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Group Formation: For Teachers (Active Assignment)

Julia
Updated

Introduction

In this article we will walk you through how to use Group Formation from the perspective of a teacher.

If you’d like more information on how this tool works, you can check out other articles here:

Tool In Action

How this article is structured

This article walks you through the steps of an Group Formation activity, following the same flow as the tool itself. It will describe the process of using the active assignment. This refers to what happens after the assignment is published and available to students. It covers monitoring student progress, forming and publishing groups.

Note: When you open a published activity, you’ll land on the Active Assignment view by default. To return to the setup view after publishing, click Edit in the upper-left corner of the activity.
You can see the article about Setting Up this tool here.

Accessibility

We're devoted to making our tools as accessible as possible for all learners - to read more about accessibility in FeedbackFruits tools, check this article: Accessibility: Within FeedbackFruits Tools.

 

Overall student progress

When entering a Group Formation activity, the first thing that you will see at the top of the page is the Overall student progress section.

In this step, you can oversee the progress of the survey to ensure its smooth execution. You have access to real-time data and analytics, allowing you to track how many students have participated, identify any potential issues, and ensure that the survey is progressing as intended. 

You can also export analytics of student progress within the tool - read more about the data provided in the export here:

Learning Analytics: Data Export Contents

Fig. 1: Overall Student progress: Active Assignment

 

Step 1: Instructions

If you've added instructions while setting up the activity, they will appear for you as the first step of the assignment. If they have not been added, simply navigate to the edit mode, click the green "+" button at the bottom of the activity and select the instruction module.

Fig. 2: Instructions

 

Step 2: Group Formation

In this step, you can configure the groups, manage deadlines, view the survey questions and the student progress. 

Before configuring the groups, you can manage the deadlines by scheduling the opening/closing of the activity, or do it manually by pressing on Open now or Close now button. After closing the deadline, you can still choose to extend the deadline by clicking Grant extension (read more about this feature here).

Fig. 3: Deadline and deadline extension

 

Fig. 4: Student progress and group configuration

You can also view the survey questions by clicking on View. This allows you to see the student progress and to check at a glance answers per student. You can always click Fullscreen to view the dashboard and the data more comfortably.

 

Configuring groups

Once all students have completed the survey, or when the deadline has arrived, you can click on the Configure groups button to set up their groups. The next window will appear. Again, the student progress and answers will be visible for reference when forming the groups.

Once you click on the Form groups button, students will be assigned to a group.

Fig. 5: Configure groups

 

Fig. 6: Configuring groups window, before clicking on Form groups

 

Note: The Form Groups button will remain inactive until the number of students specified in the Number of Students per Group field during setup have partially or fully completed their surveys. For example, if you set the group size to three, the Form Groups button will only become active once at least three students have partially or fully completed their surveys.

This suggestion can be manually overridden by teachers. To do so, you only need to click on the allocated group in the column Group, and select a different one from the dropdown.

Fig. 7: Manual group modification

Please note that any students that:

  1. Make no progress at all, e.g. do not answer the questions or do not open the assignment, will get grouped with all the other inactive students.

  2. Do not get grouped, for instance, because an uneven amount of groups and students, will need to be manually assigned to a group. Otherwise, you can return to the Edit mode and modify the group size before proceeding to form the groups again.

Using the groups

After automatically forming and, if needed, manually adjusting the groups, you can use the groups for other assignments within the same course in FeedbackFruits, other LMS assignments or in-person activities.

Students will not be notified by FeedbackFruits about which group they have been assigned to. This information will be exclusive to the teacher to choose how to use that group setting and how to disclose the information to the students.

 

Using the groups in FeedbackFruits assignments

The groups will appear per user within their groups when choosing Collaboration options in any FeedbackFruits assignment. The will appear named as the Group Formation assignment in which the groups have been set. 

Publishing to the LMS

  • Canvas, Brightspace, Blackboard, and Moodle: you can easily import the formed groups by clicking on the button 'Publish to LMS'. Please note that for this integration, institutions need to grant integration access before we provide access to the tool. Please ask your FeedbackFruits contact person for more information about this integration and its availability.

    Fig. 8: Publish to LMS button

     

    • After clicking on the 'Publish to LMS' button, you will be asked to give a name to the Group Set. The Group Set is the folder that contains all groups that are being used in the LMS.

      If the name has already been used in the LMS, you will be asked to give it another name before proceeding to the next step. 

      Fig. 9: Choose a name for the group set

       

    • Please note that after publishing the groups to the LMS, it will not be possible to modify the groups via FeedbackFruits any longer. It will still be possible within the LMS.

      Fig. 10: Confirmation to publish to the LMS

       

  • Teams and other LMSs: you can download an export with all the groups in the Overall students progress dashboard. This export can be imported to the LMS groups. Each LMS has unique export specifications. Therefore, please adjust the download export to align with the requirements of your LMS to ensure a successful import.

 

Good to Know

  • Teachers can manually override the group formation suggested by the tool.

  • After a teacher publishes the groups to the LMS, the groups cannot be modified via FeedbackFruits any longer.

  • Read more information about the Group Formation algorithm here.