Section code and section school code

Course code, section code, and section school code are unique identifiers that allow system administrators to create, update, and export course sections in bulk. Whether you use section code or section school code depends on how your organization manages courses, sections, and grading periods throughout the school year. Understanding how these identifiers work is essential for importing courses and enrollments.

Understand courses and sections

Courses are shells that contain one or more sections. Separate different class rosters into their own sections. For example, create one section for students meeting during period 1 and another for those meeting during period 2. If your school has different rosters throughout the year, consider creating sections for each grading period.

After a section has been created under a course shell, it cannot be moved to another course. Sections cannot be moved to a different course shell by editing the course code.

Course codes

A Course Code is the unique identifier for each course shell. The code must be unique across all schools in your organization and across all grading periods. If the same course is taught at multiple schools, each school needs a distinct Course Code.

Course code example

Section codes

A Section Code only needs to be unique within each course shell per grading period. You can reuse the same Course Code/Section Code combination within the same school for different grading periods. This means the same Section Code can be used year after year without affecting previous sections.

Section code examples

Section school codes

A Section School Code must be globally unique across all courses, grading periods, and buildings in your organization. After a Section School Code is used, it can never be reused for another section. For this reason, include identifying details, such as school, course, and term, in the code format.

Section school code examples

Import behavior

When importing course information and enrollments, Schoology creates or updates sections based on the section code or section school code in your import file, along with the grading periods and settings configured on the file setup page.

• If you are importing courses manually, you will have the option to Update existing records.

• If you are importing courses via Auto-Import, existing records are always updated.

Section code import behavior

You cannot update grading periods for sections that use section codes via import. To update the grading period, manually edit the section.

Section school code import behavior