Assignment

I can't really answer this myself without moving a student currently in a named group into the Default group, and I'm a bit nervous about doing that, even temporarily, since I don't know whether the effects of doing that are 100% reversible.

If you are correct, that the assignment is only attached to the group to which the submitter belonged at the time of submission, then the student in the Default group somehow obtained the report and submitted it dishonestly. That is what I am trying to determine. The report is definitely attached to G01, but the question is whether it is ALSO attached to the Default group. If it is, then the student in the Default group is likely innocent and I do not want to accuse him of cheating without knowing whether it is possible that the report was originally submitted before the submitter was moved into G01.

But thank you for your reply. Initially I had difficulty posting this because when I tried to edit a minor typo, the system said my post had been blocked as possibly containing spam. So I wasn't certain whether it was visible to anyone else.

Ok, I think I understand now. When I switched my own role temporarily to Student, I saw that I was in the Default group and the submission was shown as my own submission (i.e., that of my group). So this submission is definitely attached to the Default group.

However, although it is identical to this submission, the file attached to G01 was submitted *separately*, a day later, according to the timestamps. Also, looking back at my email exchange with G01's student representative, it appears that the student informed me of his group membership at 3:53 pm, and then per the timestamp, the Default group submission was made 2 minutes later, at 3:55. I did not move his G01 group into the grouping for that assignment until 7:30pm on the same day. So my guess is that the same student submitted the report immediately without waiting for my reply (which except for my error he could not have done), and that you are correct, that the original submission remained attached to the Default group. The student likely found the next day that his file was no longer in the submission box, and submitted it again.

Thus, the one remaining student still in the Default group is almost certainly innocent of any academic dishonesty in this matter.

In a previous thread, someone opined that the "Require group to make submissions" setting is a design flaw. I agree. At the very least, its default setting should NOT be "no", once one has set "Students submit in groups" to "yes", unless that setting has very different semantics than it does now. I cannot imagine a situation where it would be desirable for a submission by a student who is not a member of a named group to be attached to ALL students who are not members of a named group. And my experience here shows, I think, how easy it is with the current semantics to accidentally bring about a situation where the actual history of submissions is very difficult to trace, and might even make it appear that an innocent student has cheated. I could not have figured this out without the emails between myself and the G01 student, since there is (AFAIK) no timestamp telling when a group was moved into a grouping.

Perhaps instead of having a Default group, the semantics of "Require group to make submissions" = "no" should be that each submission by a student not in a named group belongs only to that student? Just a suggestion for a future release.