Navigate and Use Linked Sections
Keywords: navigate linked sections, courses, Schoology, sections, announcements, posting updates, bulk edits
Aliases: Schoology
Linked sections share the same Materials and the same Grade Setup. All other areas of the course are separate, but as the Course Admin you can toggle among sections in each area.
- Making announcements and posting updates
- Creating materials
- Using Course tools
- Course tools include: Gradebook, Mastery, Attendance, Members, Analytics, Workload Planning, and course-level Apps
- Grading
Making Announcements and Posting Updates in Linked Sections
When you link your sections together, you can send updates to all of your sections within a course at once. When you create an update, by default, the post will go to all of your sections. You can click the x next to each section name if you do not want that section to see your post.
When you post an Update to linked sections, it will appear multiple times in your Updates area–once for each section you post to. However, the update only displays once for your students, for the section in which they're enrolled.
Creating Materials in Linked Sections
Linking sections enables you to manage your materials in one place. When you click Add Materials after linking your sections, the items you add to your course are added across all of the sections.
To create identical items across the linked sections, simply clicking Add Materials and fill out the create form of your desired material type. Enter the due date in the date field next to All Sections.
Customizing Materials in Linked Sections
If you would like to differentiate the due date and availability of this item for each of your linked sections, click Select Sections to Customize below the Due Date field. Select the section(s) to customize and enter the Due Date for each section. If you would like to make an exception for one section to have its own due date (or time), click Select Sections to Customize and then check the desired section. Selecting a specific section will pull out that section's availability fields, and all the other sections are labeled Everyone Else:
If you would like each section to have its own due date, check Select All, as in the example below.
You can also use the Bulk Edit area to customize the availability of an item. The published section is displayed next to the due date:
Each course section is displayed under the Due date column. Use your cursor to hover over the book icon next to the due date to confirm the course section name. A green circle indicates the item is published in that course section. The gray circle indicates the item is unpublished in that course section.
A Note about Availability of Materials in Linked Sections: If you publish items from the gear icon drop-down menu on the Materials page, you publish the item to all sections; you cannot customize availability.
You will receive the message "Are you sure you want to publish [material title] for all linked sections?"
Click Publish All to add the material.
Using Course Tools in Linked Sections
Courses with linked sections share the same Materials and Grade Setup. Everything else in your course, however, remains separate.
In your other Course tools — the Gradebook, Mastery, Badges, Attendance, Members, Analytics, and Workload Planning areas — you'll have toggles to switch among different sections. These toggles appear near the top left of the page.
For example, this screenshot of the Gradebook area in a course with linked sections shows the expanded drop-down menu you can use to toggle between linked sections in a course. 
This same drop-down menu appears in the Mastery, Badges, Attendance, Members, Analytics and Workload Planning areas as well:
Setting Up Your Gradebook
Grade Setup does not change at all once your sections are linked. This screen looks the same as it would if you did not link your sections, and all of the items you create here — grading categories, grad scales, rubrics, and the settings you apply to your gradebook — will apply to all of the sections within this course.
Administering Grades
You can grade your materials in Schoology from directly in the Gradebook, or from the item itself.
Gradebooks across linked sections remain separate. You can use the toggle tool and drop-down menu to move among the gradebooks for your different linked sections:
Similarly, you will see a toggle tool when grading from the item itself. Below you can see screenshots of this tool in the different types of materials:
Assignments:
- Open the assignment.
- In the Submissions column on the right, select a section to see its list of student submissions.
Discussions:
- Click the Discussion to open it from the Materials page.
- Use the toggle in the Discussion Toolbar at the top to switch among the posts in the different sections.
Tests/Quizzes
- Open the test/quiz from the Materials page.
- Select the Results tab along the top.
- Use the section toggle at the top to switch among submissions for the different sections.
Assessments
- Open the Assessment from the Materials page.
- Select Student Attempts along the top.
- Use the section toggle at the top to switch among submissions for the different sections.
