Using Oncourse CL, how do I manage study groups or project teams?

View feature demonstrations relevant to this topic.

On this page:

• Overview
• Accessing groups
• Creating a group
• Editing a group
• Deleting a group

Overview

Groups are subsets of participants for a given worksite. Groups are not preloaded with official course data, and can therefore be created by the instructor. Groups are useful to organize study groups, project teams, and other non-official subsets of worksite participants.

Note: When combining sections into a parent site, groups from the original sections will not be brought forward. However, each section behaves like a group on the parent site, i.e., group-aware tools recognize each section as a group.

You can use groups with the following tools:

• Announcements: Post Announcements for your group.
  
  
• Assignments: Post Assignments for your group. However, you cannot add Assignments with group access into the Gradebook.
  
  
• Messages: Send Private Messages to your group.
  
  
• Resources: Allow specific access to files and folders for your group.
  
  
• Calendar: Schedule events for specific groups only.
  
  
• Site Setup: Manage your groups.

Accessing groups

You can access groups with the Site Setup and Worksite Setup tools.

To access groups with the Site Setup tool:

1. In your site's menubar, click Site Setup.
   
   
2. Click Manage Groups.

To access groups with the Worksite Setup tool:

1. Click My Workspace.
   
   
2. From the menubar, click Worksite Setup.
   
   
3. Check the box next to the course for which you wish to manage groups, and from the top, click Edit.
   
   
4. Click Manage Groups.

Creating a group

To create a new group:

1. Access the groups area of your site (see above).
   
   
2. Click Add.
   
   
3. In the "Title" field, enter a title for your group (e.g., Project team 1). You may also add a text description.
   
   
4. From the window on the left, select a site participant to add to the group, and then click Add to group. Repeat this step until you've added all the members you wish to the group. To select more than one member at a time, hold down the Ctrl key (in Windows) or the Cmd key (in Mac OS X), and select the members you wish to add.
   
   
5. When you're finished, click Update.

Note: It is not possible to create a new group based on existing group (i.e., duplicate an existing group).

Editing a group

To edit a group:

1. Access the groups area of your site (see above).
   
   
2. Next to the group title, click Edit.
   
   
3. You may revise the "Title" and "Description" fields. You may also add or remove group members by clicking Add to group or Remove.
   
   
4. When you're finished, click Update.

Deleting a group

To delete a group:

1. Access the groups area of your site (see above).
   
   
2. Next to the group you wish to remove, check the box under Remove.
   
   
3. Click Remove Checked.
   
   
4. To confirm removal, click Remove.

Feature demonstrations

• Create a group
  
• Posting an announcement to a group
  

Also see:

• Using Oncourse CL Calendar, how do I create/add, edit, or delete an item?
• Using Oncourse CL Gradebook, how do I view and export student grades?
• Using Oncourse CL Announcements, how do I create/add, edit, or delete an announcement?
• Using Oncourse CL Gradebook, how do I view grades?
• Using Oncourse CL Forums, how do I post and respond to messages?