Linking Course Sections in Schoology

In Schoology when sections of the same course are linked together, materials and grade setup can be done once instead of repeated for each section. This guide reviews how to link your sections.

The ability to link sections has been enabled in Schoology. Linked sections share the same set of materials and grade setup, meaning you will only have to create materials and set up your gradebook once.

Please note, there are specific properties that need to be aligned in order to link sections.

• The sections must be within the same Course number. Can be verified with the school clerk.
• The sections must be associated with the same grading period.
• Enrollment must be unique across the linked sections. There cannot be any overlap in the students.
• The sections must have the same Lead Teacher

Note: Sections should not be UNLINKED under any circumstances after being linked.

When sections are un-linked, the student assignment submissions in the child section(s) are not recoverable. Meaning, student data WILL be lost. Please assign a co-teacher as course admin if you are planning on taking a leave of absence for an extended period of time before any schedule changes are made in PowerSchool.

Linking Existing Sections Together

1. Click your Courses drop-down menu and and select My Courses.
    

   

   
   
   Steps 2-7 demonstrated below:

   

2. In your list of courses, click the gear icon to the right of the section you consider to be the "master section". If you have materials in both courses, the "master section" is the one that holds the materials and grades you would like to continue to use between the two sections.
3. Select Link Existing Sections from the dropddown.
4. Select the section(s) to link and click Next.
5. As a safeguard against losing grade data for child sections, you must select to download a grade export file for each section being linked. See the "Gradebook File Download when Linking or Unlinking Sections" instructions below for details.
6. Select the file type to download:
   • As a Standard CSV spreadsheet.
   • As a CSV file that you can use to import into other systems, such as an SIS.
7. Click Download and Next.
8. Click Link Sections.
9. A warning message displays:

   "Materials from (section name) will not be copied into: (section name). Once complete, the sections will share: grade setup, materials, and course profile (of the destination section). Member enrollments will still belong to their respective sections."
   
   This means that the section for which you clicked the gear icon will be the master section–the linked sections will now all have access to and use the materials in that master section. This includes Course Materials and items in your Grade Setup (such as Grading Categories, Rubrics, etc). However, the original rosters of students when the sections were separate will remain the same after you link the sections.

10. Click Link Sections.

Notes:
-You cannot link one set of linked sections to another set of linked sections. For example, if you have two sets of linked sections (English: Section 1, Section 2 and English: Section 3, Section 4), you cannot combine them to make one linked set (English: Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, Section 4)
-The maximum number of sections to be linked is 10.