Assigning Discussions & Assignments to Existing Groups
This page shows examples of how to utilize groups of students once they are created within your course.
An important note on creating and utilizing Groups
The following documentation outlines Online Learning Service's recommended steps for assigning group discussions and group assignments. Although other approaches may exist for creating groups when assigning content, implementing other strategies outside of the prescribed method below will result in students being unable to access materials through the Group navigation tab in your course.
Step 1: Creating the group set
Create a group set in the Groups tab of your course navigation. This group set may be one that you wish to use over the course of the semester (such as individual sections in a merged course) or it may be a set that is specific to a particular assignment/discussion.
The example to the right shows two examples of different groups sets, each created for a different purpose.
Step 2: Creating the assignment/discussion
To assign a Group Assignmentor Discussion, begin by creating the respective item on the Course Content stream.
Assigning to existing Groups
Once you have created a new discussion item, click the gear icon in the right hand corner of the assignment across from "Discussion Settings."Under "Additional Tools" of the Discussion settings, select "Assign to groups"
You will see within the "Assign to groups" setting, there are several different ways to assign the discussion:
- Custom: Create specific groups that are needed for that particular group discussion. (To do this, follow the same steps for creating groups that is outlined on the Ultra Course - Groups Answers page
- Randomly assign: When you select this option, another drop down menu will appear to the right to select how many groups you would like to be created and the system will randomly assign students to groups based on that number
- Self-enrollment: This gives your students the option to join a group of their choosing, with a limit on the number of students that can enroll in each group. More information about this option can be found on the Ultra Course - Groups Answers page
- "Reuse groups": This section will list any groups that you have previously created in your course
Instructor View
When an instructor views a group discussion on Ultra, there is a subtle but very important addition that they will see within the discussion page. A drop down menu will appear below the discussion topic that allows the instructor to easily navigate between the group discussions without having to leave the page and navigate to a separate group's page. The video below illustrates this unique Ultra course feature: