Online Teaching FAQ

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What is a Merged Site?

In Canvas, the process of combining the enrollments from two or more sections into one course site is called Merging. When an instructor wishes to have multiple sections merged, we create a new course site for the combined sections. Students will only see the merged course site on their Dashboard.

Canvas Course Merge / FERPA Policy

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects the privacy of a student’s education record, which includes a student’s course schedule. When Canvas classrooms merge different sections, it allows students to see other students who are enrolled in a separate, distinct class. Merging class sections in Canvas may violate students’ right to privacy by sharing protected information.

FERPA restrictions do not apply to a merged Canvas course if students physically meet in the same classroom at the same time. For example, if the course is cross listed in the schedule. Another example is if students from the distinct courses share labs.

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.

There are ways to merge courses that do not meet these guidelines and still maintain FERPA compliance.  The instructor will need to modify how they are interacting with students via Canvas to maintain student privacy including: 1) sending messages to course sections making sure they are communicating with students by section, 2) creating student groups to facilitate student interactions by section and 3) (optionally) creating calendar events and assignments by section.