Introduction

When instructors are assigned to multiple sections of a course, it can be challenging and tedious posting the same content into multiple sections. To avoid this, Blackboard offers a Section Merge Tool. Section Merges provide all students access to a single section, allowing faculty to share content, post announcements, and manage assessments and grades in one location, simplifying the administrative side of teaching.

Is merging right for your courses? 

As convenient as Course Merges are, there may be situations when a course merge is not the right solution. With a merged course, it becomes more complicated to offer certain abilities.

For example:

• Taking attendance on different dates for each section
• Release test availability and/or due dates for each section
• Posting announcements for cancelled/changed classes or upcoming course activities, like a guest speaker

If a merged course is unmerged later in the term, students will lose access to the course they once had and will be returned to their original empty course shell. Assignments will be lost, test results will disappear, and student progress in the course will be blank. If you suspect that your classes may need to function separately at some point in the future, you may not wish to merge courses. 

In these cases, we encourage you to consider reaching out to FacultyEdTech@georgiancollege.ca to learn about Qwickly, another powerful tool that may better meet your needs.

If you are unsure if merging course sections is right for you, speak with your Faculty Blackboard Support team.
 

🖥️ Video Tutorial

🗺️ Text Instructions

To complete this process, you will need access to all of the courses you plan on merging. You cannot merge a course that you do not have instructor access to.

Merging your first course:

1. Log into Blackboard and select Tools in the left-hand side of the Base Navigation area.
2. Select the Section Merge Tool
3. Beside the word “search”, locate the search filter options and change it to “course ID”
4. Search for the course by typing in the course code or CRN (not the course name) you wish to use as the Parent Shell. This will be the shell that you will use to contain all content, assignments, announcements, and so on.
5. Hover on the course code and click the little dropdown menu that will appear beside it and select Add Child Course.
6. In the subsequent screen, while using the Course ID search filter again, search for the course code you wish to merge as the child course. There will be no content posted in this section, but all students enrolled in this section will gain access to the parent shell as if they were enrolled in that section.
7. Once the child course is located, hover on the course code and click the little dropdown menu that will appear beside it and select “merge”.
8. A message will appear asking if you wish to proceed. Click OK.
9. The screen will reload with both courses listed. The child course will be indented with an arrow, indicating that it is merged into the parent.

Merging additional courses:

To merge additional courses, you can complete the process above, or select multiple sections at once. The easiest way to do this is to search for more general terms when locating the intended child courses. For example, if you were wanting to add all of your TGIF1001 sections, search for TGIF1001 instead of searching individually by CRNs.

Separating merged courses:

NOTE: Unmerging courses once the semester has begun is highly discouraged. Unmerging courses will remove student access to a course, its material, and the assessments within. This also removes them from the Grade Center and will impede your ability to manage grades. If you are wanting to separate a course you have merged in error, please follow these steps:

1. Log into Blackboard and select Tools in the left-hand side of the Base Navigation area.
2. Select the Section Merge Tool
3. Search for one of the courses in the merge you wish to separate. This can be the child or parent shell.
4. Click the dropdown menu beside the Course ID of the child that you wish to remove and select Separate.