Practical question about randomly assigning groups

Question

Hi! I had a quick question about a setting in Canvas. I'm assisting with a university course, and for the course we have a group assignment. I allowed the students to form their group themselves before a certain deadline. As you can see from the attached screenshot, there are still some people who haven't found a group yet. If I were to select 'randomly assign students' would this randomly re-assign ALL students or will it only re-assign the unassigned students? I don't want to accidentally mess up the current groups they have formed.

Scherm­afbeelding 2023-05-11 om 09.00.43.png

SusanNiemeyer · Accepted Answer

Hi @MeilinaR,

If you try to "randomly assign" students now, I believe that brand new groups would be formed.

It's really very, very quick and simple for you to place those students into groups. Just drag each name over to a group. I'm guessing that it would take three to five minutes for you to complete this task.

Chris_Hofer · Accepted Answer

@MeilinaR ...

In addition to what @SusanNiemeyer said, you could also try testing this out yourself in your school's Canvas "test" environment.  This is a completely separate environment that you can use to test out things without screwing up anything in your school's Canvas "production" environment (this is the name of the environment you typically sign in to on a daily basis).  I just always make sure to tell people to completely sign out of the "test" environment before returning to the "production" environment ... so that you are making sure you are working in the proper environment.  Here are a fewGuides that you'll want to take a look at:

* What is the Canvas test environment?
* How do I access the Canvas test environment as an instructor?
* How do I log out of Canvas as an instructor?

Hope this extra bit of information will be helpful to you.