Combining Sections

If you teach more than one section of a class, you may find it convenient to combine all your sections into one single site on Canvas. This means you won't have to duplicate all your work. You can still view students separately by section, and you can assign different due dates by section, and you can email the students separately by section, if needed.

If you would like to combine sections, email Matthew Weathers (it will be helpful if you include the CRN numbers of the courses). Eventually, we hope to have a more automated system to let you do this on your own - but for now, just send an email.

Working with Combined Sections

Once two or more sections are combined on Canvas, it will appear to be a single course for you and your students. You will only need to post content, create assignments, and create discussions in one place, and all the students will see it.

However, in some cases, you may need to make things slightly different for different sections. For example, to make different due dates for different sections:

Type in the due date for one section, then click the "+Add" button at the bottom, and choose the name of the second section. This will add another area to add another due date.

For the Gradebook, you will see all the students in one list. However, you can choose to view just one section of students, if you want:

Click the "Show All Sections" at the top-right of the page, then choose a section, or choose "All Sections."

FERPA Rules and Combined Rosters

A handful of students at Biola have requested a "Confidentiality Restriction" which means we need to hide their name on rosters. Other students in their own classes are allowed to see their name, but students in other sections should not be able to. To comply with these FERPA rules, make sure to do the following, when you have combined sections:

(1) Hide the student roster from the left Navigation menu by clicking Settings, then Navigation, and moving the "People" link down to the hidden section. See Reordering Course Navigation Links for more details.

(2) If you use sub-groups, only put student from the same section in groups together. And if you allow students to sign up into their own groups, check this box:

That requires students in the same group to be in the same section.

(3) If you use Discussions, create groups for each section instead of using whole-class discussions.

If you need any help setting these up, contact someone from Digital Learning, and we would be happy to help you.