Tip

Setting a member limit will apply to all groups in a group set. However, you can modify the limitations within an individual group, such as changing one group to allow a few more members than the other groups.

Guides

Groups Guides

Collaborative Workspace

A Canvas group will provide your students with a digital collaborative workspace. Each Group has its own announcements, calendar, discussions, content pages, file space, opportunities to hold conferences and participate in real-time collaboration.

Within groups, instructors can:

View all activity within all the groups within their course, including groups created by students
View all created groups within the course

Sections: When students are enrolled in your course, they are placed in sections based on what period they have your class. You can assign discussions, quizzes or assignments by section. You can also filter the gradebook by sections.

Ways Groups Can Function

Here are some ideas on ways you can leverage groups in your course:

Collaborative Group Space: Suppose that you would like your students to work together in small groups to create something like a paper, a project, or a presentation. Creating groups can provide them with a digital workspace for communicating, sharing and collaborating.
Create Group Collaborations: You can create collaborations (shared Google doc with editing rights) within your groups using Google Docs.
Create Group Assignments: Under assignment settings, there is an option for group assignment. Instead of all students having to submit an assignment, Canvas will allow one person from each group to submit on behalf of their team. As an instructor, you can choose to grade the assignment as a group (all members will receive the same grade) or individually.
Create Small Group Discussions: It might be beneficial to break your discussions into groups to have a more intimate and deeper conversation. Only the members of the group will see and respond to their group's post (even though all students are posting to the same discussion topic).

Forming Groups

Instructors can:

Create a new group set and create subgroups automatically or manually
Assign students to subgroups automatically or manually
Assign group leaders to each group
Allow students to sign up for their own groups
Move students into different subgroups
Edit or delete group sets

Video Tutorials

In this video you will learn the basics of group creation and group management.