What is merging?

By default, eConestoga courses are built section-by-section. If you teach three sections of a course, you get three eConestoga course shells.

However, some instructors prefer to manage all of their course sections within a single course shell. This is called merging. The single shell will contain all of the students in your various sections, and you will need to upload content into it only once.

Should I merge my course?

• Merged courses may be appropriate for instructors who use eConestoga largely to deliver static content-- e.g., readings, presentations, and announcements. This is especially true of courses that are continually updated throughout the semester.
• The combined rosters of a merged course make the delivery of interactive, graded content (quizzes, assignments, online grades, etc.) more challenging, as it becomes more difficult to separate submissions from one section from those of another section.
• Merging should never be done after students begin interacting with a course. You will lose student activity (quiz attempts, assignment submissions, discussion posts, entered grades, etc.) once you merge. Therefore, if you wish to merge your sections, you should request the merge before the start of the semester.

Requesting a merge

Once your course shells have been created in eConestoga, e-mail eConestoga@conestogac.on.ca, and specify:

• The course code
• The sections you would like to merge

If you teach courses under multiple course codes, please list them individually— e.g., “COMP1000 sections 1 and 2, COMP2000 sections 3 and 4”, etc.

What to expect after your request

Merging is not a same-day process. Please allow several business days for your separate sections to become merged. While the request is pending, it is possible that students will see neither the sectioned courses nor the final merged shell. This is common, and they need only to wait until the merged shell becomes available the following morning.

The end result

• Once the merge is completed, students will see only the final merged course. Instructors will see both the sectioned courses and the final merged shell; we recommend un-pinning the sectioned shells from your My Courses tileset to avoid any confusion over which shell you should be using.
• Your merged shell and your sectioned shells will have distinct titles. The exact format will vary, but generally looks something like this:
  • Sectioned: COMP1000-19F-Sec2-Basic Computers
  • Merged Sections: COMP1000-19F-Sec2&3-Basic Computers
  • Merged Codes: COMP1000&1720-19F-Sec2-Basic Computers (Course codes are typically only merged together in cases where domestic and international students are enrolled in the same class under different course codes)
• Sectioned courses will also be marked as “Inactive”, indicating that students can’t see them.
• Merged shells are created empty. If one or more of your sectioned courses contains content, this will not be carried over automatically into the merge. Follow the normal process to copy content into your merged shell from a previous course, a Model course, or the original sectioned shell.
• D2L will create a section within the course for each course section involved in the merge. In this case, a section is a grouping within your course roster-- students who are enrolled in Section 3 will be assigned to a section called “Section 3”, and so on for every other section that you merged together. This allows you to identify where each student originated, to contact individual sections through Course Mail, and to restrict course content to individual sections using release conditions if you so desire.
• Note that the tool in the Employee Portal that is used to submit grades to your Chair at the end of the semester will not be able to import grades from a merged shell. In order to submit your final grades from a merged shell, you will need to type them manually into the Employee Portal's Grade Entry tool.