Description
A section in Canvas is a container which holds the enrollments for a course. A section is automatically created for each course as part of the course creation process. Beginning May 8, 2025, we are also going to allow instructors to manually create additional sections for their courses. This article will discuss why that might be helpful, and how to use these new sections.
Environment
Canvas in your web browser
Solution
What Are the Differences Between Automatic and Manually Created Sections?
When a course is created in Canvas it will automatically have a section created for that course. If you don’t have a section in your course, Canvas has no place to put your enrollments. As users are enrolled in your course, they will automatically appear in that section. For this reason, the automatically created sections cannot be modified. Manually created sections can be modified. You will have the ability to edit the enrollments and the availability dates of those manually created sections.
Why Would You Use a Manually Created Section?
In Canvas, you can assign tasks, such as assignments, discussions, quizzes, etc. to individual students, everyone, a group, or a section. We are going to focus on the group and section options. Both options will allow you to group students together and give them differentiated assignments. The big difference is that in a group assignment, there is a single submission for the group. If an assignment is given to a section, everyone will submit their own assignment.
How might this be useful? Perhaps you have students that require accommodation, such as additional time for their assignments. You could create a section for these students and give their assignment a different due date/time than the rest of the class. Alternatively, you could have different groups of students work on different use cases for the assignment.
How Do You Add a Section? (Coming May 8, 2025)
- Go to Settings in your course menu.
- Open the Sections tab.
- In the Add a New Section area, give the section a name and select +Section.
- Please note: the section name will be visible to all users in the course, even those that are not members of the section.
How Do You Set the Start and End Dates for the Section?
By default, the section inherits the course start and end dates. If the course does not have start and end dates, the section inherits the term start and end dates. If you would like, you can give the section its own start and end dates. This will help you to control when students enrolled in these sections have access to the course.
- Go to Settings in your course menu.
- Open the Sections tab.
- Find the section you created and select the name of the section.
- On the new screen select Edit Section.
- Set your start and end dates and times.
- Select if you would like to limit student participation in the course to only happen between those dates.
- Select Update Section.
How Do You Add Users to a Section?
Once you have created your new sections, you will be able to add users to the sections. Remember to add yourself as the instructor of the sections, as well as adding any Teaching Assistants that might need to perform grading for assignments in these sections.
- Go to People in your course menu.
- Locate the person you would like to add to the new section.
- Select the kabob (three dots) menu to the right of their name.
- Select Edit Section.
- In the search box enter the name of the new section.
- Select the new section.
- Select Update.
This will add the person to this additional section, it will not remove them from their original section.
How Do You Remove Users From a Section?
Student adds/drops are only processed through the original sections. If a student drops a course after they have been added to a manually created section, they will not be dropped from that section and will still have access to the course. You will need to manually remove them from the additional section. Remember you cannot modify the enrollment in the original section.
- Go to People in your course menu.
- Locate the person you would like to add to the new section.
- Select the kabob (three dots) menu to the right of their name.
- Select Edit Section.
- Find the additional section you would like to remove them from; select the X to remove that section.
- Select Update.
How Do You Use the Section With the Assign To Feature?
Once you have created the section and added students to it, you will be able to use the Assign To feature to assign work to that group of students. When you are creating assignments, discussions, quizzes, etc. you will have an area called Assign Access. Here it will default to assigning the work to Everyone, but if you use the drop-down menu, you will be able to select to assign the work to sections instead.
If the item is already created, you can navigate to it within your course and select the kebab (three dots menu) to the right of the assignment and select Assign To. This will bring up the Assign Access area in a pop-up window and allow you to assign the work to a section.
Get Help from Canvas
- Live chat with Canvas support (Faculty)
- Get 24-hours/7-days a week Canvas support
- Dial the Canvas Support Hotline number located under "Get Help" in the Canvas Global Navigation Menu
- Contact OIT at 740-593-1222 for questions related to logging in, test courses/manually created courses, or third-party tools (Panopto, VoiceThread, Inclusive Access, etc.)
Get Help from OIT
Additional Resources