Separating a Course into Sections?

[mlehr]

Hello!

I use Canvas for K-12. Our courses are created by our sections in PowerSchool. Some of the specials teachers have classes that are uploaded for a grade level, rather than by teachers in that grade level. They wanted to know if they can separate this grade level course into sections within that course by teacher. Is this possible? They can't create a new course or the grades won't upload to PowerSchool.

I know you can create "groups" within the people in your course, but I found this doesn't allow you to assign specific assignments to only a group of students. Am I missing something?

[kona]

 @mlehr ​, you are correct about the inability to assign specific assignments to only one group of students.

As for the other issue, it sounds like this might be something PowerSchool specific rather than Canvas in general. I say this because we are able to create courses and sections based by Instructor no problem, but, we also aren't using PowerSchool. I'm going to share this question with the K-12​ group in the Community to see if they can help, as well as the Grade Pass Back​ group (which is the group that specifically works with PowerSchool). I hope someone from one of these groups is able to help!

[sgriffith]

Hi  @mlehr ,

You can create different sections in your course, however I'm not sure whether it will upload grades to PowerSchool correctly having never used PowerSchool before...

When the course is created there's already one section automatically created (usually the title of the course). You can rename this section, but if you delete it bad things could happen...I can't remember what bad things happened when I did it years ago, but I remember it was bad.

The How do I add a section to a course? page in the guides has the instructions you'll need to add a new section in your course. Once you create the section, you can add specific students and instructors to that section and organize the grade book by section.

You can find more helpful instructions here:

How do I edit the details for a course section?​ in case you need to change the section name or start and end date

How do I edit sections for an enrollment in my course?​ in case you'd like to move a student from one section to another or have them co-enrolled in multiple sections.

Hope this helps!

Sarah

[rstringham · Accepted solution]

Hi Madisen,

With the Powerschool integration we pull courses in Canvas based off of sections in Powerschool (if your set up 1-1). If you were to set up the sections in Powerschool so each teacher had their own section, when they pull into Canvas they would each have a separate course. Then you could crosslist those courses together in Canvas so they are all one course but multiple sections under one course. This would not break grade passback and I believe accomplish what you are trying to do. However, I'm speaking generally without knowing specific details. I would advise you to reach out to your CSM who can show you how to crosslist courses in Canvas.

You would need to reach out to Powerschool if you need help with changing courses/sections in Powerschool.