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Blackboard 8: Creating Groups

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How do I create student groups in my Blackboard course site?
Solution

The group feature of Blackboard provides small groups of students with on-line space to share documents, participate in discussions and collaborate on projects.  Group work in courses has been seen to: facilitate group work outside the classroom; encourage student to student interaction to enable peer learning; provide a powerful vehicle for students to clarify and extend their ideas. 

 

 

Tip:
Benefits for instructors of creating groups include:

  • the ability to send different emails to different groups;
  • the ability to release different content to different groups; and
  • the ability to amend the Grade Center view to only see a specific group of students for easy grading purposes for you or your Teaching Assistant. 

 

For exact steps on any of the above please see our additional tutorials on 'Sending emails to students', 'Adaptive Release' and 'The Grade Center'. 
Creating a Group
Creating specific groups of students in your Blackboard course site can be accomplished by using the Advanced Group Management tool.
  1. From the control panel of your course site, click on the Advanced Group Management link in the Course Tools area.

     
  2. Next, click on the Add Group button and provide a name and description if desired for the group.

     
  3. To ensure maximum functionality for the group, check all 4 enable options for the group, namely group discussion, group virtual classroom, group file exchange and group e-mail. Click Submit to save your changes.

     
  4. Now that you have created the group, you must add the desired users to it.  To do so, check the group you created and click on View/Assign Users.


  5. A list of students will be displayed. 

    Modify - To add specific students, click on Modify in the bottom right hand corner of your screen.  Check off the desired students for that group and click Submit to save your changes.


    Randomize - to have Blackboard randomly assign students to a specific group, click on the Randomize button and provide the number of students to be assigned to that group.

  6. Click Submit to save your changes.
  7. Finally, repeat the steps above to create additional groups.

 

Video Tutorial and PDF Download

 

How do I create student groups in my Blackboard course site?

 

 

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please view our Flash movie (Flash Movie Player Required)

This Blackboard tutorial is also available as a downloadable PDF (Adobe Reader required)

For a complete list of ITS Blackboard tutorials, please visit www.nyu.edu/its/blackboard/tutorials.  

 


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