The group function in Blackboard offers a variety of options typically associated with organizing and managing group assignments. You can also use this feature to create views of just certain students in the Grade Center. One use of this would be to have an easy way to separate your sections’ students in a merged course.

To create your groups select the Groups tab at the top of the course.

This takes you to the ‘Groups’ page. In a new course there will not be any groups listed here.

If you have a csv file you use to set up student groups, you can upload it to Scholar via "Import Group Sets". If you need to create a group or group set manually, however, select "New Group Set".

Creating a Group or Group Set

Group sets allow you to divide your course into two or more groups.  To create one, choose either “Random Enroll” or “Manual Enroll” from the Group Set section of the Create menu.

This will open the ‘create group set page’, containing several settings and a complete list of students in the course.  You’ll be prompted for a name (the default group name will be "New Group Set", followed by the date the group set was created). The name you select will become the default group name, with numbers afterwards to distinguish each group, so you’ll want to make it singular (not plural).

You’ll also need to choose whether or not to make the groups visible to students. Making groups visible means a link to the group area and tools will be provided to the students. This link appears just below their main course menu. If you are only using this function to sort your sections, opt for No.

What you do next depends on whether you want to select the groups manually or randomly

Random Enrollment

ITo randomly assign students to groups, select "Randomly assign" in the Group Students dropdown at the top of the page. This will spawn a second dropdown called "Number of Groups", which will populate with a default number of groups and the number of students per group needed to sort an entire class into the groups. 

To change the number of groups, and as a result the number of students in each group, select an alternative from the dropdown. 

Click Submit and Scholar will automatically create and populate your groups.

Manual Enrollment

If you’re manually enrolling students in the groups, you’ll have to choose the number of groups in the set. This feature allows you to create a full group set consisting of the entire class, or a single group containing specific students. To greate an empty group, click the plus sign at the bottom of the student list

Click Submit, and you’ll be taken to the ‘Edit Group Sets’ page. Leave the “Hide members already in another group in this set”’ option checked, so your sorting will become easier as you work down the page.

The rest of this page contains separate selection windows for each group that you are manually creating. You should adjust the name to match your needs.

To add users to the group, click Add Users.

You can then check the boxes next to the users you’d like in the group.  When you’re done, click Submit.

After you have named and populated each group. Click submit. Now your groups page will list each group.

Editing Group Sets

To edit a Group Set, return to the Groups area in your course. If a group set has been created, you'll see it present in a list.  Select the "more" icon on the far right, and select "Edit" from the resulting dropdown. You can then see a list of group sets to edit. You will then return to the group editing screen for the group set you selected, and can edit the groups accordingly. Note: Moving members in an existing group set will change the membership in these groups wherever groups are used, such as in group discussions, graded assessments, and cloud documents. As a result, editing group sets is not recommended after the groups have been used in the course except in specific circumstances.