Cross-Sectioning Courses

 Hello, 

I can't believe it's already the second week of August! This summer has just flown by! 

As you might have heard, last semester Anna Catterson and I ran a Cross-Sectioning Pilot. In short, this is an easy way to combine multiple sections of the same course and work from a single Canvas shell. All students will still stay in the section they registered for, this is just a way for you to see everything in one shell and not have to go "shell-hopping." This works great for instructors who teach multiple sections of ENGL 101 for example. 

The results of the pilot were great. All faculty involved absolutely loved the ease it created and considered cross-sectioning their courses a "total time saver." Everyone who was involved in the pilot has decided to have their courses crossed again for the fall semester! 

Because we had such great responses from the pilot, we would like to open cross-sectioning up to all instructors who are teaching multiple sections of a course. Currently, I don't have a ton of instructors on my list, so this is a call all to anyone who thinks they may be interested. This is only available to instructors who are teaching multiple sections of a course in the same modality, i.e. online, hybrid, or F2F. In other words, we cannot cross-section a hybrid course with an online course. 

If you would like to learn more about the process, here is a video recording of the training we gave faculty in the pilot last winter. 

Another piece of information that is crucial to this process is the FERPA guidelines. We cannot let students who are in multiple sections know or see the other students in the other sections. Because of FERPA regulations, there are a couple of rules and set-up that goes into the set-up of a cross-sectioned course, especially if you utilize discussion boards. You can view this document here. 

After you've looked over all the materials and you still think cross-sectioning is for you, please do not hesitate to contact me at, jewel.crowley-custis@heartland.edu so I can get you on the list.  There is a bit of a time crunch, as I need to know ASAP, as I cross-section courses in the wee hours of the morning on August 11th (the day your courses go live and students are enrolled). Please note that if you cross your courses and you absolutely hate it, we can always un-cross them, but we cannot cross courses past August 11th.

Please contact me if you have any further questions! Look forward to hearing form you! 

- Jewel