Creating Manually Allocated Groups

If group projects are a part of a course, VU Collaborate’s Group 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 individualised online experience for students.

This guide goes through the process of setting up groups in VU Collaborate where you can manually allocate students to groups.

To see a short video on How to Manage Groups and Manually Enrol Users, see the video below:

 

 

The steps include:

• Access Groups
• Create a Group Category
• Additional Options & Save and Close 
• Change Group Names 
• Allocating Students to a Group
• Viewing Group Member Information
  
  

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.

What are Allocate+ groups?

Allocate+ groups are the first listed groups. These groups are automatically created, and group membership is synced from Allocate+ 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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Create a New Category

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.

Select Group Enrolment Type

3. Under the Enrolment Type dropbox, select # of Groups – No Auto Enrolments.
No Auto Enrolments requires you to manually allocate students to each group.  To automatically allocates student see Creating Automatically Allocated Groups.

4. Enter the Number of Groups you wish to create.

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.   

Restrict Group membership to a class or a section (optional)

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. 

4. Below this, there is an option to Restrict Enrolments To.

 

Step Three: Additional Options & Save and Close

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1. 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.

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.

2. Once you have finalised the properties and options, click Save.

 

Step Four: Change Group Names (optional) 

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Rename Category

1. Next to Category name select Edit Category from the dropdown menu

2. Edit Category Name, then select Save

Rename groups

Do not change group names or codes for groups created automatically by Allocate+ (identified by the 'AP' prefix to the group name).

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

2. Modify the group name and then click Save. 
Do not change the Group Code name, as this will cause errors.

 

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. 

 

Name groups to distinguish between locations or classes (optional)

Click on the picture below to see a quick video demonstration showing how to Create assessment groups for multiple locations and then enrol. 

 

Step Five: Allocating Students to a Group

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1. To allocate students into groups, ensure that the View Categories field is displaying the group category you just created. 

2. Click on the arrow next to the group category name and select Enrol Users.

3. To allocate a student to a group, click on the checkbox in the group column.

 
4. You can add a student to multiple groups and can remove students by unticking the box.

5. When you have finished allocating students, select Save.

If you have large class sizes, use the Search For field to find specific students based on their name.

 

Step Six: Viewing Group Member Information

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1. To view which students are allocated to a specific group, click on the number in the Members column.