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Very basic course offering/section question

Melissa.H.804

Hi all,

We've been on Brightspace since Summer 24 so still fairly new. I'm troubleshooting an issue we're having with Crosslisted courses and it's making me question how we have courses coming over via Ellucian ILP in the first place. So my very basic question is: Does a Course Offering have to have a Section associated with it? What's happening now is when a course comes over a Course Offering and Section are created simultaneously. Does that Section need to exist at all?

I've included a screenshot here that shows both the Section and the Crosslist issue. So the initial Course Offering/Section was created on October 28, and then on November 25 it was Crosslisted in our SIS and when it came over via IPSIS it created another Section even though there's only one course in Banner. I'm hopeful someone can help!

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Accepted answers

Johnny.B.962

@Melissa.H.804,

When using IPSIS, all Course Offerings should have a Section associated with it. The purpose to doing so is to separate out the course (as created from your Student Information System (SIS)) from the enrollments. Now that might seem counterintuitive, "Why not just put all the enrollments into the Course Offering directly?" Merging/crosslisting courses is exactly why. There's some images on the Crosslisting Management Interface page that helps illustrate what happens when you crosslist courses together and how the Sections matter.

Within a Course Offering in Brightspace, there is obviously so much more you can do than just house enrollments. Adding in Sections allows us to more easily move enrollments around below the courses. Also then when you crosslist courses together, then the Course Offering will give you filtering options when in tools like Classlist, Grades, etc. to show which students/learners belong to which Section. There's some additional data privacy benefits to using Sections as well, for example, an Instructor could have access to see all students across all Sections that are crosslisted in 1 Course Offering, but the students would only see those who are in the same Section in tools like Classlist, Discussions, etc. Additionally, Sections can act as a group-like tool that you can then make release conditions and others based upon, so if you wanted to create an Announcement, but only have it for the students of a particular Section, you then have a way to identify them easily within the Course Offering.

Hopefully all that background is helpful.

Now onto your note regarding the duplicate Sections. This is perfectly normal. As is illustrated in the Crosslisting Management Interface page, each Course Offering would have a Section. Sections themselves aren't that easily moved around, so instead a duplicate Section will be created that will be a child org unit of the new Course Offering. The original Section then remains just in case you ever want to un-crosslist the courses together, so the enrollments would flow back into the original Section and the duplicate would then be deleted.

Hope that helps!

-Johnny
D2L LAM

All comments

Johnny.B.962

@Melissa.H.804,

Hopefully all that background is helpful.

Hope that helps!

-Johnny
D2L LAM

Melissa.H.804

Johnny - this is so helpful, thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to write this up.

Arly.D.7310

@Johnny.B.962 Is the Crosslisting Management Interface a separate integration that needs to be purchased? We have recently switched to an API integration with our SIS and the integration does not create SIS section associations, which is preventing us from being able to merge courses. It is a HUGE issue for us right now, and I am desperately trying to find alternative options.

Melissa.H.804

@Arly.D.7310 The crosslisting management interface doesn't need to be purchased separately but for us it did need to be turned on by D2L tech support before we could access. Your account reps should be able to point you in the right direction if you ask them for assistance. Good luck!