Pros and Cons of Cross-Listing Course Sections

Two or more course sections can be combined into one main course in Canvas. This is known as cross-listing a course or course combine.

Contact Instructional Technology before the start of the semester if you would like to cross-list two or more courses.

There are pros and cons to cross-listing course sections:

Pros 

• Once and done content creation (add content in one course section and the other course sections will see it as well).
• Less updating needed (if you make a change in one section, the other sections will automatically update with the changes).
• Access the full course roster (students in all the cross-listed course sections will show up in the Gradebook and under People).
• You can create section-specific assignments, Links to an external site. events Links to an external site., graded discussions Links to an external site., and quizzes Links to an external site. or assign a common activity to all sections.

Cons

• No reversing (once the course is cross-listed, you cannot separate the sections without losing all student submissions and grades).
• All the cross-listed sections or courses will now have the parent course's name in Canvas (e.g. if you are cross-listing BIO 101 A and BIO 101 B, both these courses will be named the parent course, which most likely will be BIO 101A). Students may get confused and think they were enrolled in the wrong section (which they weren't), so you might just want to make an announcement or send them an email about it.
• Creating section-specific announcements, files, pages, and modules is a bit more complicated (As of now, it can only be done by setting up student groups Links to an external site. for each section and adding content within the group pages. Otherwise, all sections will see the content you add to these areas).
• If you are using the Zoom and/or Panopto integrations in Canvas, students will have access to all Zoom meetings and Panopto recordings unless you manually change the permissions. 
• While you can filter by section under People and in the Gradebook, if you export the Gradebook into Excel, all the sections will be exported.
• Students in cross-listed courses may not be able to fill out their SPTQs via Canvas. Advise them to complete their SPTQs through the link that is emailed to them each semester instead.

Contact Instructional Technology if you have any questions.