Process for Easily Creating Small Group Discussions

Process for Easily Creating Small Group Discussions – D2L v8.1

James Falkofske – Fall 2007

This process shows you how to easily create small group discussions in D2L – in which students only see the discussion threads that apply to their groups.

Step One – Create the Group in Classlist > Manage Groups

You will need to go into CLASSLIST > MANAGE GROUPS and then press the button ADD GROUP TYPE. Then indicate the ENROLLMENT STYLE to “# of Groups – No auto-enrollment”

and set the ENROLLMENT QUALITY to the number of groups that you need. Then press ADD.

Your new group type will appear in the list.

OPTIONAL – Name the Subgroups

You can rename the subgroup titles. This will affect how the discussion topics will later be created.

Click on the name of your group (Icebreaker Discussion Groups).

Checkmark off each of the group names (Group1, Group 2, Group 3), and the press EDIT.

Then update the NAME of each group name and press UPDATE when complete.

Step Two – Assign Students to Each Group

Click on the ENROLL icon for the appropriate Group.

Use the checkboxes to assign students to the different groups.

Anyone identified as an INSTRUCTOR for the course needs to have checkboxes for every group (in order to read the message from that group).

Press UPDATE when complete.

Step 3 – Create an Empty Discussions Forum

Enter DISCUSSIONS and click the button CREATE NEW FORUM.

Enter the FORUM TITLE and instructions related to the forum in the DESCRIPTION field.

Save this forum without adding topic links.

Step 4 – Automatically Create Restricted Discussion Topics

Go to DISCUSSIONS > SET GROUP RESTRICTIONS.

Find and select the GROUP TYPE you created in MANAGE GROUPS.

Then click the link to AUTOMATICALLY CREATE RESTRICTED TOPICS.

Choose the FORUM to which the new discussion topics will be added (Icebreaker Activities).

You will then see the new topics automatically created with the names of the sub-groups from the MANAGE GROUPS operations.