[Sections] Batch add people to sections

Adding people individually to sections is cumbersome when dividing large classes into multiple sections. Doing this in batch way simplifies this task.

Note: this has been suggested earlier but I like to give it another try esp now that more larger institutions use Canvas.

Work around (as usual in Canvas 😉 😞 Invite people again for the course with a different section but this is not really a solution since invitations require emails, acceptance etc.

Previous ieads: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/9460 

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Simplify bulk course tasks Theme Status: Identified

5 Comments
kay_shenoy
Community Participant

It would be very useful if instructors could batch add students to sections. I teach a large enrolment course. I would like to be able to create sections within the course and add students to the sections easily. As of now, the only way I can do this is by going to people, clicking on each student's name and assigning them to a section. This is extremely time consuming when I have 300 students. I see that this was discussed in earlier forums, but as far as I can see there does not seem to be an efficient way to add multiple students to a section. 

CarlaD07
Community Explorer

I agree. Our district imports sections from our SIS, but we still need this feature because of the additional sections teachers are constantly creating for the purpose of differentiation.

For example, a teacher's course has 5 sections with 120 students total. Those 5 sections are 100% based on the teacher's schedule, one section for each period of the day the teacher has a class. The teacher wants to differentiate and have students only see the assignment that applies to them. The teacher creates three different versions of an assignment based on the students' abilities. The teacher then creates three different sections so they can assign each section the appropriate assignment. In this manner, each student will only see the assignment designed for their section and won't get confused about seeing other versions of the assignment. The teach then must manually add each of the 120 students one by one into their corresponding section. Being able to bulk import students into a section would go a long ways in speeding up this process and encouraging teachers to use sections to differentiate. 

mads2
Community Member

It is insane that you can't add multiple people to a section.

 

KristinL
Community Team
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KristinL
Community Team
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Status changed to: Added to Theme