Managing group AI projects
Goal
Run group projects where each group collaborates with AI in its own shared space — and you can keep an eye on every group from one place.
Grading group work in a class? Use a group assignment
Classroom now supports group assignments: you put students in groups on one assignment, each group shares its chats, and you see every group's work on the assignment's page. There are no sharing settings to manage. See How group assignments work.
Shared folders, covered below, are still useful for informal or non-class group work.
Informal group work? Try a Box
For group work outside a graded assignment, you can give each group its own Box instead of a shared folder. Everyone in a Box can open every chat in it, so there's no per-chat sharing step, and every chat follows the instructions and files you set for the Box. Add yourself to each group's Box to follow along. Boxes don't have Folder Stats, sandboxing or grading. See What is a Box?
⚠️ Check this before you build a course around it
Sharing a folder does not share the chats inside it. A folder has no permissions of its own — access is granted per chat — so a folder link lets someone see that chats exist without letting them read or take part in them.
For a group project that means each chat's owner has to widen that chat's General access before the rest of the group (or you) can read it. Chats a student creates inside a shared group folder start out Restricted to that student.
So build the sharing step into the assignment:
Tell each group that whoever starts a chat must set its General access so the group and you can open it — see How to share a chat with someone.
If you need reliable visibility into student work, use a group assignment instead of folders. See How group assignments work.
How this works (read this first)
This article covers group projects in shared folders:
For graded class work, a group assignment is usually the better fit (see How group assignments work). Use folders when the group work sits outside a class or you want an open, informal space.
Because a group project is built on shared folders, the assignment-only tools — sandboxing (limiting which bots/models a student can use) and the Assignment Dashboard — are not available here. For groups you monitor with Folder Stats instead (covered below).
Quick path
Create a parent folder named for the project (e.g., Case Study One).
Inside it, create one subfolder per group (Group 1, Group 2…), plus an Instructions subfolder.
Share each group's folder link (three-dot menu → Copy Folder Link) with that group only.
Watch progress from the parent folder and View Folder Stats.
Step-by-step
Create the parent folder. In My Folders, click + and name it for the project (e.g., Case Study One). You own this folder and can see everything inside it.
Add a subfolder for each group. On the parent folder, open the three-dot menu → Add Folder. Make one per group — Group 1, Group 2, and so on.
Add an Instructions subfolder shared with everyone. Put your daily prompts and directions here, and use Comment Mode (start your message with --) to post human-only instructions that don't trigger an AI reply (name the chats descriptively, e.g., Day 1 Instructions).
Share each group's folder link — separately. On a group's subfolder, open the three-dot menu → Copy Folder Link and send it to that group only. Send each group only its own link, so nobody has a link to a folder they shouldn't be in.
Let groups work — and have them share their chats. Inside their folder, students can add chats and subfolders (three-dot menu → Add New Chat). Whoever creates a chat has to set its General access so their group can join in, otherwise it stays private to them. Everything is timestamped.
Keep an eye on it
Open any group's folder from the parent folder. Owning the parent folder lets you into the group folders, but it does not by itself let you read the chats inside them — each chat's access still governs that. Ask groups to make their project chats readable to you.
Use Folder Stats for the numbers. On any folder, three-dot menu → View Folder Stats shows Total Chats, Prompts, Messages, and Bots, with a per-member breakdown so you can see who's contributing.
Analyze participation with AI. Add a group's folder to your Knowledge Bank (context menu → Add to Knowledge Bank), start a new chat, attach that folder, and ask the AI to summarize participation (e.g., "Who in this folder has contributed most?"). For a lot of data, a large-context model like Gemini handles it well.
Verify it's working
Each group can open its own folder link.
New chats the groups create appear under their subfolder in your parent folder.
You can actually open and read a group's chat — if it won't open, that chat's General access hasn't been widened yet.
View Folder Stats shows activity for the members you expect.
Still stuck?
Need grading, or need to lock students to specific bots? Use an assignment, and for groups, a group assignment. See How group assignments work and Designing AI-supported classroom assignments. For setting up the sharing, see How to share a chat with someone. Reach out through our contact form and we'll get back to you.