How to move multiple students to a new section

[GeoffreyWheeler]

Is there a way to easily and efficiently move multiple students from one section of a class to another? We have a vocational program with continuous enrollment. I have created a section for each learning unit in the course. When a group of students in one learning unit is ready to move to the next I'd love to be able to move all of them at the same time.  It appears that I need to got to People > Edit sections > delete current section > add new section for each student.

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@GeoffreyWheeler -

You do have an easy access to the information needed.  download the gradebook.  there should be a sis user id column and  a sis login column as well (or at least I get one from my institution).  Therefore if the students are already in a section, then all of that is in a nice csv file which can be reduced to that single column and saved and then opened in a text editor copied and pasted.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @GeoffreyWheeler ...

I'm not sure if you are an instructor or a Canvas administrator at your school, but if you have a lot of students in your course, this may be easier to do using SIS imports.  If you are not a Canvas admin, you might want to have a conversation with the person who is at your school.  I know there are some admin Guides that can help with this process:

Admin Guide - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com)

Hopefully this might help you instead of having to manually switch people manually one by one in your course(s).

[GeoffreyWheeler]

I am a teacher and not a Canvas Admin. I wonder if someone has made an add-in tool to do this. I guess I'll just use People.

[Ron_Bowman]

@GeoffreyWheeler -

If I am remembering correctly, it is easy to add in multiple students to a section that you create,  You just need a list of their Login id's, their sis id or their email.  You can add them into the section through the add people just put all of one group of those id's separated by commas into the add box, select the permissions and the section that you have already created and add them in.  they will have to accept the invitation to join that section.

As for deleting the section, it sounds like you have done that before and it works okay.  Once you get the new section created with the students added(invitations sent), you can delete the old section.

Ron

[GeoffreyWheeler]

Ron, that would be good if you had an easily accessible list of the email addresses or ssid numbers.  This is not the case.  And there is no drop-down check list to choose from.  So this method is a little cumbersome.  Using People > Edit Sections is easier. Crosslisting seems to only work between courses, not sections with in the same course.  Thanks though.

[Ron_Bowman · Accepted solution]

@GeoffreyWheeler -

You do have an easy access to the information needed.  download the gradebook.  there should be a sis user id column and  a sis login column as well (or at least I get one from my institution).  Therefore if the students are already in a section, then all of that is in a nice csv file which can be reduced to that single column and saved and then opened in a text editor copied and pasted.

[GeoffreyWheeler · Accepted solution]

I tried it and it works very easily.  By "download" we mean:

Grades > View > Filters > Sections

In the drop down box select the section that you want to migrate/copy to a new section

Grades > Actions >  Export Current Gradebook View

The view is exported and downloaded.

Open the cvs/excel file

Select all the SSIDs in that column (no need to isolate the column and save as a text file)

Canvas > People > + People > SS ID  >  paste the list > Section (select you the one you want them to be added to).

Done

[Ron_Bowman]

@GeoffreyWheeler -

Glad you found it easy to do and it worked out for you.

[AIMEEPARKERSON]

When I try to save them in this way I get an internal error occurred message.  Any ideas?

[Ron_Bowman]

@AIMEEPARKERSON -

Can you provide more information on what you tried and what action you are attempting is causing the error?

Ron

[AIMEEPARKERSON]

I tried the copy and past of the student list of SIS ID's from the excel spreadsheet into the Add People area.  I think I just did the ID, do I need the student name with their SIS ID?

[Ron_Bowman]

@AIMEEPARKERSON -

All you need is the sis id (and make sure you have the correct identification type selected to match sis id).  Do not copy from Excel into the area on Canvas.  rather save the excel file as a csv file and then open that file in a text editor.  Copy from the text editor.

Basically all you are trying to do is get a list of the ids in a format that you would normally type into the people box without having to type them in 

i.e. S1,S2,S3 or
S1
S2
S3

where S# just represents whatever ID value you are using.  You might have received the error you had if you were using the student SIS ID but had email selected as what you were providing.

Ron

[AIMEEPARKERSON]

Ron,

So I copied the SIS ID number in from the column that has their SIS ID #.  I tried it first to have them separated by line, then by a comma.  I didn't have an S next to the number. Did I need the letter S there or just the number.

[Ron_Bowman]

@AIMEEPARKERSON -

I guess that was bad on my part - you just want whatever the number is that you get from Canvas.  My S1, S2 and S3 were just an example not an actual id value.  

for an SIS login id, my institution uses 3 letters and 4 digits: i.e. abc1234  So what I would have in the add people box is: abc1234,abc5678,abc9876, etc or just put one entry per line

Ron