Some assignments are intended to be completed by groups of students rather than individually. Groups within the Halo classroom are used for a wide range of projects to facilitate collaboration and communication. Faculty are responsible for creating and managing the groups within their class.
- The first step in setting up groups is to navigate to the Groups section of Halo | Learn. Select Groups from the navigation menu on the left-side of the classroom.
- Once on the Groups page, look at the upper right corner and ensure that the appropriate assignment is selected. If your class includes multiple group assignments, select the appropriate one from the dropdown menu. If you’d like to review the assignment details before creating groups, click the assignment title from the top of the page.
- Once you’re ready to create groups, select Manage Groups.
- Students who haven’t been assigned to a group will appear in the Unassigned Students box. Select the name of a student, and then click + Add Selected Members to add them to a group. You can select one or more students at a time when adding them to a group.
NOTE You will not be able to make any changes to a group after the assignment has been submitted or if it was reassigned. - Once a student has been added to a group, they will disappear from the Unassigned Students box. Continue adding students to groups until all students are assigned.
- Groups must contain at least one student in order to be published. If you have any unused default groups once all students are assigned, click the trash icon to delete them.
- If there aren’t enough default groups available, you can add additional ones by selecting the + Add Group box.
NOTE Groups cannot be published until all unused groups have been deleted.
- When all groups are ready to publish, select Publish.
- A pop up will appear, notifying you that the changes were successfully published.
- To navigate to the group forum for any particular group, select the Go To Group button.
- To make changes to groups after they’ve been published, select the Manage Groups button. If needed, you can move members to other groups, disband a group, and create new ones.
Once a group has been set up, you can access the group forum by selecting Go to Group.
The group forum contains two tabs: Collaboration and Assignments. The Collaboration tab is where all group communication takes place. You can easily keep track of member activity and resources using the menu on the right side of the page. The most recent activity from any group member will tracked with a timestamp under the Member Activity heading. Activity from any particular student can be filtered using the filter icon (three lines) that appear to the right. Any documents that are uploaded to the forum will appear under the Resources heading.
Selecting View Resource beneath any resource will open a new tab with a preview of the uploaded file.
The Assignments tab provides details about the assignment, including the start and due date, point value, and rubric.
Selecting Start Grading will allow you to start grading that group’s submission. For more information on grading group assignments, check out the article Grading in Halo | Learn.
If the groups need to be disbanded, it can be done by selecting the Manage Groups button.
Then select the disband icon next to the group name to disband the group.
NOTE If the group has submitted an assignment, the group cannot be disbanded. It will show a yellow lock indicating it cannot be disbanded.
If you are an instructor for a traditional on-ground course, you can modify assignments in Halo. Instructors can change group assignments to individual assignments as well as individual assignments to group assignments. For a step-by-step guide on editing the assessments, check out the (Halo | Learn) Editing Content in the Classroom article.