Skip to main content

Create and Assign Group Assignments

Create and assign a group assignment

  1. On the New Assignment page, select the Settings icon to open the Assignment Settings panel.

  2. Provide a due date and select the settings you want to apply to the group assignment:

    • You can allow class conversations for a group assignment. Students can choose between a conversation with the class as a whole or among only their group members.

    • You can also choose to collect submissions offline that don't require groups to upload submissions. You can add instructions, files, a rubric, and goals so the groups can prepare for the offline work. You can also enable conversations for offline work.

    • You can issue an access code to control when groups may submit a group assignment. At this time, access codes are generated randomly by the system. You can't customize the access codes.

    Important

    At this time, you can't create a group assignment with multiple attempts, a time limit, hidden names, or with parallel grading.

  3. Select Assign groups. How you assign groups is based on which version of Groups your institution has configured.

How you assign groups is based on which version of Groups your institution has configured. Read more in next section.

The Additional Tools settings within the Assignment Settings panel. Setting options are Time Limit, Goals and Standards, Assigned Groups, and Originality Report. displaying the Goals and standards setting as well as the Assigned Groups setting. The Assigned groups setting is a drop-down menu. The menu is not opened and displays the first option: None. The Assigned groups setting has been highlighted with a blue box surrounding that option.

Assign groups to an assignment

Important

The reimagined Groups experience is available if your institution's Blackboard LMS administrators have turned it on. It becomes the default experience for all courses in January 2027. Until then, what you see after you select Assign to groups depends on which experience your course uses.

Assign groups in the new Groups experience

Select a group set that already exists in your course. You can't create groups from the assignment settings.

To use a new group set, create it first on the Groups tab of the Course Content page, then return to the assignment and select it.

Detail of the Assignment Settings panel displaying the Goals and standards setting as well as the Assigned Groups setting. The Assigned groups setting is a drop-down menu. The menu is opened and the following options are displayed: None, Exam Study Groups (3 groups), Festival Planning (3 groups), and Final Presentation (3 groups). The Assigned groups setting has been highlighted with a blue box surrounding that option.

Assign groups in the previous Groups experience

Select Assign groups, which sends you to a page to create a new group set or assign existing groups.

In the Group students menu, choose Custom, Randomly assign, Self-enrollment, or Reuse groups.

Assign groups page within the Assignment Settings workflow. This workflow is available only in the previous version of the Groups experience and functionality. In the new Groups experience, new groups must be created within the Groups page and then can be assigned once they are created.