Multiple Tracks within a single Course - Using sections?

[GraceStephens23]

Hello! I am an instructional designer (new to Canvas and higher ed.) and I got a faculty request to help build an online course that has 3 separate tracks within it. These three tracks have different clinical locations/assignments and some of the quizzes and homework assignments will be different as well based on the track the student is in.

1. Is using Course Sections the best way to differentiate the student tracks? They're not technically in different sections of the course, as it is online and the lectures are the same for everyone.
2. If we use Course Sections, will the gradebook for each student only show the assignments that have been assigned to their group or everyone? Without showing incompletes/lates for assignments only assigned to the other sections?
3. If a student registers late (once the class has already begun) and is added to one of the sections, will the appropriate assignments sync automatically to them? 

Any help is very much appreciated!

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi @GraceStephens23 

Yes, sections will pretty much do what you want, since they allow for specific assignments to only go to a particular section, or allow different dates for different sections.  The grade book will only show the assignments that have actually been assigned to the student's section.  As for students who register late, there is no difference from how the assignments appear when a student as added to a normal class late, as long as the student is added to the correct section within the course.

[GraceStephens23]

Great, thank you for the clarification!

[mzimmerman]

Hi @GraceStephens23 

The one caveat I should add is that, while it is possible to limit access to assignments and discussions based on sections, you can't restrict access to modules or pages by section, so that may be a consideration when planning out how to organize the course.

[paul_fynn]

@GraceStephens23 , @mzimmerman is quite right (unless you are prepared to do some quite clumsy stuff with prerequisites in Modules).

The good news is that you can allocate announcements, discussions, activities and assignments to specific sections. So anything that you want to discriminate access for that you would normally put ina pagem you simply add as a discussion.