What are the benefits and drawbacks to cross-listing a course?

[ericwhitmer]

I have a Nursing faculty who wants to cross-list her courses in the future, she teaches the exact same content across two different cities. Her current process is that she builds the content in one course and then copies that same content to the other course, but has ran into the problem where the other content gets overlooked in the import process. This is a problem when it comes to testing because there may be content that is completely missing and the other batch of students misses on learning their content.

Any ideas to help this process out would be most appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

[melissa_kamp]

This response may be rather late, but there are many benefits to cross listing a course. As you mentioned, cross listing funnels students from two or more sections into a single Canvas course so the faculty only needs to keep one site current. This helps create a consistent learning experience across sections, but it does allow the faculty to use settings as needed to:

• Assign assignments or set due dates by section.
• Filter the gradebook by section.
• Send announcements by section.
• Set up groups or peer reviews by section.

It is a great option for faculty teaching multiple sections of the same course.

[cholling]

While cross-listing is a convenience to faculty, especially in the situation @ericwhitmer describes, there are FERPA issues to consider. FERPA says that students in one course have the right to privacy from students in another course. Think what would happen if a student in institution A happens to know a student from institution B and for some reason can't have the other know they are taking a class at a different university. Big problems.

[MrsLauraMetz]

But with cross-listing, it keeps students separated into the courses on the student side. Maybe you are referring to creating peer groups across classes. I would also not recommend that per FERPA.