Groups and sections in Canvas

Groups and Sections comparison

		Groups	Sections
1	Guides	Groups	Sections
2	Accessed via	Course > People > Groups tab Students who are in groups will see a Groups tab on the left-hand Global Navigation Menu on their interface.	Course > Settings > Sections tab
3	Purpose	To organise students for group work, presentations, projects etc. For collaboration.	Student lists for lectures, tutorials, seminar, laboratory, recitation.
4	Creation	Manual, not synced with EduRec. Create via random assignment, manual assignment, by file import or student sign-up.	Automatic, based on information from EduRec. For official academic courses, sections are not editable by users.
5	Download lists	You can download the group lists by following these instructions. (While the instructions are for importing groups, look out for the Download Course Roster CSV File step.)	Download student lists with section information.
6	Others	Each group has a group homepage, which allows the group (and their teachers) to access a mini-Canvas consisting of: Announcements, Pages, People, Discussions, Files and Collaborations.	Create attendance list.

Tools where neither groups nor sections are applicable are not listed.
Files, Modules, Pages and Videos/Panopto cannot be assigned to groups nor sections.

	Tool	Groups	Sections
1	Announcements	Not applicable.	Post announcements to sections.
2	Assignments	Group assignments (not applicable to external tools e.g. Turnitin).	Differentiated dates for individual sections.
3	Attendance (Roll Call)	Not applicable.	Take attendance by section.
4	Calendar	Group appointment sign-up.	Not applicable.
5	Collaborations	Can be set up using groups.	Not applicable.
6	Discussions	Create a discussion to be assigned to groups. Discussion appears in respective group's home page.	Create a discussion to be assigned to sections. Separate discussions for each section appears in Discussions.
7	Grades	Filter students by groups and/or sections.	Filter students by groups and/or sections.
8	Inbox	Send messages to groups.	Send messages to sections.
9	Quizzes	Not applicable.	Differentiated dates for individual sections.
10	SpeedGrader	Grade group assignments.	Filter student list by sections.
11	Zoom	Not applicable.	Invite up to 3 sections to join meeting. Add up to 5 sections to view recordings. Requirements and limitations