This page explains the differences between groups, tags and sections in Canvas. It give recommendations as to which grouping-tool can work best for different situations.

Norsk versjon: Gruppering av studenter i Canvas

There are several ways to organise students in Canvas. Your choice depends on whether you need to solve an administrative task, organise your own workflow, or facilitate student collaboration.

• Groups: For student collaboration and group work.
• Tags: For activities related to organising courses and administrative subdivision of students (e.g. learning assistants or co-teachers following up specific students or fixed assessment groups).
• Sections: For administrative divisions such as seminar groups or placement groups. Sections are taken directly from registered teaching groups in FS, and most teachers therefore do not have access to create them.

Groups

Groups are the students’ collaboration arena. When you place students in a group, they get their own miniature version of the Canvas course.Students have their own group tool in Canvas where all their groups are gathered across courses. Therefore, we recommend that you only use groups when students are meant to collaborate together.

Benefits of groups

• Collaboration: Groups get their own pages, discussion forum, and the ability to share files that other students cannot see.
• Group submissions: Create assignments where one student submits on behalf of the whole group, and you can provide one shared grade/feedback.
• Student activity: You can allow students to sign up for groups themselves (self‑enrolment) to give them ownership of a topic or project.

How to create groups

Groups are created under People in the course.

Read about groups and how to create them on Canvas’ website.

How students can sign up for a group themselves

How to create a group set from a CVS file

Tags

Tags (called differentiation tags on Canvas's website) are used to customise teaching for groups of students without necessarily requiring a formal section or group. Teachers and learning assistants can see tags in the course. Students do not see which tags they have.

Tags can be used when you want to divide students into groups – either for administrative purposes or for differentiated learning. Examples of uses include:

• Giving different deadlines to different groups (e.g. the Wednesday seminar group submits on a different day than the Monday group)
• Assigning content to different groups (e.g. students on different campuses only see campus‑specific activities relevant to their location)
• Assigning assessment tasks (e.g. teaching assistants or instructors know which student submissions they are responsible for marking)

How to create tags

Tags are created under People in the course; they can be set up manually or via a CSV file. Read how to create and manage tags in Canvas.

Sections

Sections are primarily used for administrative purposes and to control access to content. At NTNU, sections are created through the FS integration.

Every course in Canvas has two sections automatically. The section from FS (which is called the same as the course room) and the section “Seksjon for manuelt tillagte brukere”. This section is used when you want to add a colleague or guest lecturer to the course without them being added through FS. The person must already have a user account in NTNU’s Canvas. Users can be given the role of teacher or learning assistant in the “Section for manually added users”, but not the student role. The student role can only originate from FS.

Read about how to add roles directly in Canvas.

Read about the possibilities for course structure and FS‑controlled sections in Canvas.

How to create sections

Sections from FS

For some courses, it may be useful to create sections in FS, which are then transferred—along with their users—to Canvas. These may be seminar groups, multi‑campus courses, or continuing education courses with different student cohorts. Canvas sections can be set up based on teaching activities in FS. This is carried out by the department administration.

Sections can be useful for teachers who want to filter and only see their assigned students in SpeedGrader or Grades. After the gradebook is filtered the filtered section will be shown in SpeedGrader. This means you only see your students when marking. Read about how to filter in Grades to learn more about how to organise the overview.

Contact

The Section for Learning Support and Digital Services (SLD) manages Canvas at NTNU and provides pedagogical and technical support for the use of learning tools.Contact the Section for Learning Support and Digital Services via NTNU Help.