Cobra Learning - Group Basics

Groups basics

Create group work areas for users with the Groups tool. You can use groups to organize users’ work on projects and assignments, or you can create special work areas for users with different learning needs.

Users can belong to multiple groups within the same course. For example, each user can simultaneously belong to a group for class projects, a group for special interest discussions, and a group for advanced users. Each group can have its own discussion forums, dropbox folders, and locker area to work in. You can grade members of groups individually or as a team.

Accessing Groups

Do one of the following:

Click Groups on the navbar (if Groups is a link on your navbar).
Click Course Admin on the navbar, then click Groups.

Things to consider when setting up groups

Before setting up groups you should know how you want to organize them. A number of things can affect how users enroll in groups, including:

Setting groups up before or after you enrolled users.
Enabling auto-enrollment in groups.
Enabling randomization of users in groups.
Enabling self-enrollment in groups.
The Enrollment Type you choose.

Tip In most cases it is better to set up groups after the majority of users enroll in your course. This gives you a better idea of how many users you are organizing and how many groups you need. Setting up groups after enrollment can also ensure better distribution of users between groups.

Enroll Users page

Users are enrolled in groups based on the enrollment options selected on the New Category page. Use the Enroll Users page to:

Manually enroll users in groups if you selected # of Groups – No Auto Enrollments.
Manually change which group a user is enrolled in.
Add users who enrolled late to a group if Auto Enroll New Users is not selected.
Search for users who have not been assigned to a group.

What happens when you move a user to a new group?

Discussion posts remain in the old group and do not count towards a user’s grade if the forum or topic is associated with a grade item. The user must satisfy the discussion post requirements in the new section. You can override a grade using the Grades tool.

Manage Groups page

Course participants access the Groups tool by clicking the Groups link on the course navbar (if included in the navbar).

On the Manage Groups page, users can do the following:

Click the View Available Groups button to enroll in a group.
Click on the number in the Members column to view the Member List for a group.
Click on a dropbox folder to view its contents.
Click on a discussion forum to view its postings.
Click Email Group to email all members of a group.

Dropbox submissions submitted for the old group remain with the old group. The user receives the grade achieved by the new group on any group dropbox folders. You can change the user’s grade back to the original group’s mark in Grades.