Assign one group assignment to ALL groups (across ALL 'group categories'')
I'm encountering a nasty problem in my (currently running!) course: Assignments that were supposed to be 'group assignments', have become 'individual assignments' (somewhere in the process of copying last years course and configuring it for this year).
I CAN still edit the final assignments that have no submissions yet, BUT then I HAVE TO select a 'Group Category'. I want the assignment to be the same for ALL groups. It seems impossible to move all groups to 1 category (right?).
I've researched it a bit and I currently see different strategies
- Somehow creating a new category with a copy of each group. (only possible if I can do this automatically by CSV import/export again, because doing this manually for 250+ students / 46 teams is no option, of course ;)
- Copying each group assignment (and I have 4 for each group) 10 times (I know I can prevent this for students by setting a Release Condition for each copy, but this a lot of work AND it will still create a confusingly long list of 40 assignments for the teachers, and a horribly complex formula for the grading - I've done this last year and I thought that I found a solution, but…)
- OTHER ? Of course I'm overlooking something, and/or I need some internal admin to help, but 'd like to point them to the solution directly :)
I'm in doubt what's best, and maybe there's a better solution. Looking forward to your help! - I've also put out this question within our university, but I also want to ask here, maybe the solution is better or quicker :)
Important to know (I think):
- in our organization classes are synchronized to Sections (and section membership keeps being synchronized, so as far as I know I should better not touch that)
- random groups were created using Manage Groups (per section, 46 in total , across 10 sections (classes)). This is where the Group Sections were created, that I can't change now.
- I don't seem to have rights to do thing like or
Answers
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@Remko.S.95 Hi Remko,
Thank you for reaching out to us on the Community site.
Assignments in Brightspace LE can only be linked to a Group Category, and the groups under this group category will have access to this assignment.
To achieve your scenario, you can create a new Group Category from the Groups tool of your course and add all the students who need to access the single assignment into the groups under this group category. To auto-enroll all the students into the group their Student role needs to have the setting "Can be auto enrolled into groups" enabled so that after the groups are created the students get auto enrolled into the groups
Once this is done you can create or edit an assignment and select the group category that has all the students enrolled, This way all the students in your course will have access to this Group Assignment
More information on creating groups is found here>https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/3483-create-and-manage-categories-and-groups
Regards,
Nik
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Hi @Nikhil.P.90 ,
Thanks for that answer, but I think that your answer does not address the problem that the 46 groups already exist (in 10 other Group Categories -our classes; groups do not contain students from different classes).If I would create a new category with "# of groups" - which I think is what you mean - , then students will either be auto-enrolled in equal groups, in order (dismissing the fact that they are in different classes) or randomized (new random groups of studenst from mixed classes).
I need to keep the current groups, so:- OR: 'Move' all current groups (with students in it) to ONE Group Section.
- OR: Create a copy of all groups (including student enrollments) in a new group by export, CSV, import.
Manual enrolling or self-enrollment in the right new group are unfeasible due to the amount of work and/or confusion and possible mistakes etc.
Any other ideas? Thanks!
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@Remko.S.95 Hi Remko,
Unfortunately, the feature of moving already existing groups within the same course does not exist.
However there is a feature request submitted in Product Idea Exchange that aligns with your ask and is submitted as below,
{
allow move a group from one category to another (D3106)
Direct Link:https://desire2learn.brightidea.com/ideas/D3106
}
I kindly request you upvote the above feature request.
Thanks and Regards,
Nik
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Thanks. WILL DO! - Definitely a missing feature for people who run into this situation!
By the way, internally I also have a definitive answer for now: "Unfortunately the functionality to do that are not turned on in our university …. the desire is to have it is widely present to be able to read groups from an excel table into Brightspace. At other universities around us this is possible, but not yet with us."
I think I will be clicking away for a few hours, with some colleagues who like clicking ;)
Cheers! -
p.s. @Nikhil.P.90 How do I login at that ? It's not the same credentials as this forum apparently.
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Sorry to tag you one more time @Nikhil.P.90 , but something that would speed up the manual labor tremendously would be some (secret) way to do a boolean search for students.
The results I get searching the forum for 'Boolean search user' etc. are not really helping me yet, nor does Googling. I hope there is something, and otherwise this is will be another Community Idea to upvote :)
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@Remko.S.95 Hi Remko,
Please don't be sorry; happy to help!
You can access the Brightspace Community Idea Site by clicking on the Product Idea Exchange (3rd Party Tool) link on the right side pane under Quick Links on the community site's main homepage.
Based on your second query related to boolean search students, I believe you want to find out the number of students enrolled in your course; if so, you can find them by going to the Classlist tool in your course. This tool is under the Course Admin area of your course.
Thanks and Regards,
Nik
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Thanks.
No, what I mean is looking for multiple users at once (by separating with & or AND or ; etc.) , so for example by student number:
"1078338; 1079196; 1004551; 1046494; 1048529; 1049797; 1078310; 1084180; 1023789; 1028699; 1060545; 1078803; 1078874;"
… to be able to find all of them at once and enroll them to the right group.
Would be good to know it this is possible, but for the problem at hand time was running out so I switched to searching 250+ one by one copy-pasting-form an Excel to enroll 🤖😊. Never again I hope so I'll keep lobbying to implement the right settings at our university.
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@Remko.S.95 Hi Remko,
I checked further and found that the LE does not have a feature to search for student numbers by separating them with & or AND or; etc.
I am glad to hear that you were able to find the users from the Excel sheet and enroll them in the relevant groups.
Thanks and Regards,
Nik
