Creating Student Self Enrolment Groups

If group projects are part of a course, VU Collaborate’s Groups tool is a great resource to set up areas for students to submit group assignments and have discussion areas specifically for members of these Groups. Furthermore, where students are enrolled into groups, you can release specific content or other assessment tasks to provide an individualized online experience for students. This guide goes through the process of setting up groups in VU Collaborate where students can select which group they want to be a part of.

To see a short video on How to Create Student Self Enrolment Groups, see the video below:

Below are the steps in the written guide on Creating Student Self Enrolment Groups:

• Access Groups
• Create a Group Category
• Change Group Names
• Advise Students to Self-Enrol

 

Step One: Access Groups

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1. In your VU Collaborate space on the navigation bar, click Communication then Groups.

2. The Manage Group page is where all your group categories will be listed.

Important Note - Do Not Use Allocate+ groups. These groups are automatically created, and group membership is synced from the Allocate Plus timetable daily. You can identify these groups as they begin with AP_ (Allocate Plus), followed by the unit code and class (AP_UnitCode_Class). DO NOT modify these groups as changes can cause errors.

 

Step Two: Create a Group Category

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1. Select New Category under the Manage Groups heading.

2. Enter a Category Name and you may also provide a brief description of your groups.

3. In the Enrolment Type, select either

• Groups of # - Self Enrolment: Create groups with # (e.g., 3) students per group
• # of Groups – Self Enrolment: Create # (e.g., 8) groups
• # of Groups, Capacity of # - Self Enrolment: Create # (e.g., 8) groups with # (e.g., 3) students per group

When working in the master space, please note the differences in Groups:

Groups of # = once copied into a delivery space from the master space, consider the total number of users enrolled in the unit space and create the required number of groups.
E.g., If you have created 3 groups of 10 users, however, your class only has 20 enrolled students, then only 2 groups of 10 users will be created. Group names will also be lost, in order to retain group names, you will need to select - # of Groups instead. 

# of Groups = once copied into a delivery space from the master space, will retain the group name as well as the total count of groups, as they are independent to the users in a class list.
E.g., If you have created 3 groups of 10 users and have labelled each group with a specific title, then the exact settings and group names will transfer across into a delivery space, irrespective of the total number of users enrolled.   

 

4 (Optional). Below this, there is an option to Restrict Enrolments to.

Note: This is used to create Groups within a Group. For instance, if in a tutorial you have devised a Group Exercise that does not apply to any of the other tutorials for the same Unit, you can use this to restrict your Group to only that tutorial. It can also be used to restrict to Sections. For instance, if you needed to create Group Dropboxes that only apply to Bachelor of Nursing but the unit is offered to other Courses, you can use this restriction to do so. 

5. (Optional) Advanced Properties provides the option to set a start date and expiry date for self-enrolment; there is also an option to allow or disallow students to enrol after the expiry date.

There is also an option to allow students to view the description of the group; however, this does not appear for '# of Groups, Capacity of # - Self Enrolment' and 'Groups of # - Self Enrolment'.

6. (Optional) When creating groups you are also able to set up additional tools for groups such as a separate discussion area, locker and Assessment Dropbox. This will allow groups to collaborate further with each other and submit a group assignment if required.

Note: If creating a discussion area or an Assessment Dropbox, once you click Save additional options will appear allowing you to create the required discussion area or Assessment Dropbox folder.

7. Once you have finalised, the properties and options of the group, click Save to create them.

Note: Although the purpose of these enrolment types is to permit students to self-enrol into groups, you are still able to manually add and remove students from groups.

 

Step Three: Change Group Names

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Note: DO NOT change the titles of the automated Groups. This will disable the syncing process as the system will not know which Group is which. 

1. If you wish to re-name each individual group to something more relatable, click on the name of the group.

 

2. Enter the new name in the Group Name field. Click Save to return to the previous screen.

Note: Under no circumstances, DO NOT change the group code. 

3. Click on the picture below to see a video showing how to change group names and how to enroll students.
This is not one of our lovely professionally done videos, just a quick demonstration. 

 

 

Step Four: Advise Students to Self-Enrol

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Now that your self-enrollment groups have been created, students are now able to allocate themselves to a group.

To do this, you can advise the students to follow the steps in this guide: Using and Managing Groups | Student Guides

Note: To check the group settings as a staff member, Impersonate a Test Student in your space.