Create a Course in Schoology

Keywords: Create Course, delete course, section name, manually create a course, setting the grading period, create additional sections

Aliases: Schoology

How to create a Course

* PSD Courses for students are created through PowerSchool. You should NOT change the Course Name. Doing so will cause confussion in how the Course Name is displayed for others that are instructors and members of that overarching Course.

Example; There are 4 teachers that teach Kindergarten in a particular building. ATTENDANCE KINDERGARTEN is the main overarching course with 4 sections (one for each teacher). If one teacher changes the Course Name to Mr. John Doe's K Kids, it will show as "Mr. John Doe's K Kids" for ALL the kindergarten courses at that school.

The ability to create/delete courses is open/turned on during the following time periods:

the first and last week of Semester 1 & 2
the first and last week of Trimester 1, 2, & 3

If it is outside of these time periods, please submit a ticket through service central to request the creation of a course.

The following directions are for creating other courses such as a practice or sandbox, courses for student organizations, parents, PD, or PLC.

Courses are the structure of your online classroom. They're the space where students and teachers interact; the space where all the course materials will be housed, viewed, and completed. Through your courses, every message, update, assignment, etc. is specific to course members only. Your online course contains all the necessary tools for building materials designed to engage students and facilitate interaction.

Note:

Enterprise instructors may not see some of the options below, depending on the settings in place at your school or organization. Contact your System Administrator with any questions.
Schoology mobile apps do not support course creation.

To manually create a course:

Click Courses at the top of Schoology.
Click My Courses in the top right corner of the drop-down menu.
From the Courses page, click the Create Course button
In the Create form:
1. Enter a Course Name; for example, "English 101"
2. Rename the Section Name by clicking into the area that says Section 1.
3. Select a Subject Area.
4. Enter a Grade Level, or select a grade range.
Click Create to finish.

Note: If you are an instructor in an Enterprise organization, additional fields will be available to you. A grading period will only be available if the System Administrator has created a list of designated grading periods. If you don't see a grading period for your course, please contact your System Administrator. You can also add a Course Code and Section Code. Learn more in this article.

Course Name vs. Section Name

Each course has a Course Name and a Section Name. This naming convention allows you to create multiple sections for the same course. For example:

Course Name: English 101
Section Name: Section 1

You can also find more information about sections and courses here: What is a Course and a Section?

Creating additional sections

Create a new section under an existing course

If you already have a course, and you'd like to add another section under that same course, use the Add Section option to create a section. This option does not copy any of the course materials into the new section.

Click Courses at the top of Schoology.
Click My Courses in the top right corner of the drop-down menu.
Click Add Section next to the desired course.
Click Create.

Create a copy of a current course section

Use the Copy Section option to create a clone of an existing section you have created under the course. This option copies over the course materials you've built out in the existing section. This is a good way to add a new class with the same materials, but a different roster of students. Since this operation also copies your existing materials and content, check your Transfer History to follow the progress of the section copy.

Click My Courses in the top right corner of the drop-down menu.
Click the gear icon to the right of the section you'd like to copy.
Select Copy Section from the drop-down menu.
Complete the Copy Course Section form.
Click Create.

Note: Upon copying a section, you will receive a notification that the process is being executed and that you can access a list of large operations from the Transfer History area. Once the copy process shows completed in Transfer History, the course section will be available from Courses.

Setting the Grading Period:

Select the correct term for your course. To scroll to see additional terms, place your curser on the right side of the dates to see the scroll bar and move as necessary. (You will only see the scroll bar when your curser is hovering over it.)