Sections

Sections and Groups are both subsets of students in a course. In this page you will learn how you can use Sections in Canvas.

For most courses, Sections are automatically created and populated by the Student Information System (SAP/SLM). These automatically created groups are recognisable because their names start with “S_”. If you want to change the enrollment status of a student in these automatically created Sections, you have to do this in our Student Information System (SAP/SLM), not in Canvas. If you change the enrollment status in Canvas, this action will be overruled by the enrollment status in the Student Information System (SAP/SLM).

 

Sections

Sections are subsets of users that have been organised for administrative purposes. When users are enrolled in a course, they are always enrolled in at least one Section of that course.
It is possible to have more than one Section in a course. All sections of a course share the same Modules.

Sections can be used to:

• grade different subsets of students and sort Grades by Sections
• offer different subsets of students varied due dates for assignments, discussions and quizzes.
• announcements can be created for specific Sections.

Automatically created Sections

For most courses, Sections are automatically created and populated by the student information system (SAP/SLM). These automatically created Sections are recognisable because their names start with “S_”. 

Overview of automatically created Sections:

S_ name	Users present in this Section	Example
S_[name course]	- All Coordinators and Teachers of the course. - Students who only have a course enrollment (i.e.: no "werkgroep" enrollments). *
S_[name "werkgroep"]	All students who have been enrolled in that "werkgroep" (or "practicum", "hoorcollege" etc).

* Please note:
If a course only has the "S_[name course]" Section, every user in the course will be present in that Section.
If a Section for (for example) a "werkgroep" is added later, students enrolled in that "werkgroep" will be moved from the "S_[name course]" Section to the "S_[name "werkgroep"]" Section.
If a student is enrolled in two different “werkgroepen”, that student will be enrolled in the two Sections for these two “werkgroepen”.

Manually created Sections

Teachers can also manually create Sections and populate these Sections with students.

To manually add Sections:

• Go to Settings > Sections.
• Enter a Section name in the Add a New Section Field and click +Section.
  (Note: please do not start the Section name with "S_")

To learn more about adding a section to a course take a look at the following guide:

• How do I add a section to a course? Links to an external site.
• How do I hide the section column in the people menu Links to an external site.

To manually add students to Manually Created Sections

• Go to People.
• Click the Settings menu (gear icon) next to the desired student’s name and select Edit Sections.
• Type the desired Section’s name in the Section name field or click the directory icon to show a list of Sections.
• Select the desired Section.
• Click Update.
• To learn more about editing Sections for an enrollment in a course take a look at the following guide:
  • How do I edit sections for an enrollment in a course? Links to an external site.