Classes or Units for Courses?

[rbaker1]

Hi everyone,

I suspect this topic has been discussed many times, but I wanted to ask as a newbie "How are you organising your courses?". Is it by topic/unit or by class? What are the advantages/disadvantages of each? We want to set up our courses in our Canvas pilot and as an Admin I'm struggling on how to organise the courses. I'm leaning towards classes (just from an SIS perspective) but any comments would be helpful. Thanks All!

Richard

[Stef_retired]

 @rbaker1 ‌, just to clarify, are you referring to organization within the courses (for example, are modules to be organized by unit or topic), or are you referring to your account and sub-account structure? Because of your reference to SIS, I suspect it's the latter, and with that in mind, I've shared your question with the Canvas Admins‌ group--but if my assumption is incorrect, please feel free to set me straight.

[rbaker1]

Hi Stephanie,

A bit of both really. I'm struggling with the meta question of whether to create courses in a class structure of topic structure. If the former then the SIS system will push the students and teachers to the course, but we'll lose some flexibility in terms of having units then topics inside units (as far as i know the module system is a flat structure). If the later then we'll have the course groups by units and the modules can act as topics (I really like the conditional structure of modules). The other option is to create sub accounts for the classes and then unit courses, but that might be a whole world of hurt.

I was just interested in which way the community favours it in K12. What stories do they have and which have been successful. I realise that some of this is admin purview, but other people must have run into this as well. Just curious!

Thanks for the swift reply.

[tross]

 @rbaker1   We build courses based on our sis.  Each teacher has their own courses. We create sections in the course for each section in the sis.  Teachers have freedom in setting up their courses but in general what we find is the PreK - 6th grade like to have their courses organized with pages and everything is linked off a page.  7 - 12 mostly just use a module for each unit.  The course may have a basic homepage with general info about the teacher but most just use modules as their homepage.  We are a large K12 district and completing our 3rd year on Canvas.  Happy to answer with more specifics if you have any questions.

[KristinL]

We do the same; we're a small private high school (grades 9-12, approximately 750 students).

Using our SIS, we create a Canvas course for each course offered. If a teacher has more than one section, they receive sections within their course, but teachers who teach the same course each receive their own Canvas Course so they can create content independently. Each teacher creates a homepage for each course with basic information, and then, teachers are encouraged to use modules or custom pages to organize unit material. Like Teri, I'm more than happy to answer any other questions.