The Groups feature allows you to create groups of students within a Course. These course groups have their own area on Blackboard to collaborate on work. These spaces are equipped with tools that can assist in this collaborative process including file sharing and group assignments. Additionally, blogs, wikis, and other resources can be created in the course site’s main content areas and access restricted to a specific group.

You as an instructors can create a single group or multiple groups in which students can be enrolled automatically, manually, or by allowing the students to enroll themselves. Instructors do not need to be enrolled in groups to access content or interact with group members.

Ways to create groups:

• Create Single Group – This allows the instructor to create one group at a time, this method is good for small courses.
• Create Group Set – This allows the instructor to create multiple groups in one shot, this method is good for large courses.

Blackboard offers three different ways to set up groups:

• Self-Enroll Group – This gives the students the responsibility of enrolling into groups. Each group is given a sign-up sheet, and a set of instructions, where students must sign themselves up for a group. Students can sign-up and be automatically enrolled in a group, if there’s room, or they can sign-up and then the instructor can “ok” the sign-up sheet for final enrollment.
• Manual Enroll Group – This allows the instructor to pick and choose how the groups will be broken up. There is no sign-up sheet, the instructor will manually choose each student for the groups. If there are a lot of students, this can be very time consuming.
• Random Enroll Group – This allows Blackboard to create groups by randomly putting in students based on the Instructor’s criteria. If there are a lot of students, this is by far the quickest way to enroll them.

The Group Settings gives the instructor a set of options that allows students to create and manage their own groups.

How to Restrict Access to Content by Group

1. Create the desired blog, wiki, or content item.

Note: only additional blogs/wikis, not course blogs/wikis, will allow restricted access.

2. Navigate to the title of the item that you wish to restrict access.
3. Click the double down arrows to the right of the title for more menu options.
4. Select Adaptive Release.
5. Under Membership, select the group(s) you wish to have access.
6. Submit. This item will display only to those who have access.

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