Cross-List (Merge) Courses
Do Not manually enroll students in courses; this may result in your student(s) being unenrolled each time the automated system enrollment file runs resulting in a potential loss of student activity in your course.
Cross-Listing is the equivalent terminology for "merging". It allows you to move section enrollments from individual courses and combine them into one course. This feature is helpful for instructors who teach several sections of the same course (or different courses that need to be merged, i.e. HIST course merged with an AFAM course) and only want to manage course data in one location.
Instructors can allow students to view users in other sections or limit them to only view users in the same section. Section names do not change when they are cross-listed; the section is just moved to another course.
To cross-list a course, you must know the name of the course or the course ID into which you are cross-listing. However, using a course ID (i.e. the course SIS ID, found on the course settings page, formatted as "CRN.YearTermCode") is a better way to confirm you are cross-listing a section into the correct course. You can find the course ID by opening the course and viewing the number at the end of the browser URL (i.e. account.instructure.com/courses/xyz123.)
Instructors can perform this task on their own in Canvas and must simply choose one of their pre-existing sections to become the "parent" course.
- IMPORTANT: Cross-listing should be done while courses are unpublished. DO NOT cross-list after you have published your course and students have accessed it. Course work is retained within the course, not within the sections, so if a published course is cross-listed after publishing, all cross-listed enrollments will lose any associated assignment submissions and grades.
- Before you can cross-list a section, the course must contain at least one enrollment.
- Sections can only be cross-listed once.
- Section names do not change and can be seen on the People list - Rename Course Section
- Students do see all other students from each cross-listed section/course within the People section if the instructors chooses to leave it open.
- Discussions/Assignments: Quizzes can all be set to individual sections using the "assign to" feature in the edit page for individual areas.
- Instructors can communicate with one section or the entire course. This can be done in announcements or in messages.
- Once a course is cross-listed, only the parent shell (or the course all sections will be merged into) will be visible to all users on the Dashboard and the All Courses list. All other courses will not be visible.
- Make sure the parent course displays a title that all students can identify with, which will help clarify they are in the correct course. For example, include all the section numbers in the title (i.e. HIST-101-102-104-Fall2025). How to Edit a Course Name and Code.
- When cross-listing, all users (including Teachers and TAs) will be moved to the parent shell. On the People list, they will appear to be enrolled more than once. For example, if someone is enrolled as a Teacher and TA, the role with more privileges (in this case, the Teacher role) will be dominant.
For important reasons of student privacy and consistent with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the university does not permit students to see the information of students enrolled in other sections through the roster function.
To remain FERPA compliant faculty should do the following:
- Disable People on your course navigation menu If you do not disable this option, students will be able to see the entire course roster for all sections in your cross-listed course.
- If you decide to use Canvas Discussions, create separate groups for each section of students and assign each discussion to the separate groups. Or, create multiple, almost identical discussion topics and assign each one to only one section of students.
- When sending messages through Canvas (Inbox), always opt to Send Individual Messages so that a group reply is not possible.
- If you share student information, or cause student information to be shared within a course or section(s), make sure that no student within the course or section has invoked a FERPA hold on all of their directory and non directory information.
*De-Cross-Listing can only be done by a VCU Canvas Admin
What you need to know before making this request...
If you cross-listed a course section, you may be able to reverse the cross-listed section back into its original course. This process is called de-cross-listing and returns all student enrollments back to the original course section.
However, once you de-cross-list enrollments, all grades and student submissions (i.e. Discussion Board posts and replies, Assignment Submissions, etc.) are removed from the course (because the course can no longer associate the information with any course enrollments).
Note: If you de-cross-list a section that includes student grades, Canvas will include a message that all grades will no longer be visible. If you need to retain student grades and put them in the original course, you should export the Gradebook and import it into the original course before de-cross-listing the section.