Canvas: Merge multiple sections into one Canvas course

Overview

Canvas is Oregon State University's Learning Management System. Instructors that are teaching multiple sections of the same course in the same term can use the Course Merge tool to merge the various sections into a single Canvas course to reduce the time spent managing course content across sections in Canvas. If the crosslisted or merged course in Canvas isn't what you need, contact us to evaluate if/what other options may be available.

Enable the Course Merge Tool

1. Log in to Canvas
2. Navigate to the course in Canvas which you want to use as your 'parent' course
3. Click Settings in the course menu
4. Click the Navigation tab located near the top center of the screen
5. Locate the Course Merge tool in the list of disabled tools
6. Drag and drop the Course Merge tool to the enabled tools section, or click the three vertical dots to the right of the tool and click Enable
7. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save
8. Click Home in the course navigation menu to return to the course home page

Using the Course Merge Tool

The Course Merge tool can only be used to merge Canvas courses that meet the following criteria:

• Have the same subject code, course number, and term
• Are the same modality*
• Are not a Crosslisted Canvas course
• Are not published
• Are not past-term courses

*OSU’s current legal interpretation of FERPA restricts courses of different modalities from being taught from the same Canvas course site. Multiple Ecampus sections of a course can be merged together and multiple sections of an on-campus course can be merged together, but an Ecampus section cannot be merged with an on-campus section.

To Merge Sections into a Parent Course

1. Ensure you have enabled the Course Merge tool in the course (see instructions above)
2. Click Course Merge in the course menu
3. Select the course(s) from the list of eligible courses that you wish to merge into the 'parent' course
4. Click Merge! --> to merge the courses
5. Let the merge process run. Depending on the number of courses and enrollments within the courses, it may take some time for the process to complete.

Merging enrollments from multiple courses into one course can take some time to process. We recommend allowing the process to run overnight before performing any further work in the newly merged course.

To Un-merge Sections from a Parent Course

1. Ensure you have enabled the Course Merge tool in the merged course (see instructions above)
2. Click Course Merge in the course menu
3. Select the course(s) from the list of sections eligible to un-merge you wish to un-merge from the 'parent' course
4. Click <--Un-Merge! to un-merge the courses

Still have questions?

If you questions about this topic or related topics, please use one of the following methods to contact the Canvas team at Oregon State:

• Add a comment/question to this article using the tools below the article
• Send an email to Canvas@oregonstate.edu