Blueprint vs Crosslisting vs Sections?

[adrianna_nickel]

If teachers have multiple sections of the same prep/course, and would only like to only have to update content in one of them as the year progresses, what is the best option? Cross-listing, sections, or blueprint course: What are the benefits/purpose of each of these things? 

[nwilson7]

Hello  @adrianna_nickel ‌, this is probably just my 2 cents but in this case we always have people Cross-list.

Sections are how the course is natively divided up.  Each course by default has one section.  You can add to that for organization (assuming your institution allows it).

Cross-listing is a way of combines sections.  If an instructor has 2 or more of the same class divided by section, they can cross-list them so there is just one course shell and then all the sections are part of it.  This gives them the ability to do most things just once for all courses but they still get the ability to be section specific if they wish.  For example, one section gets behind, then assignments can be different or have different due dates for that section.

A blueprint is more of a starting point.  You design a course exactly how you want it and then sync it to the other courses.  Each course remains separate but has some of the same content across the courses that are synced.  You would need to do a new sync every time you make an update and if you made changes in the synced classes, they may not accept changes from the blueprint as it would be seen as "end user changed" depending on how you restrict your settings.  We use blueprint to apply certain settings across the campus and then let the instructors go from there and never do another sync.

Hope that helps!

Nick

[adrianna_nickel]

Does cross-listing affect gradebook syncing?

[nwilson7]

It depends how your institution does the mapping.  We map sections so that as long as the sections retain the same name then everything works no matter how it may get cross-listed.  

[jryter1]

I am having the same question as Adrianna. We are just starting to use Canvas at a small university. We started down the crosslisting path but I had some questions.

Our goal-we have 7 chemistry labs. 4 instructors. Some instructors have 3 labs some only 1. All assignments are all the same. Same assignments pages etc. They are on different day's of the week so due dates need to change.

I wanted to make a master copy that we can change content but instructors can alter due dates and grade their sections. So we cross listed the courses so all 7 sections are now under one course. Instructors can grade all sections at once or one section at a time.

The problem is, I can't see how one section only can have different due dates. If I log in under my account i can't differentiate between sections. I can go to settings and see all 7 sections as a list but can't alter anything.

If I log in as another instructor, it is the same thing. If the other instructor changes a due date it changes for all instructors and sections.

Did we miss something setting up the cross-linking? Nick mentioned that we should be able to change due dates for different sections. I'm working with our admin-we are both new.... Any help would be lovely!

Thanks

Jarral

[mzimmerman]

Hi  @jryter1 

To set different due dates for assignments based on section, you have to "Assign to.." > "+Add" individually for each section in the course settings.  There's a document describing the process atHow do I assign an assignment to a course section? 

Mike

[jryter1]

Thanks! I actually found that soon after. Had my brain stuck in a different direction. Like each of the sections would be treated like a separate class with their own due dates. Wishful thinking that we could do a global date change for each one. Oh well. It looks like I'll be updating due dates for a couple hours today.

Thanks again for the reply. So far happy with Canvas!