In many cases, faculty teaching more than one section of the same course find it convenient to maintain a single Blackboard site with students from all sections enrolled in that site. Faculty have found that combining sections has resulted in less redundancy and has helped streamline the maintenance process.

The benefits for combining sections are many however, faculty making this request should be aware of the following:

Content:
Combining course sections are useful in cases where substantial content is identical for multiple sections. However, once students are enrolled in a single section there is no easy way to organize or manage students.

Gradebook:
Each Blackboard class has its own Blackboard gradebook that lists each enrolled student. There is no feature to subdivide the gradebook into separate sections. All enrolled students appear in the gradebook in alphabetical order.

Communication:
Each Blackboard class has its own discussion forum, whiteboard/chat tool, email, and digital drop box. Faculty need to be aware that there are simple strategies to organize the tools to best meet student needs.

Rosters:
Once the sections have been combined into a single Bb course, faculty will have to manage student rosters by hand. Unfortunately the student information system does not recognize the newly created combined section(s).