Canvas @ Yale

Merging Canvas Course Sections into One Course Site (Section-Merge Umbrella Site)

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Merging Canvas course sections allows you to move section enrollments from individual courses and combine them into one course. This feature is helpful for instructors who teach several sections of the same course and only want to manage course data in one location.

Instructors can allow students to view users in other sections or limit them to only view users in the same section. Section names do not change when they are merged, the section is just moved to another course.

Merging Canvas course sections in a section-merge umbrella site is not an official cross-listing with your school or department registrar. Courses that should be cross-listed in the registration system (Banner) will need to be done through the Registrar's Office.

Merging should be done while the courses are still unpublished and no course work has been submitted by students. You can un-merge Canvas course sections, but you will not want to do so if students have already submitted assignments and classwork.

Section-Merged Umbrella sites only maintain the "Primary" course's Canvas site. The other Canvas section course sites are not maintained. If an instructor needs to have a combined site as well as the individual Canvas section sites, they will need to request a Section Retained Umbrella site through our umbrella site request form.

  1. Before you begin, navigate to the "Home" page of the Canvas course you want to be the "Primary" course, which will be the Canvas course site your other Canvas course section sites will be merged into.
  2. Identify and copy the Course ID for your primary Canvas course in the Address Bar of your browser.
  1. Once you have the primary course's Course ID copied, navigate to the secondary course you want to merge, go to the "Settings" section, and click on the "Sections" tab.
  2. In the "Sections" tab, click on the title of the secondary course section you would like to merge with the primary course.
  1. On the next screen, you will see the Current Enrollments in the secondary course's section. Click the "Cross-List this Section" button.
  1. In the pop-up box that opens, paste / type in the Course ID of your primary Canvas course site into the "Enter the Course's ID" text box.
  2. Confirm that the primary course is the correctly identified and selected course.
  3. If everything is correct, click the "Cross-List this Section" button.
  1. The secondary course's section is now merged merged with the primary course.
    1. Looking in the "Settings" section of the primary course, and navigating to the "Sections" tab again, you will see your primary course's section, as well as the secondary course's section.

Repeat steps 3 through 9 for any additional secondary course sections you want to merge with the primary course.

  1. Finally, navigate to the "Course Details" tab in your primary course's "Settings" section and update the "Course Code" to reflect the multiple sections now merged into the primary Canvas course site.
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Update Course Details" button.

For example, if you were updating the Course Code for a section-merge course site that had SPAN 110 01 as the primary Canvas course which has now merged SPAN 110 02 and SPAN 110 03 as secondary course sections, then the Course Code should be written as:

SPAN 110 01 / SPAN 110 02 / SPAN 110 03

For more help, please contact [email protected].

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