Cross-list courses

[lhenson]

I have a teacher who wants to cross-list her sections, but she already has content in them. If I unpublish the courses which are moving into the main course, will that retain the content when they are republished?  

[kona]

No, I don't believe they will because they loose their individual identity. So they couldn't be individually published or unpublished if they were crosslisted. When crosslisted the multiple courses become one course, but have different sections within the course that represent the original cross listed courses. 

Does this make sense?

[lhenson]

It does make sense.  Just want to clarify before I do this.  So, I can unpublish the separate courses (sections), cross-list them and any assignments/quizzes assigned to students in those courses (sections) should be in tact? 

Here is what the Canvas help has on their instructions, which is why I wanted to double check:  Cross-listing should be done while courses are unpublished. Coursework is retained with the course, not with the section enrollments, so if a published course is cross-listed, all cross-listed enrollments will lose any associated assignment submissions and grades.

[kona]

I'll be honest that I'm not an expert with cross-listing. We don't use it at our Institution (we do all combining of course on the back end of Canvas). 

From my limited knowledge, the unpublishing part is only because you shouldn't cross list courses after they've already been published and have students working in them. The reason for this is that you will lose all of their work and what they did in the course that gets cross-listed into the other course. In addition, if you have students already in the course working in them then you can't unpublish them. 

I'm going to share this with the https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/admins?sr=search&searchId=eab32519-b8bb-4c34-b592-c7c2c179653...‌ group in the Community to see if you can get some help from people who actually use this tool!

[kbickell]

Cross-listing courses after faculty have created content should not be too problematic. But if students have done any work then typically it gets hidden in the cross-list. If that's not the case here, one less mess to deal with.  

[kblack]

Leslie, Kona is absolutely correct on this. (Not surprisingly!  )  I had one real experience with this, and my first recommendation is if enough time has passed in your term, you may want to try this out first on your Beta installation if you can, since that is refreshed every weekend.  With luck, your class in question might have some material in it.  But as Kona stated, it is the student work that will be lost.  Here was my scenario (course names made up, of course!):

Hist 100 was published, as was Hist 101.  Hist 101 already had some student discussion posts in it, but not Hist 100.  But it was Hist 101 that was to be cross-listed INTO Hist 100.  (So Hist 100 was the "parent" course site, "absorbing" Hist 101.)  All student discussions in Hist 101 were lost once the cross-listing occurred.  To be honest, I cannot remember what happened with the content in the course, but I believe (as you saw in the documentation) that the content survived unscathed.  (Certainly in the parent Hist 100 course; not 100% certain with the Hist 101 course.)

If it's only course content that is there and NOT student assignments/contributions/whatever, you should be okay.  In fact, if it IS only content that is there, I recommend--to be safe--that you export both sites and import them into Beta and then try your cross listing in Beta.

[lhenson]

Thanks so much for the further explanation. Yes, Kona is always correct with her responses, but this one was a big deal if it got messed up. Didn't even think about trying it in Beta first to see what actually happens. Let me look further into the course to make sure that the courses being cross-listed don't have any student submissions and only content.

Thanks again you all. I can always count on the Community to answer my questions.

[kona]

I'm definitely not always correct! Everyone makes mistakes, including me, but that's the beauty of the Community... we can fact check and rely on each other to make sure people are getting the best and most accurate responses!

[lhenson]

Well, you have always helped me with stuff.  I do love the community because we can all collaborate to come up with solutions that work.

[kona]

I'm glad that I've been able to help, but in this case it looks like you've done a great job trying things out to make sure you know how things work!

[lhenson]

I just looked at the courses which I am planning on cross-listing into a Parent Course and found that there are grades in them already, which means that there are student submissions in them.  So, if I cross-list these courses into the parent course, the grades will be lost, correct?  I looked in the beta version and there aren't any grades, content, assignments, etc in the courses.  She must have put them all in this week after it reset.  Not really a way to test this until next week when it picks up the new info. 

[kona]

Since it's in Beta you could add grades into the course or even go in as a student and upload something and then cross list it to test it out. Anything you add won't show up to the teacher or students, so you're fine doing this. I actually do it myself time to time when I need to test something.

Also, if it's just grades and not student submissions you could download the gradebook from the course and then after the cross-listing re-add them into the cross-listed course.

[kblack]

That I'm not sure of, though the grades might actually stay put, since grades are tied to enrollment in a course and (after all) the gradebook allows the instructor to isolate grades by the section.  Hmm.  I guess if you wanted to spend some time on this you could:

• Masquerade as a student or two and submit some assignments on Beta.
• Masquerade as the instructor and submit some grades on Beta
• Cross list them on Beta.

Or you could wait until next week!  But I would be concerned that the instructor may do some additional work over the long weekend, unless she knows not to because you are looking into this.

[kbickell]

The grades won't actually be "lost" permanently, just hidden by the cross-listing. Which for the professor means the same thing, but they can be retrieved by de-cross-listing. So the grades can be downloaded before cross-listing and entered manually, but the professor will have no way of seeing the work or any attachments. 

Always best to cross-list before any work or content is done, but a message we're still trying to get across to our institution

[kbickell]

To clarify further, if I remember correctly the grades of students in the parent course should remain, it's the grades from students of the child course that will disappear.

[lhenson · Accepted solution]

I just ran a test in the beta site and here is the conclusion I reached.  When I cross-listed ChildDev-07 with ChildDev-02 (the parent course) it wiped out all of the grades, submissions and assignments for ChildDev-07.  ChildDev-02 stayed in tact.  I can download the grades from ChildDev-07 prior to cross-listing it, but any submissions will be lost.  

Thanks for all the help and the beta suggestion.  That gave me a playground to test some things out - I need to remember that for next time.

[QC99_tsilvius]

I've found that when you cross-list Class1 SectionA into Class2 with SectionB so that Class2 now contains SectionA and SectionB of students, Class1 disappears into Canva'oblivion. Along with it goes its content, assignments, quizzes, files, etc... the works. So at the start of the year before any students in either Section do any submissions I usually advise copying the content from Class1 into Class2 prior to the cross-listing process. This way Class2 becomes (more or less) a new working master course for the year. Once the content is structured and published the way I want it in Class2 (my new working master for the year) I throw the switch to publish the entire class.

When I have DE-cross-listed classes, for example if I were to send SectionB of students back into their original Class2, Canvas would resurrect my Class2 from Canva'oblivion and would reveal all of my content and so on like it never disappeared.

Another scenario that prevented an edu-heart attack happened one year around November when a teacher cross-listed a Class3 SectionC into Class4 SectionD (thinking that all submissions and assignment tools would simply travel with the SectionC kids and rebuilt themselves in Class4, the destination course -- spoiler alert: NOPE) the teacher realized that they lost about 2.5 months of student submissions!  EEP!  However, when I DE-cross-listed the SectionC sending it back into its original Class3, everything restored, student submissions, teacher feedback, grades, comments, etc -- everything... like it never was cross-listed in the first place. Feel free to use these cross-listing resources for more info about cross-listing and DE-crosslisting process to share with teachers if you find them helpful.