Link course sections | PowerSchool Learning and Engagement

Overview

Link course sections to manage all sections of a course efficiently. Linked sections share the same materials and grade setup, so you only need to create materials and set up your gradebook once, even when you teach multiple sections of the same course.

Depending on your organization's settings, this feature may not be available.

Requirements for linking course sections

Sections must be within the same course and grading period.
Enrollment must be unique across sections.
Sections must have the same Course Admins.

You cannot:

Import linked sections.
Link one set of linked sections to another set of linked sections.
Link more than 10 sections.

Link sections

You can link sections that meet the requirements in three ways.

Refrain from linking sections after school has started to avoid losing grade data for child sections. When linking, choose a master section to link others to. The linked sections (child sections) will replace their materials and grade settings with those of the master section. Any existing materials and grade data in the child sections will be set aside.

When linking sections, you cannot recover students' assignment submissions from child sections. You will be prompted to download a CSV file containing all the grade data for child sections.

Link existing sections

Select Courses.
Select My Courses.
For the master section, select the gear icon and choose Link Existing Sections.
Select the sections to link and click Next.
Choose a file type and click Download and Next to obtain grade export files for each section being linked.
Click Link Sections.
Review the warning message and click Link Sections.

Create a course with linked sections

Select Courses.
Select My Courses.
Click Create Course.
Enter the course information.
1. Select Add Section.
2. Enter the section names and codes to link. Ensure the section codes are consistent with other courses at your school.
Click Create.

Add a linked section to an existing course

Navigate to the master course.
From Course Options, select Edit Info from the list.
Select Add Section.
Enter the section names and codes to link. Ensure the section codes are consistent with other courses at your school.
Click Save.

Use linked sections

Use linked sections to perform actions once for all sections.

To grade materials for linked sections, use the toggle to switch between gradebooks for different sections.

Action	Details
Make announcements and post updates	Post updates to all linked sections in a course. Each update appears once for each section in your Updates area but is only visible to students in their specific enrolled section.
Create materials	Add Materials once and apply them across all sections.
Customize materials	Differentiate an item’s due date and availability for each linked section. When creating an item, choose Select Sections to Customize to select the sections to customize. Then, enter a Due Date for each section. Alternatively, customize an item’s availability from Bulk Edit. The Due date column displays each course section and lets you update the date and time for each section. You cannot customize availability for items published using the gear icon on the Materials page.

Action

Details

Make announcements and post updates

Post updates to all linked sections in a course.

Each update appears once for each section in your Updates area but is only visible to students in their specific enrolled section.

Create materials

Add Materials once and apply them across all sections.

Customize materials

Differentiate an item’s due date and availability for each linked section.

When creating an item, choose Select Sections to Customize to select the sections to customize. Then, enter a Due Date for each section. Alternatively, customize an item’s availability from Bulk Edit. The Due date column displays each course section and lets you update the date and time for each section.

You cannot customize availability for items published using the gear icon on the Materials page.