Team Formation Tool Guide

What is the Team Formation Tool?

The Team Formation Tool, a Canvas app developed at Dartmouth, is a survey-based tool for the creation of optimized student groups. With the Team Formation Tool, instructors can create custom surveys designed to sort students into groups based on a cluster of predetermined criteria including time zone, teamwork and working style, preferred time of day to study, and more. 

Install the App

To get the Team Formation Tool installed in your Canvas course, submit a Canvas Support Request here, and enter Team Formation Tool Installation in the Short Description of Problem field. You can take a Team Formation survey as a student and find more resources about the tool in this Canvas course.

Create the Survey

Once the Team Formation Tool has been installed in your Canvas course, you can access it via your course menu. It should appear toward the bottom of the menu, near Settings. 

To create a new survey:

  1. Select Team Formation from the course menu.
  2. Click the Create Survey button in the upper right corner of the page.
  3. Select the Question Presets you'd like to use from the tile grid by clicking on the question tile to add it to your survey.
    • To add additional questions, click on the appropriate tile.
    • If you would like to remove a question, click on a highlighted tile to deselect it.
  4. When you are satisfied with your selections, click on the Continue button.
    • Note: Consider these preset questions carefully before moving on. If you decide that you need to add one of these questions after leaving the Question Presets page, the only way to do so is to start over with a new survey (using the Cancel and go back button in the top left corner).
  5. Name the survey by clicking and dragging over the default tile, New Survey, deleting that text, and typing in your title. You can use the same steps to create a subtitle or description below the title. The name of the survey will become the name of your group set once groups have been published to Canv
  6. Set a due date, keeping in mind that if you are using this at the start of the term you will need to account for the add/drop period.
  7. If you have multiple sections and need groups to be discrete to their sections, you can set course sections using the drop box below the due date. You will then need to clone the survey and change the section assignment for each additional section in your course. More on survey cloning below.
  8. At this stage, you can customize present questions and create your own questions.
    • To customize preset questions:
      • Select for Distribution (how students should be distributed across groups).
        • Click on the similar responses tile to group students who selected the same responses to the question.
        • Click on the dissimilar responses tile to group students who selected different responses to the question.
      • Select the question's Priority Level by moving the slider between Not Important, Somewhat Important, or Very Important.
      • Repeat this process for all Preset Questions.
    • To create your own questions:
      • Click on + Question in the green box in the lower right corner. There, you will also see a list of all of the questions you've added to the survey.
      • Scroll past the preset questions you already customized, stopping when you see a question titled New Question. 
      • Customize the question title as you did with the survey title and description.
      • Set the question type by clicking on the drop down menu in the top right of the question. You can decide between short answer, multiple choice (single select), and checkbox (multiple select).
      • Add options if your question is multiple choice or checkbox. If your question is short answer, proceed to the next step.
        • You will see a text field below the question title with the words "add option." Click into the text field to create the option. 
        • Press Enter to create additional options.
      • Set Distribution.
      • Set Priority.
      • Repeat for each custom question you wish to create.
  9. At this point, you have three options: 
    • Cancel and go back.
    • Preview.
    • Verify and save.
  10. Click the Preview button at the top center of the page to verify that all your questions are appearing as they should.
  11. Click the Cancel Preview button at the top left of the page to make more changes, or to return to your survey to verify and save.
  12. If you need to make changes, you can do so here following the same steps you used to customize preset questions and create new questions.
  13. If you wish to delete any questions, use the Trash Icon at the bottom right of each question. 
    • Note: The interface will not notify you that the question has been deleted. To verify that it has been deleted, look at the list of questions in the green box at the bottom right of the page.

Publish the Survey

Once you have created the survey, you will need to Publish the survey in order to deploy it to students. If you need to make any last-minute changes before publishing, see the Manage the Survey section of this article, below. To publish the survey you just created:

  1. Click on the Team Formation link in your course menu. There, you will see a list of Current Surveys and Complete Surveys.
  2. In the list of Current Surveys, locate the survey you wish to publish. 
  3. Click Publish.
  4. You will see a warning message that reads: "This action cannot be undone. Are you sure you want to PUBLISH this survey and allow students to respond to it?" 
  5. If you need to make more changes, click Cancel.
  6. If you still wish to proceed, click I am sure. 
  7. The survey will be published and you will be returned to the main Team Formation tool page. There, your recently published survey should appear at the top of the list in a larger size to indicate that it has been successfully published. It will also display a count of students who have completed the survey.

 

Student Responses

  1. Once you have published the survey, students will be able to respond to the questions by:
    • Selecting Team Formation from the course menu.
    • Clicking the  Take Survey button to launch the survey. 
    • Completing the questions and clicking Save to submit. 
  2. After submitting, students have the option to Edit Responses until you generate groups and close the survey. They can do so by:
    • Selecting Team Formation from the course menu.
    • Locating the survey for which they wish to edit responses. 
    • Clicking Edit Responses. 
    • Completing the changes they wish to make.
    • Clicking Save to submit.

Manage the Survey

The Manage the Survey function can be used to make changes to questions before publishing the survey and, even more importantly, to generate groups once students have responded to the survey.

To make changes to questions before publishing:

  1. Click on the Team Formation link in your course menu. There, you will see a list of Current Surveys and Complete Surveys.
  2. In the list of Current Surveys, locate the survey you wish to manage. 
  3. Click Manage.
  4. You will see a management page with the survey title and description that allows you to view questions and responses (via buttons at the top of the page).
  5. Click Change Weights.
  6. From the resulting page, you can change the weight of any question by adjusting the priority level slider.
  7. You can also:
    • Edit the distribution of custom questions by clicking on the distribution tile of your choice.
    • Edit the title and description of custom questions by clicking into those fields and adding / deleting text.
    • Edit the survey's title, description, due date, and sections.
      • Note:  We recommend making substantive changes only before you publish the survey. Making such changes after the survey is published will result in inconsistent results.
  8. Once you are finished making changes, you can Preview, Cancel and go back, or Verify and save.
  9. To save your changes, click the Verify and save button in the top right corner.

View Results and Generate Groups

Once you've received your students' responses, you can sort students into groups based on their responses. You may be able to use the built-in sorting functionality with no futher adjustments if you've used only pre-set questions or your custom questions were easily sortable. In some cases, however, you will need to do some additional hand sorting. 

To generate groups:

  1. Click on the Team Formation Tool link in your course menu. There, you will see a list of Current Surveys and Complete Surveys.
  2. In the list of Current Surveys, locate the survey you wish to manage. 
  3. Click Manage.
  4. You will see a management page with the survey title and description that allows you to view questions and responses (via buttons at the top of the page).
  5. Click Generate Groups.
  6. Set the number of students to be included in each group using the drop down menu in the dialog box that appears.
  7. Click Form Groups. 
    • If you have not received any student responses, you will receive an error message if you attempt to form groups. 
    • If you are forming groups before the deadline you entered when you created the survey, you will receive the following warning message: "This survey has not ended yet. If you continue, the end date will be movted to last night at midnight. These changes cannot be undone. Are you sure you want to continue." Click I Am Sure to continue. If you are not ready to proceed, click Cancel.
    • If you have not received responses from all students when you choose to form groups, you will receive an error message that reads "Some students have not completed this survey. If you continue, blank responses will be created for these students." If you click I Am Sure to proceed, these students will be sorted randomly into groups. Select Cancel to give students more time to respond. 
    • Once your groups have been generated, you can review them and, if necessary, re-roll by clicking Generate Groups again. 
    • If you're happy with the group makeup, click Write Groups to Canvas.
    • You will see a popup message that reads "Success! Created a set of groups named '[Your Survey Name].' To view and modify the groups, select 'People' on the left." Click to Dismiss the message.           
    • Navigate to People in the course menu. Once you are there, you will see a tab at the top of the page that reads "[Your Survey Name] Groups." Click on the tab to view or manage the groups. From this point on, you can use them as you would any Canvas group.

To hand sort before generating groups:

  • Click on the Team Formation Tool link in your course menu. There, you will see a list of Current Surveys and Complete Surveys.
  • In the list of Current Surveys, locate the survey you wish to manage. 
  • Click Manage.
  • You should see a survey management page that looks like this: 
  • Click on the CSV button to download a spreadsheet of survey information.
  • Use your spreadsheet tool of choice (Excel, Google Sheets) to do further group sorting.
  • Once your groups are set, follow the instructions here to create your groups in Canvas.


Clone the Survey

If you want to create groups that are discrete to specific sections of your course, or you would like to re-assign groups for a different project at a later time in the term, you can clone your survey. To do so:

  • Select Team Formation from the course menu.
  • Find the survey you wish to clone in your list of current or complete surveys.
  • Click on the white Clone Survey button.
  • Update your survey title and survey description.
  • Click the Clone Now button. 

 

  • You should now see your cloned survey in your list of surveys on the main Team Formation page.
  • Use the Manage button to update the due date and section designation (if necessary). 
  • Publish they survey and create groups as described above.
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