Groups is where you can organize students or their parents into groups to stay connected with them outside of class.  After you create a group, you will be assigned a special code to hand out to members to automatically join your group.  Alternatively, students or parents can join your group manually through their account, but must be approved by you before they are a part of the group.   After you set up your groups, you'll be able to post, collect, and grade assignments, hold discussions, and send private messages to members of your groups.   Benefits of using groups and sample uses Creating a group Editing a group Moving members between groups Removing members from a group What if I don't want to organize groups?

1. Benefits of using groups and sample uses

Due to popular demand, we have added Groups functionality to the new version of SchoolRack.  Groups can be used for classes, clubs, parents of students, or any other organizational unit at your school.  Once you have created groups, you can:

• Create, collect, and grade assignments for group members
• Hold online discussions with group members
• Send private messages to group members

Also, getting started is much easier than you think, we've created a user-friendly interface to make managing groups of students or parents a breeze.

Imagine a teacher, Bill, with two classes: Algebra and English.  For his Algebra class, Bill uses the groups functionality to occasionally send out reminder messages of upcoming tests and hold discussions online to answer questions on difficult topics.  For his English class, he uses groups to collect essays online and to ask thought-provoking questions about weekly reading assignments in the discussion boards for all his students to answer. 

2. Creating a group

1. Once you have logged in to your account, enter the Groups section of your account

2. Click the Create a New Group button

3. Fill in the short form to specify which type of group you'd like to create and click the Create Group button

4. After you create your group, you will be provided a special group code to hand out to members of your group.  This is the easiest way to add members to your groups, as they will be automatically added to the group upon signing up to SchoolRack.

5. After handing out the code to students or parents, watch the number of members in your group increase in real time as students or parents subscribe to your group in their personal SchoolRack accounts

3. Editing a group

1. Once you have logged in to your account, enter the Groups section of your account

2. In your list of groups, click the Edit icon next to the name of the group

3. Make any changes to your original settings for the group and click the Save Group button, the changes take effect immediately

4. Moving members between groups

1. Once you have logged in to your account, enter the Groups section of your account

2. Click the name of the group you'd like to delete members from

3. After clicking the group name, you will be taken to a page to manage all of its members. Here, you can relocate members to other groups by clicking the checkboxes by their name and selecting the group name from the 'Move selected to' dropdown menu

5. Removing members from a group

1. Once you have logged in to your account, enter the Groups section of your account

2. Click the name of the group you'd like to remove members from

3. After clicking the group name, you will be taken to a page to manage all of its members. Here, you can a) delete members by clicking the x button next to their names or b) by clicking the checkboxes of multiple members and clicking the Delete link above the table.

6. What if I don't want to organize groups?

There are three ways for visitors to become group members of your website:

1. Via the special group code given to you upon creation of the group (recommended)
2. Via their account, by searching for your name (approval required)
3. Via your website, by clicking the Subscribe to this Page button up top (approval required)

If you create a group, the best way for members to subscribe is with the special code given to you upon creation (option 1).  However, if you wish to not organize members in to groups and have an unorganized list of members, users can simply subscribe after visiting your website (option 2) or searching for your name in our search directory (option 3).  Before they can be subscribed to your page though, you must first approve all subscription requests.  Though we recommend organizing students and parents into groups, you can simply have students or parents subscribe to your page to be placed in a general bucket of ungrouped subscribers.

You don’t have to create groups in order to enjoy the group features with students and parents.  If students subscribe to your website via options 2 and 3, they will simply be placed in a group called Subscribers (Ungrouped).  You must approve all users that don’t sign up using option 1.

If a user adds your group to their account manually via options 2 or 3 (i.e., without the special code assigned to your account), they will be placed in a "pending approval" bin until you approve their membership.  If you see the following notice at the top of your Groups page, simply click "View Pending →" and approve or deny the members listed.