Groups and Group sets

Groups are a powerful tool to help manage cohorts and promote collaboration through tasks, assessments, and discussions. The available options for group creation fit most scenarios and should allow you to set up your groups quickly.

Groups have their own menu:

Open

Groups belong to group sets. To create a group or groups, you need to create a group set. There are two ways to create group sets. They can be created within Ultra, or by importing the group data from a CSV file.

Instructions

Creating Groups using on-screen options

Click Groups on the module homepage, and click New Group Set.

Open

Give the Group Set a name.

The Group students drop-down menu lets you choose between 4 grouping methods:

• Custom: manually add students to groups

• Randomly assign: automatically add students to groups at random

• Self-enrolment: lets student choose their group

• Reuse existing group sets

Populating groups manually

Custom lets you create groups by selecting the plus sign.

1. Create as many groups as you will need.

2. To assign students, select the ellipsis on a student card and select the group they will be part of.

    

3. Repeat for each student.

4. Once you have finished allocating students to groups, select Save.

Randomly assigning students to groups.

Randomly assign lets you set how many students you want in each group, create the correct number of groups and randomly place the correct number of students in each group.

1. Select Randomly assign from the drop-down menu

2. Select the Number of groups

3. Group names and descriptions can be added once they have been created

4. Select Save

Self Enrolment

You may want to give students the opportunity to choose their group. By default, two groups will be created. More can be added by selecting the plus sign below the existing groups.

The Advanced Options let you add a description, program the enrolment start and end dates, and the maximum number of students per group. By default, group members are visible.

Watch a 3 min video about setting up groups in Ultra

Importing group-sets and group members

The methods described above may prove time-consuming when dealing with large cohorts or complex constraints to form groups. In those cases, group-sets and group members lists can be created outside of Ultra in a spreadsheet e.g. Excel and saved as a .CSV (comma separated values).

Creating Group-sets (use for setting up groups for discussions)

1. Use the to create a file that contains the name of your group sets, it must contain the following columns:

For instance a completed file for e-tutors might look like this, this will create four Group sets

Make sure it’s saved as a .CSV

2. In Blackboard, click on Import Group Set

This will open up the Import Group Sets menu, click on Upload file, navigate to your group set.CSV file. Then click Import.

You will then get a on-screen message:

When Blackboard has processed the file, you will receive an email to your Ulster email account (in the Other folder)

3. Open it, if it has not encountered any errors, it should announce that the file was successfully imported. Click on Go to Course Groups

A list of Group sets will appear in Blackboard.

Adding students to Group sets

1. Create a separate group-members .CSV file is created containing two columns, Group Code, User name to add students to groups in Group sets

2. Select the ellipsis (three dots) beside the name of the Group set. Select Edit from the context menu

3. Chose the Import Groups or Members symbol and select your group members.CSV file and click Save.

4. Again you will receive an email when the file has processed. Refresh your Groups page in Blackboard.

If you successfully added the students, you will see the number of members increase in the Members column.

Remember to set the groups Visible to Students. To view the list of students, click on the group set name, the list of assigned students will be at the bottom of the page.

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