Why do some institutions create single-section courses?

[LucasWinter]

I am currently weighing up the benefits of courses vs. sections. I like the idea of putting all classes into their own separate courses to provide teachers with full control over files, pages, assignments etc so that they can make changes and differentiate without affecting any other classes. Would it be okay to not use sections at all or would there be some benefits of sections that we would be missing out on if we opt for stand-alone courses?

I have seen that some institutions create single-section courses and I am unsure of why this is done and if this is something that may be on benefit. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Kind regards, 

Lucas

[TrishaMeyer1]

I hope I'm understanding you correctly. We are a K12 school district, and we have single-section courses because we have a separate Student Information System (SIS) that creates the courses and uses "grade passback" for collecting grades and producing report cards. As I understand it, the process will not work with sections; the SIS needs to see each class as its own course. So a teacher might have, for example, English 9 Period 1, English 9 Period 2, etc. instead of one English 9 master course with multiple sections for the class periods.

We do have some teachers who cross-list their courses into one larger course so that they can create content for one course instead of copying from one to others all year long.

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @LucasWinter,

In Canvas, enrollments are in sections, and then sections belong to a course.  You can't have people in a course without a section, so that's why you're probably seeing "single section courses" quite often.  You can have multiple sections in one course, but the only people who could access a course without a section would be admins (so they could go in the course and create sections, etc).

Hope this helps!

-Chris

[SusanNiemeyer]

I teach at a community college. I have my own Canvas course shells. There are other instructors who teach the same course, but each of us teaches our classes independently. I like it this way. I would never want to share a Canvas course shell with an instructor who has a different set of students. It would be too confusing and too unwieldy. Just no. Don't do it.

If you want your teachers to collaborate, then create a "template" or "development" course for them to draw course materials from.