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 can be accessed by the Course toolbar:

Open

To create one or more groups, you first need to create a Group Set to contain the groups. There are two ways to create group sets: within your module, or by importing the group data from a CSV file.

Instructions

Creating Groups in your module

Click Groups in the course toolbar and click New Group Set.

Open

Give the Group Set a name.

Choose one of the options from the Group students drop-down menu to set up your groups:

• Custom: manually add students to groups

• Randomly assign: automatically add students to groups at random

• Self-enrolment: lets student choose their group

Creating Custom groups

Selecting Custom from the Group students dropdown menu lets your create groups manually

1. Select the plus sign to add a new group then double click on the name to give the group a meaningful title

2. Create as many groups as you will need using the plus symbol.

3. Then in the Unassigned students section at the top of the page. Click on the ellipsis beside each student name and assign them to a group.

3. Repeat for each student.

You can un-assign or reassign a student at any time using dropdrown menu by clicking on the ellipsis beside the student name.

4. Once you have finished allocating students to groups, select Save at the bottom of the page.

Your group set will appear in the groups list. Click on the arrow to reveal the groups inside the group set. Use the ellipsis to edit the groups

Remember to make your group visible to student when you are ready to use it.

Randomly assigning students to groups.

Randomly assign lets you randomly distribute students throughout a specified number of groups

1. Select Randomly assign from the drop-down menu

2. Select the number of groups

3. Edit the Group names by clicking on the default group titles.

4. Select Save at the bottom of the page

Your group set will appear in the groups list. Click on the arrow to reveal the groups inside the group set. Use the ellipsis to edit the groups.

Remember to make your group visible to student when you are ready to use it.

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).

Importing 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.

Importing 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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