How do groups work?

Grouping Overview

Perusall uses grouping to encourage dynamic interactions when reading and viewing Perusall content. Groups help to ensure that students:

• See all threads started by members of their group or by an instructor/TA
• Within each thread, will see comments from other members of their group and by an instructor/TA
• Are not left feeling overwhelmed by too many highlights or comments, particularly in high-enrollment courses

Important: We advise instructors to maintain consistent grouping throughout a term.  A change mid-course will cause confusion, as students will see a different set of comments when reopening library content or assignments. 

To learn more about grouping with Review based and Differentiated assignments, visit How do I use groups with Review based or Differentiated assignment?

Using Easy Grouping

Easy grouping is an automated setup tool used during course creation. It calculates and creates your group sets based on your estimated enrollment and target group size. You can enable Easy grouping in Step 6 of the Get Started walkthrough.

1. Select your Grouping method.  

   • If you are not using groups in your course, select No grouping.  If you are using groups in your course, select Fixed grouping*, Assignment-based Grouping, or Library content-based grouping. This enables Create group sets automatically.

2. Determine the number of group sets.

   • Enter the total number of group sets you want Perusall to create for the course.

3. Determine your target group size.

   • Enter the approximate number of students you'd like for each group.  Perusall will use this "target" to distribute students as evenly as possible.(*This is based on the enrollment estimate you set in Step 5, please make sure this number is accurate).

4. Save your settings.

   • Click Next step to save.

Easy grouping can only be enabled if your course has no group sets. If you copy group sets from another course, the Easy grouping feature will not be available.
  

If you change your mind, you can delete your existing group sets:

1. Navigate to Settings > Grouping.
2.  Click the drop down arrow to view your existing Group sets.
3. Select the checkbox next to Group set name (this will select all group sets).
4. Finally, click the red button, Delete group sets, to permanently delete all group sets.

Once completed, revisit Step 6 of Get started and follow the instructions above. Deleted group sets cannot be recovered.

*Fixed grouping uses one group set for the duration of the course. You only need to determine your target group size.

Grouping Methods

Perusall offers four Grouping methods, available in Step 6 of the Get Started walkthrough or under Settings > Grouping in your course. Click the dropdowns below to learn more about each method.

• To place all students in a single group for all library items and assignments, navigate to Settings > Grouping and select No grouping.

  With this option enabled, you will not have the ability to create or manage Group sets, as all students will interact within one collective group for the entire course.

• (This setting was previously called "Specify groups.")
  
  To keep student groups consistent across all library items and assignments, navigate to Settings > Grouping and select Fixed grouping for all course material. At the bottom of the page, you can create a new group set or import one directly from a CSV file or your LMS.

  If your course contains multiple group sets, you must select one specific set to serve as the "fixed" version for the entire course.

• To organize students by assignment, navigate to Settings > Grouping and select Assignment-based grouping. Once enabled, students will only see comments from members of their assigned group within that specific task.

  These grouping restrictions apply only to assignments; students will continue to see all content and comments in the library without any group limitations (i.e. Book X does not itself have groups, but each assignment that uses Book X can have its own grouping).

  You can click Generate randomly to create multiple randomized group sets at once, giving you the flexibility to either reuse the same groups across different assignments or assign unique groups to each assignment.

• To organize students by specific content pieces, navigate to Settings > Grouping and select Library content-based grouping. Once enabled, students will only see comments from members of their assigned group within that specific item.

  These grouping restrictions apply to all library content items and any assignments directly tied to them (i.e. the grouping from Book X will be used in an assignment configured with that text).

  You can click Generate randomly to create multiple randomized group sets at once, allowing you to either reuse the same groups across various materials or assign unique groups to each individual piece of content.

If you are not using Easy grouping but are manually configuring Fixed, Assignment-based, or Library content-based group sets, you'll have the opportunity to determine the Behavior when new students join the course. The options for this behavior are: 

• Automatically add new students to a randomly-selected group in each group set
• Keep new students ungrouped (they will not be able to see comments from any other students until grouped)

If you switch to the Automatically add new students... option, then all of your ungrouped students will automatically be sorted into your existing groups.

Creating Group sets without Easy grouping

If not using Easy grouping, you may manually create individual group sets when using Fixed, Assignment or Library content-based grouping. Alternatively, click Generate randomly to create multiple group sets at once.  Use the tabs below to explore the options for creating group sets:

• To manually create a Group set, click Create new and provide a name for the set. You can then organize your students by clicking the Add group button or using the Randomize option. 
  
  
  
  Once the groups are generated, you have the flexibility to rename each individual group as desired.
• To import via CSV, select Import group set from CSV and download the provided template. After filling out the spreadsheet with Group names and saving it as a .csv file, return to Perusall, click Next, name your Group set, and upload your file via the Choose button. 
  
  
  
  Once the import is complete, the group set remains fully editable. 
• If importing from Canvas, Blackboard, or D2L/Brightspace, select either Import group set (available for Blackboard, D2L, and Canvas) or Import section (only available for Canvas). After clicking Authorize in the LMS popup window, choose the specific group set or section you wish to bring over. Note that imports must be performed one at a time; to add additional sets or sections, simply repeat this process for each one.
  
  
  
  Note: this is only available for courses using our LTI 1.3 integration.

Managing and editing group sets without Easy grouping

• When using Assignment-based or Library content-based grouping, you can select a Default group set to associate with your course materials or assignments, or choose Randomly choose one of my group sets.
  
   
   
• The Apply to feature allows you to quickly associate a group set with a given assignment or library content item. 
  
  

• You can edit group sets at any time to rename groups, move students, add groups, or re-randomize them.
  
  

  Be careful when changing groups.
   

• Select duplicate group sets, to replicate a group set if you’d like to make minor edits or use the same overall group set framework with different groups.
  
  

• The Delete feature allows you to remove a group set that you no longer need. 
  
  
   

  Deleted group sets cannot be recovered.

Reviewing student groups

Use the tabs below to learn how to see the groups that students have been placed into based on your selected Grouping method.

• When using Fixed grouping for all course material, click on the Groups button associated with the Library content item or Assignment. 
  
  
•  
  1. Click on the Assignments tab.
  2. Open the desired assignment's Action menu, and then click the Groups button.
  3. Within the new window, you'll see the group set for the assignment.  
     
     If you'd like, you can use Select a custom group set to create, edit, or choose another group set to apply to the selected assignment.
     
     
•  
  1. Click on the Library tab.
  2. Open the desired document's Action menu, and then click the Groups button.
  3. Within the new window, you'll see the group set for the assignment.  
     
     If you'd like, you can use Select a custom group set to create, edit, or choose another group set to apply to the selected document.
     
     

Viewing comments by group

Instructors will always be able to see all comments.

To see all comments for a specific group, navigate to your Course home, select an assignment, click All comments, and in the dropdown, select a specific group to see who has participated. 

You can also filter comments by group while viewing assignments. Click All comments at the top of the window, then click Specific group, and select the group you'd like to see.  Click the All conversations icon on the right navigation panel to see all conversations from that group. Learn more about what icons are visible.

• If a student is the first one in their group to comment on a particular document, then they won't see any other comments in the document even though other students in the class may have also started commenting. This is normal; they should start to see other students' comments as others in their group start reading and commenting on the document as well. As a first step, you can check their group's activity using one of the methods from above.
• When you filter conversations by group, it's possible that you'll see conversation threads appearing in multiple groups due to the change of membership.
  
  Contact Perusall support for further assistance.

Changing grouping methods

We recommend using one Grouping method throughout the duration of your course; however, we recognize that sometimes grouping must change. If you are using Fixed grouping for all course material or Assignment-based groups and have assignments in your course that use assign to: specific groups, the grouping method cannot be changed unless you remove this setting. To do this, edit the assignment(s), navigate to Options, and adjust the assign to setting from specific groups to entire course. 

Changing grouping methods affects all documents and assignments in your course depending on your initially selected grouping method, i.e. if changing from library content-based group to assignment-based grouping, you will no longer have the groups button in your course library. Instead, it will now be available via the assignment.