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Overview

The UT Advanced Group Tool is a very useful tool for managing and organizing large classes. The tool can be used to:

Subdivide your course into smaller groups for the purposes of academic activities or for administrative sections that facilitate grading and TA assignment.
Convert section enrolments in your course to Quercus groups, and vice versa.
Bulk create Quercus Groups from excel spreadsheets.

Groups vs. Sections

Sections and Groups within Quercus serve two separate functions.

Groups:

Quercus Groups create a space for student groups to interact, collaborate, and work on assessments together, and are most often manually created in the “People” area of a course.
Every group has a group homepage, where students can work together, post announcements, and share files, and have discussions.
- Note: Instructors who are not comfortable with student access to these homepages can contact us to work on a process to alleviate some of the risks associated with using this tool.

Sections:

Sections are mainly administrative and are automatically created when courses are cross-listed. You can view sections in your course by going to your course Settings and selecting the “Sections” tab at the top of the screen.
Sections will allow you to assign quizzes, assignments, and discussions to specific sections, send announcements to specific sections.
Instructors and TAs can filter the Gradebook and SpeedGrader by section when entering grades.
TAs can be limited to accessing only their section(s).

The Quercus interface for Groups and Sections

Enabling the UT Advanced Group Tool

In order to use the UT Advanced Group Tool, it first needs to be enabled in your course navigation. The tool is only available for course staff roles (Teacher, TA, Course Staff, Grader, Designer, or Librarian) and is not visible to students.

In your course, click Settings from your course navigation menu
Select the “Navigation” Tab
Select the 3-dot menu next to “UT Advanced Group Tool” and select “Enable” (or alternatively, drag it up to the top section of the list)
Select “Save” - the tool will appear in your course menu.

Creating Baseline Groups from Cross-Listed Sections

The UTAGT allows you to create Quercus groups from the sections that are automatically created when cross-listing your course. These groups are called "baseline groups".

Use Case: You can create baseline groups for each tutorial section in a course as a separate place for students in each tutorial section to interact and (if desired) subdivide your tutorials into even smaller groups.

Select the UT Advanced Group Tool from the course navigation menu.
Select Create Baseline Group Set.

(A) Select the section(s) you want to turn into a single group set.

- Note: If you want to create a separate group for each course section, you will need to repeat this process for each section. Selecting multiple sections will combine them into a single group set.

(B) Enter a name for your the new group set.

- Note: If you do not want to divide the group set, enter "1" under “Number of groups to randomize students across”. This will add all of the students to a single group within the group set.

(D) Enter a name for the groups (for example: typing “Team Number”, will call your groups “Team Number 1”, “Team Number 2” etc..)

- Hit Submit.

The UT Advanced Group tool interface for creating a baseline group set

Updating Baseline Groups to reflect ROSI Enrolment

The baseline groups created in the UT Advanced Group Tool can be updated to reflect changes in ROSI enrolments as students join, drop, and change course sections.

Use Case: If groups are created before the add/drop period, then after the add/drop period, the groups may no longer represent accurate student enrollment.

In the UT Advanced Group Tool, select Update Baseline Group Sets

(A) Find the group set you wish to update from the list. The section(s) that were used to create the group set are also shown (B)

- This will compare the roster of the group with the section(s) it was created from and you will be shown any differences.
- Note: Any manual changes to the group set made in the People section of the course will also be shown here.

(D) The list of students to be updated can be edited to prevent them from being added or removed from the baseline group set.

- Select Update Group Set Membership to update your group.

The UT Advanced Group tool interface for updating baseline group sets

Removing all Members from a Group

The UT Advanced Group Tool can be used to batch remove students from groups.

Use Case: Instructor has created groups and no longer needs them, or has made a mistake and needs to start over.

In the UT Advanced Group Tool, select Remove All Group Members.

(A) Select the desired group set from the dropdown menu.

(B) Select one or more groups to bulk remove members from.

Select Remove.

The UT Advanced Group tool interface for bulk removing members from group sets

Creating Sections from Groups

You can create course sections from any group in the People section of your course. Sections created in this way are called “Cloned Sections.”

Use Case: If you need the administrative capabilities of sections for your groups (eg. the ability to give assignments/quizzes different due dates to specific groups), cloning groups to sections will enable this.

Use Case: Some courses have large tutorial sections that are divided up amongst multiple TAs. To make it easier for TAs to filter their students in the Gradebook and SpeedGrader, the large tutorial sections can be divided into smaller groups, which can then be cloned into sections to make them more easily accessible in the SpeedGrader.

In the UT Advanced Group Tool, select Clone Groups into Sections.

(A) Select the Group Set you wish to turn into a cloned section.

(B) The groups within the group set will be shown. Select the groups in the set you wish to turn into sections. A separate section will be created for each group and will be labeled with the prefix “ΩCLONED: “

Select Clone.

The UT Advanced Group tool interface for creating cloned sections from group sets

Updating or Deleting Cloned Sections

Cloned sections can be quickly updated to reflect changes in your group sets using the UT Advanced Group Tool.

Use Case: If students join or drop a course after the cloned sections are created or if students switch sections, groups can be updated (using the UT Advanced Group Tool, or manually in the People section of the course) and the cloned sections can be updated to reflect those changes.

In the UT Advanced Group Tool, select Clone Groups into Sections.

(A) Select the Group Set that was used to create the cloned section that you wish to update. You will be shown the groups within the group set. If they have been cloned into sections, a "Synchronize" and "Remove Section" button will appear next to them.

(B) To synchronize the cloned section to the group, select Synchronize.

The UT Advanced Group tool interface for updating cloned sections

Importing Groups

The UT Advanced Group tool can be used to bulk create groups and add students to them by their UTORID from an excel spreadsheet. Importing groups with the UT Advanced Group tool requires a Group Set to already be made.

Use Case: If students self-sign up for groups outside of Quercus (for example, by email or with MS Forms), groups can quickly be created using this method.

Use Case: If you have a group assignment, and have used the UT Advanced Group Tool to create smaller work groups within each tutorial, the group rosters can be exported, combined in excel, and then imported into a single group set so a single group assignment can be made for the entire class.

In the UT Advanced Group Tool, select Import Group Roster

(A) Select a Group Set you want to import into.

(B) Choose your import method (select to see a description of how the excel spreadsheet should be formatted for that method).

- Import roster into a single existing group - imports users into a single existing group
- Import roster into a single new group - creates a single new group and import users into it
- Batch import rosters into multiple existing groups - import users into existing groups you have already created
- Batch import rosters into multiple new groups - the system will create multiple new groups and import users into them.

Select Import.

The UT Advanced Group tool interface for importing groups

Exporting Groups

You can download a CSV file of the memberships of a desired Group Set roster or of your entire class roster. This will give you an excel spreadsheet containing the students in each group, along with student numbers, UTORIDs, and email-addresses.

Use Case: If you wish to directly email all the members of a Quercus group, Export Group Roster can be used to get the email addresses for all members of a Quercus group.

Use Case: Exporting groups can be used in combination with importing groups to combine group sets for group assignments.

In the UT Advanced group tool select Export Group Roster.

(A) Select the group set you wish to export from the drop down menu.

(B) Select the specific groups within the group set(s) you wish to include in your export (the report will contain which students belong to which group).

Select Generate group roster report.
- The group roster will be sent to your Quercus Inbox as a .csv file.
- The group roster export will contain student first and last names, student numbers, UTORIDs, Group Names and IDs, and student email addresses

Note: Selecting "Generate course roster report" will download a report containing Names, student numbers, UTORIDs and email addresses, but will not include groups/section enrollments.

The UT Advanced Group tool interface for exporting group roster information

Can't find what you're looking for? Consult the Index for a full list of pages or contact the T&L team. Page last updated: May 22, 2022.

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