Wiki Page, Canvas Admin Overview: [MODULE 2] Assigning Sections to a Course

Wiki Page
2014-04-03T08:37:00-06:00

Assigning Sections to a Course

Sections are groups of students enrolled in a course. In other words, courses house content, sections house enrollments. By default, every course comes with one section.

Schools and organizations may use the concept of 'sections' differently. Some offer multiple 'sections' of the same class, taught by the same teacher. Some offer same courses taught by different teachers, each leading a different 'section' (and possibly having different content, too). Regardless of how you define 'sections', it is important to understand how they work in Canvas before determining how to use them for your needs.

How Are Sections Created?

By default, every course comes with one section. You can also manually add course sections through Canvas user-interface or import via SIS import.

REMEMBER:
If you have multiple sections in a course,
all users in all sections will see and access
all content in the course.
If an instructor plans to have different content,
assignments or discussions, it's best to avoid cross-listing.

Cross-Listing Sections

Think of cross-listing as moving enrollment from one course shell into another.

Sometimes it may be necessary to cross-list a section into another course. For example, a teacher is assigned to teach 2 sections of their english course, but they have two course shells in Canvas. He wants to combine both sections into one course shell for convenience. This may be a good opportunity to cross-list one section.

Assuming all course content, activities and assignments remain the same across sections, then it would be advantageous and efficient to cross-list a section. Event and assignment due dates and deadlines can be determined by section. Gradebook can be filtered by section. These make it efficient for instructors to facilitate and deliver their courses.

The following tutorials detail sections:

How are courses and sections related?

How do I manually create a section?

How do I edit a section's details?

How does cross-listing work in Canvas?

How do I cross-list a section?

How do I de-cross-list a Section?