How do I use Sections in Canvas?

Consider the difference between Groups and Sections in Canvas.

Naming Sections

When creating groups and sections, you can choose any name. However, it is strongly encouraged that you use a naming convention that will help you and your students navigate not only your course more easily but also navigate groups and sections across all courses.  Regardless of how you have organized your course and your teaching team, always include your course code at the beginning of your group and section names. If you have assigned TFs to a particular group or section, you may also wish to include the TF’s name in the group or section name. 

Sections Overview

Sections unlike groups are only accessible to teaching staff and admins, and operate more in the "back-end" compared to groups which are more front-end facing.

Sections can be created and managed by using the tool developed by Harvard integrated into Canvas: Manage Sections in Canvas | HUIT. 

Simplify Grading & Tracking

For courses with multiple TF's, sections are a great way to keep track of students. Each TF can have a section assigned to them, and within the section are the students that they are assigned to grade.

In the Gradebook, you can filter by section to only see a subset of the students that are relevant to you.

In the SpeedGrader there is no explicit option to filter by section, however there is an option that can be enabled that can limit users to only interact with users in their section. As such, enabling this will allow TFs visibility to see only their students when grading in the SpeedGrader. 

Section Assignments

Similar to group assignments, section assignments also allow differentiated due dates by section; the difference being that while group assignments only expect a single submission per group, a section assignments expects a single submission per person since there are no groups.

Section Discussions

While group discussions offer a space for students to share ideas and respond to questions amongst a smaller subset of their peers, section discussions are always graded discussions, whereas group discussions have the option of being graded/ungraded.

Note: Section discussions do not create a separate and isolated thread for each section like a group discussion! It is the same discussion thread, but with different due dates for each section. 

Cross-listing Courses

There are some instances where there may be multiple Canvas sites for a course, and "combining" them into one site for ease of management may be desired. The most common case is when the course is being jointly-offered by multiple schools. Different sections for each course number will be automatically created.

Use Cases

• Assigning different due dates for assignments or discussions to different sections if they meet at different dates with their section leader/TF.
• Allows TFs to filter and view only their subset of students to streamline grading.
• Sections also allow you to use the Course Emailer tool developed in-house by Harvard to stream communications.