bottom of the Grader report. In large courses, these averages can be used to determine the relative difficulty of each grader. Accordingly, manual adjustments can be made to balance out students’ grades.

Rating Other Students Using the Group Peer Assessment Activity

Tue, 22 Aug 2017 11:34:22 -0600

If you are working in groups in eClass, your instructor may have set up an activity for you to rate all the other members of your group.

This activity will be identified in your course with an appropriate title and the icon shown here.

Once you enter the activity, your instructor(s) will have included any required instructions and if they have set a deadline for you to complete reviewing your peers, these will appear at the top above the list of students in your group that you need to provide ratings for:

To assess a student, click their name, fill in the ratings, and enter comments. Your instructor has the option to display peer's ratings and comments but even if this isn't the case, you should always aim to be constructive and respectful in your feedback.

Once you have submitted an assessment for a student, they will have a small green Assessed flag beside their name. You can click on any previously completed assessments and make changes up until the posted deadline.
If your instructor, has enabled it, you may also be required to complete an assessment for yourself. To do this, you click your own name from the list of group members to assess.

Your instructor may use the peer assessment simply as a check-up on the health and happiness of your team but they also have the option to display your group peer ratings to you.
If there is a deadline to review, you would only be able to view these results once the deadline is passed. Additionally, if you have been the option to rate yourself, your scores will be shown in relation to your peers. Note: feedback comments are always anonymous.

Exporting Group Information from Courses

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 16:24:45 -0700

New in June 2023, eClass instructors can utilize a core Moodle function to export student details along with their respective group information. (This functionality was previously offered through the use of a custom-built external tool.) The export generates a .csv spreadsheet containing students' first names, last names, CCID, email addresses, and group names.

To export groups:

Click on Participants from the top menu bar of your course main page:
From the drop down menu at the top left of the page, select Overview in the 'Groups' section:
From the 'Filter groups by', select the appropriate grouping and or groups that need to be exported. Once a selection is made, the page displaying the groups will adjust to the filtered groups/groupings; the contents of the file will match the filtered contents displayed on the overview page:

4. The resulting file will contain columns for the grouping, group, and identofying student information. The sample image below shows the result after selecting a single grouping from 'Filter groups by':

Import Groups from a Spreadsheet

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 10:11:04 -0600

While Groups can be entered manually on eClass, it is possible to create and import groups from a spreadsheet (CSV). This tool can be used only for importing empty groups.

Students must be added manually after the groups are created.

It is also important to note that combined courses will have groups set up by default for each section within the course.

CSV Setup:

A spreadsheet can be made in Excel and saved as a CSV file to use for importing groups:

Here are some of the column names available:

Required:

groupname - the name of the group

Optional:

groupidnumber - the ID number of the group
description - the description of the group
enrollmentkey - the enrollment key for the group (used for self-enrollment)

The sample CSV file above can be downloaded here.

Import Procedure:

Once you have created your .csv, in order to import groups from a file:

In the header for your course, click on Participants, and select Groups from the dropdown menu.
Next, click on the Import Groups button at the bottom.
You will be brought to a page where you can drag a CSV file into the Import box or click on Choose a file, then browse....
Click on Import Groups to upload your file containing the groups, then, click on Continue at the next screen. Your groups are now listed in the course.

Advanced Use of Group Sign-up Block

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 15:14:32 -0600

Contents:

1 Inputs
2 Outputs
3 Additional Settings

This article describes how instructors can link the Group Sign-Up block to a feedback activity to have students fill in a questionnaire about themselves to aid in the formation of project teams. For basic usage of the Group Sign-up block, please see our article on setting up the group sign-up block.

Select Edit skills group settings to set up advanced group self-selection. Until you configure group sign-up, students will not be able to use the block.

Inputs

You can use a feedback activity (created separately from the group sign-up block) to help students identify potential strengths which can be used to encourage formation of well-rounded groups. Using a feedback activity in conjunction with the group sign-up block is not required.

The feedback activity should contain only single-answer multiple-choice questions (you may also use labels). The selectable answers for these questions should be numerals so that students can rank their own skill level (see below).

Make sure your feedback activity is NOT anonymous, otherwise, students’ responses can’t be mapped correctly to the group sign-up block.

Keep in mind that question names (set in the field labelled “Question”) are also displayed when students view group strengths. Making question names somewhat generic and short can improve readability.

Students will see the following when they join an existing group:

Students must rank a skill ABOVE the score threshold for it to be listed as a strength in group selection.

More details on setting up feedback activities can be found our article on adding feedback items.

Outputs

Your course must contain a grouping to place the generated groups within. Choose a grouping that is empty and has no groups within it. For more information on groupings and how to set one up please see SETTING UP GROUPINGS.

Naming groups: If Group Creation is checked, the instructor has to SET UP GROUPS for students to join. If Naming is checked, students can name their groups. If neither is selected, a default naming scheme is used. Instructors can create groups as they regularly would, making sure to add the created groups to the correct grouping.

Additional Settings

Additional Settings can be used to limit group size and set a cut-off date for forming groups. Setting a maximum group size is required (if you don’t want to limit group size, set a sufficiently large number here).

Groups can be edited similarly to regular instructor-generated groups in eClass. This includes manually moving students between groups. Look at our article on setting up Groups for more details on editing groups in eClass.

Restricting Access to Content for Specific Groups

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 15:16:30 -0600

Instructors will often combine several of their course sections so that general course content only needs to be posted in one place. However, there may still be other content (assignments, quizzes, etc) that are specific to each section (lecture, lab, seminar, group, etc). This article will illustrate a simple example of what a course would look like with such restrictions in place.

As an instructor, you would use restrictions so that your sections (lecture, lab, seminar, groups, etc) can see their respective course content.

This course has two groups (Group A and Group B)
There are two versions of the syllabus in this course for their respective groups
With the restrictions set, users from Group A will see the Group A tabs while Group B can only see theirs.

As a reminder, these restrictions can be implemented the same way for other types of course content (assignments, quizzes, etc.).

Related articles:

Setting up groups

Restricting Access to An Activity or Resource