Overview

Brightspace has a function in which rosters from multiple sections can be merged into one course site. There are multiple reasons which a faculty may want to combine course sections.

• Courses that are cross-listed in the registration system (Banner) will be merged automatically in Brightspace. These cross-listed courses are coordinated between the department and the Registrar's office.
• If you find yourself posting the same materials to different course sections of the same course during a semester, you can request that your course sections be combined into a single Brightspace course site.

Best Practices for Merges

• A merged course cannot have a user available and active in two child sections.
• Two courses with different content and lessons should not be merged. 
• Courses should never be merged during a semester. Courses that already have student activity, should never be merged.  The activity will not propagate to the parent course, and the student’s activity will appear to be missing.
• Content added to a child course will not be added to a parent course.
• Faculty can edit banner text within their Brightspace course to represent the course name.

Features of a Merge

• Multiple course sections will be combined into the course site with the lowest CRN. A new course site will not be created.
• Student enrollments will be updated (add & drops) at 8 am, 1 pm & 8 pm.
• In Brightspace, students will not see the course for which they are registered but they will see the course with the lowest CRN in the title.

Tool	Permissions : (Set to ensure FERPA compliance)
Classlist (Roster)	Instructor role: Can view all users in all sections.  Student role: Can only view students from their section.
Assignments	Instructor role: Can view all user submissions in all sections.  Student role: Can view own submissions and/or group submissions (if group assignments are utilized). Cannot see other group’s members.
Email	Instructor role: Can email all users in all sections.  Student role: Can only email students from their section.
Discussion	Instructor role: Can view all discussion postings in all sections.  Student role: Discussions can be configured by instructor to be open to all users or limited to each section. Visibility depends on how the discussion is configured by the instructor.  Discussion Topic Options
Activity Feed	Instructor role: Can see all comments. Can also determine if comments are allowed (shown below).    Student role: Can only see own comments.

Instructor Responsibilities in a Merged Course

• If requesting a merge, the requester must be the instructor of record listed in Banner to have these courses combined. If there are multiple instructors for this merge, written permission should be given to the requesting instructor from their co-instructor(s).
• The instructor must communicate to the students that the course sections are merged and the course title so that students know where to access and participate in the course. Instructors can also customize the banner text to represent the course name.
• The instructor must communicate to the students if the tools (listed above) include enrollments from all course sections. (This is to ensure FERPA compliance)

How to see your Cross-Listed or Merged Course

1. Access the Parent Course (the course with the lowest CRN) 
2. Go to Course Tools and click Roster.
3. The Classlist will show.
4. In View By, click the chevron drop down to select Sections, then hit the Apply button.
   
5. Sections will then appear. Click the chevron next to sections and a drop down list will appear with all sections that are crosslisted/merged.
6. If you only see one section in the drop down, then there is not a cross-listed or merged course into this course.