What are reasons of combining sections of a course

[tsunghl]

I have two sections of the same course that are for different students, with different TAs and have different class schedules.  

I am not sure whether I should combine the two sections into one course space inside Canvas.  Are there reasons that multiple sections are better not to be combined?

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi,

At my school, the most common situations for merging sections are 1) when it is really the same class is crosslisted under multiple sections/departments (which results in multiple course shells in Canvas), 2) there are undergrad/grad or honors sections of the same class being taught together, 3) there a lecture class and multiple associate lab sections, or 4) the same teacher is teaching multiple sections of the same class with the same content and structure, and they don't want to have to upload/update the same content into multiple course shells.

In your situation, if the content and structure is the same and the only difference is due dates on assignments (for instance), it might make sense to combine the classes, since you can assign different due dates/availability dates to each section.   However, you will need to be sure that that TAs know which sections they are supposed to be working with.

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@tsunghl @mzimmerman did a good job of providing reasons why you would combine courses.

The main reason I do it is I am the instructor for 2 sections of the same course - so I do not want to duplicate my effort for uploading information.

Grading with TA's is not really an issue as they can be limited to viewing students in their section only - plus for grading they will only see those students in their sections.

[mzimmerman · Accepted solution]

Hi,

At my school, the most common situations for merging sections are 1) when it is really the same class is crosslisted under multiple sections/departments (which results in multiple course shells in Canvas), 2) there are undergrad/grad or honors sections of the same class being taught together, 3) there a lecture class and multiple associate lab sections, or 4) the same teacher is teaching multiple sections of the same class with the same content and structure, and they don't want to have to upload/update the same content into multiple course shells.

In your situation, if the content and structure is the same and the only difference is due dates on assignments (for instance), it might make sense to combine the classes, since you can assign different due dates/availability dates to each section.   However, you will need to be sure that that TAs know which sections they are supposed to be working with.

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@tsunghl @mzimmerman did a good job of providing reasons why you would combine courses.

The main reason I do it is I am the instructor for 2 sections of the same course - so I do not want to duplicate my effort for uploading information.

Grading with TA's is not really an issue as they can be limited to viewing students in their section only - plus for grading they will only see those students in their sections.

[tsunghl · Accepted solution]

I just completed teaching a course with 2 sections combined on Canvas. 

As others reported, combining 2 sections has the key benefit of maintaining only one course space, as opposed to two.  I also used Gradescope application to grade HW/exams and the link between Gradescope and Canvas gradebook worked nicely.  Overall, my experience was positive and I would recommend others to do the same.  

If anything, I wish Canvas had the function for an instructor to adopt different grading schemes between the two sections.  This would be useful for curving the final grades when two sections have different performance distributions for some reasons.  

[mzimmerman]

@tsunghl 

I agree, it would be nice to be able to adopt different grading settings--whether it be grading schemes or grade weighting--for different sections.  This is especially relevent when one section is a graduate section and the other is an undergrad, as is often the case at my school.

[Ron_Bowman]

@mzimmerman -

I agree with the undergrad/grad class makeup in higher ed.  it would be nice if you could excuse an entire assignment group for a section - or have the option of an assignment group only being assigned to a particular section or sections(if 2 or more sections in a course) or the entire course.

It is easy for us to come up with all these nice ways we would like to see the grade book work, but without knowledge of how it is all accomplished keeps us from knowing how difficult it is to actually create.

[Tiffany_Rainey]

Have you experienced any issues with merged sections? Or can you think of any real or potential drawbacks? 

[mzimmerman]

The primary issue we have has is when there are several sections of the same course merged together, and students have dropped one section and added another within that merged course.  In our environment (integrated with our SIS), that means that the enrollment for one section gets marked as "inactive" and the other is marked as "active".  Unfortunately, the "People" screen can't display the "Inactive" tag for one enrollment and not the other, so there's not really a way for the instructor to see which enrollment is active from that screen.

More critically, in cases where an assignment or quiz was set to be available to one section on one date, and the other section on a different date, Canvas could not distinguish that one enrollment was inactive, so the student had access on both dates.  (It's possible this issue has been fixed, but I don't remember seeing a specific notice yet from Canvas and I haven't tested it lately...)

The other issue, of course, is that if a grad and undergrad section of the same course are merged (a fairly common situation for us), a person who is a student in the grad section but a TA in the undergrad section could get access to things in the course that they shouldn't.

[mzimmerman]

@Ron_Bowman 

Well, you can't "excuse" an assignment group, but you can assign individual assignments to specific sections, so you could assign all the assignments in a particular assignment group to only the grad or undergrad section.  You would just have to be thoughtful in how you assigned points/percentages to specific assignments and assignment groups to be sure that you're getting the results you want, though.

[Ron_Bowman]

@mzimmerman -

Yes, I knew about doing that, but as I was replying and thinking about the question the idea of creating assignment groups that applied to different sections just came to mind.  Along those lines it would be great if you cross listed a course that each course cross listed could have its own grading scheme, assignment groups and group weightings - of course the response to that is why not keep the two courses separate. However the issue is to keep from posting the same class information twice and having to go into two different courses to grade or view progress.   The undergrad/grad class mix has been an issue with our institution ever since we started using Canvas.