Faculty and staff who wish to create a merged course in Canvas will be asked to verify that their reason for merging sections does not violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
To begin the merge process, click on the “Merge Course Manager” button on the Canvas dashboard. A new window will open that spells out acceptable and unacceptable instances for merging sections:
- If your students will have occasion to see each other in the same classroom or collaborate (physically or online) with each other for educational or pedagogical reasons related to the course during the semester, the sections can be merged in Canvas.
- If you teach several sections of the same course but the students do not interact with each other for educational or pedagogical reasons related to the course in a classroom or online, the sections cannot be merged in Canvas.
Note: The instructor of record for the course must acknowledge understanding and consent to merge sections. Staff (instructional designers) who work with faculty on courses may perform the merge function in Canvas only after confirming with the instructor(s) of record it is for educational or pedagogical reasons. If the reason to merge meets the criteria, click “Yes” in the window; if not, click “Cancel” to exit.
Please consider the following important information before merging any courses:
- After merging, you will no longer have access to the original merged course spaces or any content within those spaces that were merged into the base course.
- If you merge courses with the same students in more than one of the original course rosters, those students will show up multiple times in the People section but only once in the gradebook. This will not affect the content in the course or the gradebook, but it will affect how students appear in the People section.
- Students will be able to see the names of students in other sections after merging (primarily through the Canvas Inbox). If you must prevent students in one section from interacting with students in other sections, you will need to hide/disable certain settings in your merged course.
Use the links below to learn how to ready your courses for merging, merge multiple course sections into a single combined course and work with merged courses in Canvas.
For questions about the Merge Course Manager tool, please email support staff at lmssupport@psu.edu.
For questions about FERPA and online course sites that involve more than one enrollment section, please contact the Office of the University Registrar at 814-863-3681 or registrar@psu.edu. Additional information can be found on the FERPA Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on the University Registrar website.