{"id":1974,"date":"2020-09-17T20:56:22","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T20:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/blackboardhelp\/?page_id=1974"},"modified":"2025-01-27T21:25:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T21:25:49","slug":"briefing-note-on-groups-in-blackboard","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/blackboardhelp\/briefing-note-on-groups-in-blackboard\/","title":{"rendered":"Briefing note on Groups in Blackboard"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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STUDENT GROUPS AND BLACKBOARD<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Blackboard \u2013 some basics<\/strong><\/h2>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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To be able to explain about groups and how they can best be used it is first necessary to provide some basic background on Blackboard.<\/p>

The Blackboard environment at Westminster breaks down into two broad components:<\/p>

Blackboard Learn Ultra<\/strong><\/p>

Blackboard sites for each of our modules. It is for asynchronous online learning, where students may go at anytime during a week to access materials or to contribute to discussion boards or read messages or submit coursework<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Groups<\/strong><\/h2>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In Blackboard Learn Ultra<\/strong> you can organise students that have access to a module Blackboard site into group sets<\/strong><\/a>. Groups sets can be generated randomly, or they can be set to permit students to self-enrol or they can be custom (see table below).<\/p>

Random<\/strong><\/p><\/td>

Students are randomly assigned to the number of groups you choose. You need at least four students, so the system can randomly assign students to at least two groups.<\/p><\/td><\/tr>

Self-enrol<\/strong><\/p><\/td>

You can ask students to self-enrol in course groups. Only students may join. Students receive a course announcement and an activity stream notification about groups they need to join.<\/p>

Students see\u00a0Join a group\u00a0and\u00a0New\u00a0in the\u00a0Details & Actions\u00a0panel on the\u00a0Course Content\u00a0page. You can also add an enrolment period. Students are notified when the enrolment deadline approaches. When the enrolment period ends, students can no longer join groups, and they\u2019re enrolled automatically.<\/p><\/td><\/tr>

Custom<\/strong><\/p><\/td>

You can create a single, custom group or as many groups as you want, with any number of students in each group. Students need to added by an instructor, one by one to each group. This can obviously be time consuming for large cohort classes.<\/p><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>

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Blackboard groups and CMISGO groups<\/strong><\/h2>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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There is no \u2018off the shelf\u2019 connection between CMISGO groups. Developers in ISS have been working hard on creating a usable connection between CMISGO groups and Blackboard Learn Ultra groups sets.<\/p>

A connection between these two systems now exists and it is possible to automatically create group sets in a Blackboard Learn Ultra site, the membership of which will reflect group membership on CMISGO. However, at present the groups, once created in Blackboard the groups do not update dynamically. You are therefore advised to ask Blackboard support to create these groups for you only when you are reasonably sure your CMISGO groups are fairly settled.<\/strong><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STUDENT GROUPS AND BLACKBOARD Blackboard \u2013 some basics To be able to explain about groups and how they can best be used it is first necessary to provide some basic background on Blackboard. The Blackboard environment at Westminster breaks down…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1974","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/blackboardhelp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/blackboardhelp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/blackboardhelp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/blackboardhelp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/blackboardhelp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1974"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/blackboardhelp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20193,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/blackboardhelp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1974\/revisions\/20193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/blackboardhelp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}