LMS Admin Question > Course Sections
Hi All-
Currently in the middle of a SIS change over and testing the API between the SIS and Brightspace.
Noticed this morning on a test push, that the course sent over only had an offering and had no section.
In our current LMS setup, we sent over the template, course offering and then a course section. I was not involved with our initial setup and all of our LMS admins who were involved with setup have departed the org.
We also appear to enroll user in both the course offering and course section. Assuming this might be for merging and keeping users organized by section?
Do you need to have course sections if you enroll directly into the course offering? Any impact on merging if just using an offering?
Best Answer
-
Hello @Michael.H.932, thank you for reaching out! I believe that in Brightspace, using course sections isn't strictly required if enrolling directly into the course offering. However, sections are typically used to organize students into distinct groups, which can be helpful for managing communications, assessments, and group-specific content.
I could link you to below documentation/articles:
I hope I was able to answer your question!
Krizzy
adminAnswers
-
Thanks for the documentation.
-
@Michael.H.932 We are in the same situation as you—We changed to a new SIS change that is API between the SIS and Brightspace. The courses sent over only have an offering and no section. We are struggling because we need to merge courses but we cannot without SIS sections. However, the documentation shared above about the SIS Course Merge Tool seems to be promising. Have you tried that?
-
What SIS are you moving to?
We moved to Anthology. Its been a struggle. Getting ready to go into PROD and did a test run of a couple sub terms and TONS of enrollment issues with either bad data or missing emails, etc. Ugh.
Anthology API supports merging via the SIS.We asked for an API customization so that ONLY merged courses would send a section, which would allow faculty to know which student fell into which section. For our NON-merged courses, we are just sending over an offering.
You may need to ask for a customization for your API, if using an out of the box API.
To my knowledge, the SIS Course Merge Tool, only works with IPSIS integration. I think if you use it with an API, it will break your enrollments for the merged course??
