Groups | How to delete Brightspace groups and categories

As you may have learned in the article How to use Brightspace Groups, you can create groups in Brightspace where students are assigned to submit group assignments or create group discussions. It is also possible to delete the unwanted groups or categories that are no longer needed.

This article will show how to:

Deleting a Category or a Group has consequences for the functions the Category/Group they are linked to:

  • Discussions - only the forum will remain visible for the lecturer. All topics including content will be deleted
  • Assignments - will be deleted when deleting a category/group. Assignments that were submitted are deleted too, and can not be retrieved!  However, a lecturer can see how many assignments were submitted
  • Subgroups - all subgroups will be deleted
  • Release Conditions - if there is a file in Content with this category as a release condition, everyone will be able to access the file after deleting the category

Accessing Brightspace Groups

Navigate to your Brightspace course page. Then, in the green navigation bar 

  1. Click Communication 
  2. Click Groups

This will take you to the Manage Groups homepage.

navigate to communication and click on groups

The Manage Groups homepage will open, under View Categories,

3. Click the downward arrow, and a dropdown menu will appear

4. Click the [category name] you want to delete

Under View Categories - select the category you want to delete

Now you can continue to one of the following sections to delete a category or to delete a group.

Deleting a Brightspace group/category

1. Delete Brightspace group(s)

In the table view on the Manage Groups homepage

5. Click the selectbox next to the group name(s) you want to delete

6. Click the button Delete above the table

manage groups page, select category and group to remove, and click delete

To continue in the process follow to Step 7 in this manual.

2. Delete a Brightspace category

5. Click the selectbox next to the category name you want to delete

By checking the selectbox all the groups within that category will be automatically selected to be deleted together with the selected category.

6. Click the button Delete above the table

manage groups page, select category and click delete

Whether you are deleting a group(s) or a category, after you click the button Delete a window will pop up with a confirmation and a warning message. In the pop-up window,

7. Click the button Delete Groups/Categories 

confirmation pop-up

The groups and categories have been successfully deleted. If you did not have any other group and category created on the Manage Groups homepage you will see and empty page (see image below).

Manage Groups - No longer containing defined groups

You now know how to delete groups and categories in Brightspace!

Want to know more about Groups in Brightspace?

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