UTSOnline has a Groups tool to facilitate student collaboration and to provide Instructors with greater flexibility for managing student access to content. Groups are automatically created and populated with students when your subject is created and enrolled as a UTSOnline subject site but they can also be manually created by an Instructor.

You can create self-enrol (sign-up groups), randomly populated groups or groups for which you choose the members manually. Staff often ask which is the best way to assign students to groups. There is no ‘one size fits all’ answer. See this Blackboard support page for best practice on group membership.

Blackboard support offers in-depth guides to the group tool.

 

Batch Group procedures

There are two tools available to Instructors that simplify the bulk creation and enrolment of groups in a UTSOnline site:

1. The UTS Batch Group Enrolment tool

Use the UTS Batch Group Enrolment tool if you need to quickly organise students into groups. To learn more, please refer to the UTS Batch Group Enrolment Tool help page.

2. The Import Groups tool

As well as being able to bulk create groups and add students into those groups, the Import Groups tool enables a greater level of group customisation for Instructors such as what types of Groups are created and which group tools are enabled. To learn more, please refer to the Import Groups tool help page.