[Important Information for Employees] Brightspace - Merged Course Limitations

[Information Technology Services CIO Office]

Campus community,

If you teach courses out of the Brightspace LMS then you should continue
reading, if you don't then you only need to read if the topic of "merged
courses" interests you.  I"m sending this email to a wide audience because
we have recently seen a significant increase in the number of requests to
merge multiple sections of a course into one combined Brightspace site.

Merging course sites is a common request for faculty teaching more than one
section of the same course. It seems like a perfectly logical request with
the main benefit of sharing the same course content to all of the sections,
minimizing duplication of effort on the part of the faculty member. While
that is understood and despite Brightspace being capable of doing this, it
violates FERPA regulations.  FERPA states that:

*An institution can allow a student to see other students in a course for
which the student is officially registered, but cannot allow a student to
see (or be seen by) other students in another class. *

You may search other SUNY campuses and find they have produced various
manual workarounds that allow for such merging to occur. We have researched
all of these options and have found there isn't a good way to accomplish
this, using the existing SUNY tools and processes, that would be FERPA
compliant and NOT result in a negative experience for faculty and students.

*So at this time,  the only courses that can be cross-listed/merged are
courses that are taught on the same day, at the same time and location, by
the same instructor.*

*If you can't merge the courses what other options are there for these
situations?*

*Our recommendation is to use the export/import options directly in
Brightspace to move content from one course site into another, which will
prevent having to recreate the same content over multiple course sites. Our
colleagues in TEL developed a handout that describes the steps
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rxf_CtTzqG49FvOSmhFeht2KH0FvmMrL/view?usp=sharing>
(also
available on the Brightspace Site Developers Area in Brightspace) that
walks you through the process.

We hope you find this information helpful and if you need additional
assistance please reach out to TEL by filing a trouble report
<https://plattsburgh.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/90/Portal/Requests/ServiceDet?ID=5257>
or
sending an email to technologyenhancedlearning at plattsburgh.edu.

Have a great night.

-- 

*TJ Myers*

Director & Chief Information Officer

Information Technology Services

215 Feinberg

101 Broad Street
<https://maps.google.com/?q=101+Broad+Street+Plattsburgh,+NY+12901&entry=gmail&source=g>

Plattsburgh, NY 12901
<https://maps.google.com/?q=101+Broad+Street+Plattsburgh,+NY+12901&entry=gmail&source=g>

(o) 518-564- <(518)%20564-2449>5180

(f) 518-564-3817

*plattsburgh.edu <http://plattsburgh.edu/>*
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