Groups in Blackboard can be a useful way to have students interact in precepts or with group assignments. You can manually add students to groups or enable the "self-enroll" feature. Many features are available within each group, such as assignment submission, discussion forums, blogs, journals, and email. Follow the instructions below to set up groups in your Blackboard course.
1. Select Groups in the left panel in your Blackboard course. If this option isn't there, you can find it lower in the panel under "Course Management" -> "Users and Groups" -> "Groups".
2. Once in Groups, click Create. You will now need to select which group option you want. If you are only making one group, select an option under "Single Group." If you want to make multiple groups (e.g. for five precepts), select an option under "Group Set." Next, decide whether you want to manually enroll students in each group or to have students self-enroll in groups on Blackboard. [The following instructions will assume you have selected the Group Set and Self Enroll options, which have more extensive choices that the others. Even if you did not select this, you will find much of the information below useful as you finish the process.]
3. On the page that opens, you will find many Group setting options. Begin by entering a Name for the Group or Group Set (e.g. Precept).
4. Make sure that the group is available to students. (The default selection is "Yes")
5. All of the tools will be available by default. If you want to limit these, deselect the boxes of each tool you do not want students to be able to access.
6. For the Group Set and self-enroll option, add a name for the sign-up sheet, add a maximum number of students per group, and add the number of groups you are creating.
7. Select Submit.
8. For the Group Set option, you will see that you can now add a name for each group (e.g. "Precept 1," "Precept 2"). Edit these and select Submit. (Note: These will default to the name of your Group Set with numbers).
9. You will see that the groups you have made are available and set for self-enrollment! If you chose to manually enroll students, you will be able to select which users to enter into each group. If you need to make any edits to the individual groups, select the small arrow that appears to the right of the group name when you hover over it. If you need to make any edits to the group set, select the small arrow that appears to the right of the group set name when you hover over it.
