[ARCHIVED] SIS course enroll and cross-listing

[harrison]

I"m new to Canvas and trying to figure out what is best way to handle enrolling users into course sections.

We plan to automatically create course shells for all Banner courses (CRN numbers) in a term.  Some instructors teach multiple sections of some courses and wish to have one course with all students instead of individual courses.  Cross-listing is the obvious way to handle this.  I don't know ahead of time who wants what cross-listed, so plan to allow instructors to cross-list their own courses (is there a better idea?).  The question arises on how to handle enrollments into courses.  It may start out with students enrolled in each course, then the instructor cross-lists.  How do I ensure the student enrolls from that point on (after the cross-list) are enrolled in the section and not the orig. course shell?

Bruce Harrison
University of Tennessee at Martin

[tdelillo · Accepted solution]

All enrollments live in the sections, not the course shell. The How do I use cross-listing in an account? guide explains this pretty well. When you cross-list, you are moving the section into the "parent" course shell you're using for all the content. So it doesn't matter where the section is, new enrollments will be added to it. If you cross-list the ENGL-1301-002 section into the shell for ENGL-1301-001, and a new student enrolls in section 002, he will be added to the section that now lives in the 001 shell, so from his perspective (and the teacher's), he's been added to ENGL-1301-001 course, if that makes sense.

Our Banner-to-Canvas processes are handled by our programmer, so I don't have the details on how it was originally set up, but if you are starting with each CRN having its own course shell with one section in it, all the documentation (such as How do I cross-list a section in a course?) should make sense.

By the way, we allow instructors to do their own cross-listing (although it can be a little confusing so we're often called upon to assist) and it works out fine. Occasionally we have to de-cross-list things that were done in error, but it's a minor issue.

By the way, part two: You CAN do cross-listing in Banner and automate the cross-listing in Canvas, but we've had so many glitches with it since the beginning that if could do it all over, I'd make it a 100% manual process.

[harrison]

Sounds good. Have been doing some reading since post and it’s making more sense.

My plan now is to create a section at the same time I create the course, both using the same course_id (ENGL110_001_FA2016). That way enrollments will work whether there is any cross-listing or not. Just what you described.

Thanks,

Bruce

[bgibson]

Now that you have an idea of the technical aspects of cross-listing courses, you might want to look at the discussion on how to meet FERPA requirements when combining course sections: New FERPA requirements for cross-listed courses!

[harrison]

Thanks! will take a look.

bruce

[QC99_tsilvius]

You are more than welcome to use this mini-tutorial series that I created to help teachers understand the cross-listing process if they are new to it. Note: the decrosslisting priv has been elevated up from the teacher role to the admin role so teachers need to request decrosslisting.

[ronmarx]

Todd,

We're doing the same thing—cross-listing functions sits with Admin roles only, but it's easy for teachers request and get what they need within a school day. Great minds think alike.

i.Ron

[QC99_tsilvius]

I understand why Instructure removed this priv from teachers because of how decrosslisting what will appear to them as data loss once the Sections are decrosslisted back to their original course shells. Even though the solution to what appears to be data loss would be repeating the crosslisting, recording the data manually or with Grade Passback to the SIS, etc, and then decrosslisting once again, it still could cause a frustration/confusion point for teachers if they don't have that understanding of the process with some support. Having a preliminary chat with an admin before decrosslisting is very helpful to guide teachers through the process.