Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Managing Group Assignments in Google Classroom

Often times, teachers want to assign group work to students using Google Classroom. They want students to be able to work on the same document and turn in a single copy. Right now, there isn't a way to create sub-groups in Google Classroom like many teachers wish, but there is a way to do this without some students having "not done" assignments when it's all over.



Create your assignment document. Create the assignment as you usually would. Give it a title, add instructions, and attach your document for your first group. Then, click where it says all students.

You'll see a dropdown box with the name of each student in the class. Un-click the box next to "all students".

Check only the name of the students in a particular group. Make sure that instead of "make a copy for every student," you'll want to choose "students can edit". This way, all students in the group will be working on the same doc, and each student will be able to click "turn in" when the group is finished. 


To post the assignment for group two, click the "create" button in the upper left of the Classwork Tab. Select "Reuse Assignment". 


Find the first group assignment you posted in the reuse window and select it. Make sure to select the option to "make all new copies of all attachments". Then click the blue "reuse" button. 


In the new posting window, make sure to go to the "all students" dropdown as selected above and select the new group of students. 

Here's the rub to using this method: You'll need to repeat the "reuse post" process for each new group. There is a little more set-up time on the front end for teachers, but it is much less confusing for students and for the teacher, especially when grading time comes!

As always, feel free to reply with any questions!

9 comments:

  1. Thank you! This is the best workaroubd I've found! Great blog, BTW. All your posts are concise but comprehensive. Keep it up!

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  2. Thanks Alejandro! Glad you found it useful!

    ~Laurah J.

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  3. Laura, Thanks for the great advise... that will work for the meantime... Although that feature would be great if the students do it... I teach college students and they should be able to organize their own teamwork...

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  4. Hello! I found this post and tried the method this week for remote teaching. I'm finding that the second group is receiving the same document that the first group has already been working on.

    I reread your post and thought maybe I had neglected to click the box for "Make all new copies of attachments". I tried your process with a different assignment today, and I am certain that I clicked the box for "Make all new copies." However, the second group received the document that the first group had already been writing in.

    Do you have any suggestions?

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  5. What does this look like on the gradebook end?

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  6. OMGoodness, you saved me so much time! Thank you!

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  7. This was great! I wanted to share a document with groups so they could still do KAGAN structures during a pandemic!

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  8. Thank you for this post. So my understanding is, if I have 5 different groups, there will be 5 different classwork assignments on google classroom, one for each group. Will I be able to see the documents live as the students are working on them during class in one place or will I have to go into each "classroom assignment" and individually look at their documents?

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  9. Thank you for sharing and I am sure it will be of great help to use!

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