Student Groups in Canvas allow instructors the ability to create group discussions, group assignments, and group collaboration spaces.

Creating Groups in Canvas

Instructors can manually or automatically assign students to groups within a group set.

  1. Click People in the Canvas course menu
  2. Click + Group Set and name the Group Set.
    • Select a Group Set name that briefly identifies your course and the purpose of the groups, e.g. TST_101 Project Group.
  3. Select how students should be assigned to groups. Select one of the following three options (automatically-created groups, manually-created groups, or student-created groups).

Instructor-Created Groups

Automatically-Created Groups
  1. Select the option to "Split students into ___ groups"
  2. Set the number of groups to be generated. Select any of these optional settings:
    • Require group members to be in the same section*
    • Automatically assign a group leader for each group
  3. Click Save to have Canvas create the groups and randomly assign students to the groups.
Manually-Created Groups
  1. After naming the Group Set, click Save. An empty Group Set will be created.
  2. Click + Group in near the top-right corner of the page
  3. Name the group. Optionally set a limit for the number of students you want to be able to place within the group.
  4. Click Save to create the group.
  5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 for as many groups as are needed for the Group Set.
  6. Drag and drop students from the list of Unassigned Students into the appropriate groups.

Student-Created Groups

  1. Click the checkbox next to "Allow self sign-up"
  2. Select the number of groups that students can join. Select any of these optional settings:
    • Require group members to be in the same section*
    • Limit the number of student members within each group
    • Automatically assign a group leader for each group
  3. Click Save to create the Groups within the Group Set
  4. Provide your students instructions for how to join a group. The People menu item needs to be available to students in your course.

Please Note: Students are allowed to switch groups at any time in student-created groups. Therefore these groups cannot be used for graded assignments.

Using Groups in Canvas

Learn how to do any of the following with Canvas Guides: