When adding students to groups, is there a way to see what section they are in?

I have created groups for a course that has three cross-listed sections. I need to assign students to these groups, but make sure students in a group are in the same section. Is there a way for me to see which student is in which section? Or is there a way to filter unassigned students depending on the section? To clarify, this isn't a question about a self-signup option I can set. This is a question about how I can see which section a student is in so I can pick an appropriate group for them.

Side note: if "Require group members to be in the same section" is checked under self-signup and I put two students from different sections into the same group, an error message pops up but the student gets added anyway.

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Accepted answers

EdwardPershwitz

@chriscas @Chris_Hofer Thank you for your replies. I asked them to self-organize and set a due date. Anyone not in a group after the due date gets assigned randomly (by me). Auto-assignment suggested by @chriscas appears to only work at the time of group set creation, unless I've missed something. This would have been a great feature if it could also auto-assign unassigned students without re-assigning those who are already assigned. The second solution suggested by @Chris_Hofer did come to mind but would require going through the whole list of 70+ students for each assignment, rather than working with a shrinking list of unassigned students. This is probably what I will end up doing. Thank you both very much for your suggestions! I really wish Canvas group management functionality covered more common use cases... filtering unassigned students by section would be such an easy thing to implement.

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Chris

Hi @EdwardPershwitz,

So from what I can see, there isn't a way for you to see what section the students are in if you're manually assigning students to a group. However, even if you don't use self sign-up, you can have Canvas auto assign students to groups based on either how many total groups you want or how many students you want per group, and when you do this you'll have the option to have group members be in the same section too (see screenshot). I know you wanted to see the groups, but if having students auto-assigned (without self sign-up) might work, I wanted to put this out there as an option

Screenshot 2023-08-31 at 9.19.02 PM.png

-Chris

Chris_Hofer

@EdwardPershwitz ...

In addition to what @chriscas has told you...you could also have another tab open in your browser with the "People" page of your course displaying there. The "People" page will tell you which section each of your students are in. I know it would be a bit of back and forth looking at these two screens, but it might be a semi-quick way to ensure that your students are where they need to be within the groups you are setting up.

In fact, I'm not sure what browser you are using, but on my Windows 11 laptop, my Edge browser has a Split screen option (Ctrl + Shift + 2) so that you could be looking at things in a split screen view...which might make things even easier.

Hope this helps!

EdwardPershwitz

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