At SWC, cross-listed or merged course sections in Canvas are known as supercourses.

How Supercourses Work

cross list sections graphic

If you're teaching several sections of the same class, consider requesting a course cross-list through ServiceNow to make your life easier! A cross-list (aka supercourses at SWC) means all of your sections for a class are bundled together in Canvas with a single point of access for you, the instructor. So instead of having 3 separate COURSE 101 course cards in your Canvas Dashboard (section 01, section 02, and section 03), you'll simply have 1 supercourse comprising all 3 sections (sections 01, 02, and 03 combined). And instead of posting the same Announcement for 3 different sections, you can simply post the Announcement once in your supercourse and all cross-listed sections will receive the info.

NOTE: cross-listing can only be done before the term begins, before students have entered the course. Once a supercourse has been created, it cannot be undone.

There are some considerations to be aware of when using supercourses. We recommend view the Supercourses: Things to Keep in Mind video to get familiar with what a supercourse will and won't be able to do in terms of funactionality. Contact the Online Learning Center for more information: onlinelearning@swccd.edu.

Cross-listing and FERPA

There has been discussion about whether cross-listing courses, meaning allowing students from one section to interact with students from another section on Canvas, is FERPA compliant. Areas in Canvas where students have the potential to view other student names or work in a cross-listed course include:

Inbox Messages
Discussions
People
Chat
Collaborations
Conferences
Peer Reviews

There are several ways to ensure students of different sections remain separate in Canvas:

From the Canvas Guides: "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 cross-listed; the section is just moved to another course."
- When using sections to constrain students and other course enrollees to seeing only their fellow section members, note that "[l]imiting students to interact by section only affects Collaborations, Chat, People, and Conversations. When enrolling instructors and TAs, section limitations allow those users to grade students in their same section(s)... Discussion topics and Pages are not affected by section limitations and can be viewed by any student. These feature areas could be restricted by creating content in course groups."
Student groups can also be created to segment students into learning teams for course activities, such as graded group discussions.

Contact the Online Learning Center for more information: onlinelearning@swccd.edu.

Canvas Help Section on cross-listing sections