⚠️Note: The Canvas Request System (CRS) cannot be used by graduate students even if they have a teaching appointment. Contact Academic Technology for assistance with CRS tasks.
What is course combining?
Should I combine my courses?
I have a combination of face-to-face and online courses - should I combine? What to consider.
I have multiple lecture/lab/recitation sections, what should I combine and what should I not combine?
How do I combine my courses?
One course shell is created in Canvas for each course an instructor is assigned to in the Student Information System, or SIS (Joe'SS/myZou/PATHway/MyView). Many times, two or more of these course shells may be for different sections of the same class.
Examples:
- CHEM-1100-101, CHEM-1100-102, CHEM-1100-103 are three courses/sections of the same class with different enrollments.
- ENG-1600-101 and TCH_COM-1600-101 are two sections of the same course that are cross-listed.
- MECH_ENG-1702-301, MECH_ENG-1702-302, MECH_ENG-1702-1A, MECH_ENG-1702-1B are courses that have lectures and labs, sometimes with multiple sections of each.
Any or all of these distinct Canvas course shells can be merged into one Canvas course shell. This may be done to make it easier for the instructor to manage course content and assignments.
The process of combining courses uses one of the section sites as the parent course site and then creates a child relationship for the other course site sections with that parent course. From the instructor's and students' perspectives, they access a single Canvas course.
The name of the combined course will be the same as the parent course unless you edit the name.
This is a question only you can answer. If all your course sections use the same Canvas content, combining may make your life easier. You will only have to add or change content for multiple classes in one Canvas course shell instead of many.
Things to consider when deciding to combine:
- Are all sections covering the same content?
- If they are lecture and lab sections, are they taught by the same instructor?
- Are all the sections of my class graded?
- Is there a combination of face-to-face and online students?
- Am I recording my lectures?
Remember, there is no overall right or wrong answer to any of these questions. You need to decide what the correct answer is for you and for each of your courses. If you would like to discuss what may be best for you and your course, feel free to contact us at at@umsystem.edu.
Do you want your face-to-face students to be able to view any recordings?
This is probably the most important question to answer before you decide to combine. If you record your face-to-face class lectures to allow your online students to connect either synchronously or asynchronously, you will need to decide if you want your in-person students to also review the recordings or only your online students.
There are benefits in allowing all your students to review lecture recordings, but this is a teaching philosophy and class management question. Only you can make this decision.
If you want to allow all students access to the recording and your face-to-face and online students are all covering the same content, you may want to combine the sections.
If all your students are covering the same content, but you don’t want your face-to-face students to see your recordings, you may still want to combine the content, but managing your recordings may be more time-consuming.
There are several questions you will need to consider before you decide whether or not to combine lecture, lab, and recitation sections.
Are there multiple teachers, especially for lab or recitation sections?
If there are multiple teachers, it is often best and easiest not to combine the sections, even if they are teaching the same content. Managing the gradebook with multiple teachers can be unwieldy. In this case, there may be better ways of managing shared content.
Which of the courses are marked in SIS as graded and which are not?
If there is only one instructor for the course and you want to combine any combination of lecture/lab/recitation to make your content and gradebook easier to manage, you will first need to check which of the sections are graded and which are not. This is to avoid problems when you import grades from Canvas into SIS at midterm and the end of the semester.
The graded section(s) of the course should be included in any configuration of course combination, or the grade import to SIS will not work, even though there are grades are in the Canvas course. You will then have to either export grades from one Canvas course and import them to the other, or enter grades into SIS by hand.
How do I know which of my courses are graded?
There is no consistent method for determining which type of courses are graded and which are not. This is determined by the department. The best way to discover which of your sections are graded is to check SIS.
- Log into SIS (Joe'SS/myZou/PATHway/MyView).
- Go to the schedule of classes to search for a class.
- Select the correct term.
- Select the subject.
- Enter the course number.
- Select Search.
- From the list of classes, select one of the types (lecture/lab/recitation).
- If the section is graded, it will be marked in SIS as graded; if it is not, there will be no designation in SIS (See Figs. 1 & 2).
Figure 1: Graded section of a course in SIS
Figure 2: Ungraded section of a course in SIS
Combine your course sites using the Canvas Request System (CRS). View CRS help articles for further instructions.
Important decisions include:
- Which course do you want to be the parent course? And which the child(ren)?
- What you would like the new combined course to be named?
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