Sometimes groups change

During a course, it is possible that students may need to switch groups, both before and after an assignment has been handed in and/or graded. This guide covers common scenarios when groups change and what's important to keep in mind before editing group sets in your course.

The guide covers the following scenarios:

When a student leaves a group after hand-in/assessment
When a student joins a group after hand-in/assessment
When new groups are created after hand-in/assessment
When students belonging to the same group are to receive different grades

The Gradebook is sacred

Assessments of students are always individual

The Gradebook in Studium always deals with students individually. Group assignments make it easy for teachers to grade groups of students simultaneously, but in Studium these assessments are always connected to individual students.

That which is graded stays graded

Assessments/grades weigh heavy in Studium and the information that has been written into the Gradebook won't disappear due to changes in the assignment or the group composition. If you change an assignment or group composition, that does not change what has already been written into the Gradebook.

The only way to change an entered grade is to actively enter a new grade.

Scenarios

As we established above, the assessment a student has received remains regardless if they have been moved from one group to another. What happens to the students group hand-in? What happens to feedback?

SCENARIO	STUDENT	GROUP
Student leaves the group after assignment has been handed in	The groups submission remains.	The group submission remains.
Student leaves the group after the assignment has been graded	The assessment and feedback remains.	The assessment and feedback remains.
Student is added to the group after assignment has been handed in	The new group member does not have the new groups submission, and keeps the old submission from the previous group.*	The submission remains for the previous group. Nothing changes for the new group.
Student is added to the group after assignment has been graded	The new group member does not receive the new groups grade, and instead keeps their grade from the previous group.*	The assessment and feedback remains for the old group. Nothing changes for the new group.

*PLEASE NOTE: Although assignment hand-ins and grades are different for the group and the new student of the group, all new information that is entered into the Gradebook will be written to everyone in the group. If you for example give a new grade to the group on an assignment for which the new student wasn't present, the new student will receive this grade as well.

See text below for a work-around!

Individually grade group members

The most common setting for a group assignment is that the same grade is set for everyone in the group. This means that you as a teacher in a convenient way can give all students in the group the grade that their group work has earned. But sometimes the students in a group might have to receive different grades.

This can be the case in the following situations:

Student is added to a group, but you still have to give the group a grade for a past assignment
Student is supposed to be graded on an assignment done in a previous group, and not based on current group composition
Student hasn't participated enough to the group's work in order to justify getting the same grade as the rest of the group members

Solution: Hand out all group grades first – then change the settings for grading

Follow this step-by-step guide:

Make sure you have manual publishing of grades enabled on the assignment
(read more about that here!)
Mark the entire group through SpeedGrader or directly in the Grade book
When the group grade is entered some students will temporarily have the "wrong" grade
Go to the assignment settings. At the alternative for group assignment, check the box "Assign grades to each student individually"
No grades that you have already entered will be changed automatically (remember the principle from the top)
Go to the Grade book and change the grades for the students that shouldn't receive the same grade as their group
Publish the grades for the assignment

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