Keywords: courses, schoology, sections, unlinking, gradebook, unlink

Aliases: Schoology

Unlinking Sections 

Once you've linked sections, you can also unlink them. However, when you unlink sections, the materials, grades, and data will remain only in the master section. 

Unlinking will only be possible within the first 10 days of a term. After that, please contact the Help Desk at 3711 or your Digital Innovation Lead. 

Schoology does not recommend unlinking sections once the school year has begun or once student submissions have been made in the child section.

To unlink sections:

1. Click Courses at the top of the screen.
2. Select My Courses..
3. In your list of courses, click the gear icon to the right of the linked sections.
4. Select Unlink Sections from the drop-down menu on the gear icon.

When you click Unlink Sections, you are prompted to select the section(s) to unlink, as well as the two options of what happens to the unlinked section(s). Make sure you are aware of the effects:

• Unlink and restore original section — restores that section to the way it was before it was linked. If it was an existing section with data, that data that existed before you linked the sections will be restored.  Only the master section retains the materials, setup, grades, and data. In other words, any material created after linking sections will only be retained in the master section when you unlink. The child section will revert back to what it looked like before you linked the sections.
• Unlink and move enrollments into an new section — moves the students enrolled in that section into a new blank course - without materials or any other data. This action cannot be undone. 

5. As a safeguard against losing grade data for child sections, you must select to download a grade export file for each section being unlinked. See the Gradebook File Download when Linking or Unlinking Sections instructions below for details.
   
6. Select the file type to download:
   • As a Standard CSV spreadsheet.
   • As a CSV file that you can use to import into other systems, such as an SIS.
7. Click Download and Next.
8. Click Unlink Sections to complete the process.

Gradebook File Download when Linking or Unlinking Sections

When you link or unlink sections, the grade data for child sections is not retained–only the student grade data for the master section remains visible in Schoology. The child sections are restored to how they were before the sections were linked or unlinked.

For this reason, Schoology strongly recommends against linking or unlinking during the school year; but we also realize that sometimes you will have link or unlink sections. For this reason, we've added a safeguard to ensure that grade data in child sections is still available to Course Admins: requiring a download of the gradebook spreadsheet for each child section when linking or unlinking. 

Before completing the linking or unlinking process, Course Admins must choose from one of two downloads: 

• Standard CSV:
  • Select this option to download a CSV file version of your gradebook. This spreadsheet is formatted similarly to how it is in Schoology, with the student names vertically and material titles along the top.
• CSV for import into other system:
  • Select this option to download a CSV file with more detailed student data. This spreadsheet is separated by columns for mapping purposes to use to import into another system, such as an SIS gradebook. 

Grade Calculation Differences

There are several important differences in how grades are calculated between the two formats.

Be sure to consider these variables when deciding the file format to download.