Groups | How to create a Brightspace Group
Using the Groups in Brightspace you are able to create different groups for your course. These are organized into categories, which serve as containers for topic-related groups. There is no limit on the number of group categories in a course.
This article shows how to:
Creating Groups
Navigate to your course, in the green navigation bar
- Click on Communication, a drop-down menu will appear
- Click Groups
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The homepage Manage Groups now opens.
First, a group category is needed.
A group category can hold multiple groups. Several categories can exist simultaneously.
For example, there is a Group Category for tutorials and a Group Category for practicals. For tutorials, students are divided into 4 groups of 20 persons; for the practicals, students are divided into 8 groups of 10 persons.
- Click the blue button New Category to add a Group Category
- (Optional) Click to view and recover deleted groups
In the first section Category Information do the following:
- Enter a Category Name
- (Optional) Add a Description of the Group Category
- Select Enrolment Type - how you want the users to be enrolled in the Groups
- You can assign students yourself (manually or automatically) to a group, or allow them to assign themselves (Self Enrolment).
For more information about enrolment types, please visit: Groups | About Brightspace Group Category enrolment types
Please note that if a course has a future start date, groups will not be created automatically. To work around this, temporarily set the course start date to a past date, create the group category, and then restore the original start date.
- Fill in Number of Groups and/or Number of Users (linked to the enrolment type you choose in Step 6)
- Decide how many groups there should be (# of Groups) and/or the amount of students per group (Groups of #).
- (Optional) Give name to the Group Prefix
- this option lets you customize the general name of the groups in the Group Category (e.g. using prefix Study group will create the number of groups specified in Step 7 with the name Study group + by system added number - Study group 1, Study group 2, etc).
In this example, Groups of # is chosen.
- Consequently, in section Advance Properties you can check the Selectbox of the following options:
- Auto-Enrol New Users
- Randomise users in Groups (checked by default)
- Make category and group descriptions visible to group members
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- (Optional) In the section Additional Options click the Selectbox(es) if you want to:
- Set up discussion areas
- Set up lockers
- Set up assignment
The discussion areas, the locker, and the group assignment(s) can always be set up later, and not right away when setting up the group.
- Click the blue button Save to finish the setting up of the group
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You have created a Brightspace group now and it will appear in the homepage of Manage Groups.
Additionally, if you have a self enrolment type of group you can add a self-enrollment link to Content.
Now you know how to create groups in Brightspace!
Related topics
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