Instructor Help and Resources
Instructor Home > Bb Training and Features > Group Management
What's new in managing groups for Bb?
A Blackboard "building block" developed at Florida State
University has been installed on our UK Bb server, and several handy features have been added to the basic
Bb Groups tools, including random assignment and quick deletion of groups.
This Course Tool extension appears in the Instructor's control panel
as Advanced Group Management and provides an alternative to
Blackboard's built-in
group management tools (Manage Groups). It includes the same
functions as the built-in tools, with the following additional features: summary
display of all
groups, their membership count, and chart of features you have enabled, all in
one matrix; ability to view/modify membership assignments to all groups in one
display page, and thus more easily balance group assignment tasks; random assignment
of students to groups, whether overlapping membership or disjoint; simultaneous
multiple deletes of groups.
Note that this new tool Advanced Group Management appears in the
Course Tools section on the left side of your Control Panel. If you
use this improved tool to set up your student groups, you can
disregard the basic tool provided by Bb (Manage Groups) in the upper
right of the Control Panel. (Any groups you define will show up under
both the basic and the advanced group manager.)
How do I use Advanced Group Management?
To use Advanged Group Management, follow these steps:
- Go to the Instructor's Control Panel and click the link for Advanced
Group Management.
- Click the Add Group button
to name a new group, assign it any of four tools and make it visible
or not.
- Select a group by checking the box next to
it and click the Modify
Group button to edit the settings shown when you add a group.
- Click the View/Assign Users button
to display names of all students enrolled in your course; then scroll
to the bottom to click
either the Modify button (to check off individual names you
wish to add to this group) or the Randomize button (to specify
the number of students to be randomly pulled into this group).
- Click the Remove Groups button
to delete one or more selected groups instantly!
Can Blackboard randomly assign my students to groups within my course?
Yes. To randomly assign your students into groups, follow these steps:
- Go to the Instructor's Control Panel and
click the link for Advanced
Group Management.
- Click the Add Group button
to name a new group, assign it any of four tools and make it visible
or not.
- Click the View/Assign Users button
to display names of all students enrolled in your course; then scroll
to the bottom to click the Randomize button to
specify the number of students to be randomly pulled into this group.
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