...

Merged Courses Naming Convention

Before we begin the tutorial, please pay close attention to the naming conventionconventions:

1. Please put MRG after the semester and year but before the course abbreviation (ex., from Fall2025_CAN101A_COLI Demonstration Workshop & Testing to Fall2025_MRG_CAN101A_COLI Demonstration Workshop & Testing).

   1. This is extremely important for helping D2L Administrators find and diagnose merged courses.

2. Use _ to separate the semester-year, MRG, and the course abbreviations and / to separate the primary and secondary courses (i.e., Fall2025_MRG_CAN101A/CAN101B). Then, use : after the course section letter for the title, also using spaces between words (Fall2025_MRG_CAN101A/CAN101B: COLI Demonstration Workshops & Testing).

3. & MUST be changed to and (i.e., Fall2025_MRG_CAN101A/CAN101B: COLI Demonstration Workshops and Testing).

4. If the primary and secondary course(s) share the same abbreviation and number (i.e., the only difference is the section letter), there is no need to include the abbreviation and number for the secondary course(s) (ex, Fall2025_MRG_CAN101A/B: COLI Demonstration Workshops and Testing).

5. The general formula is SemesterYear_MRG_PrimaryCourse/SecondaryCourse: Descriptive Merged Name

...

1	Click on the gear icon in the upper-right, to the right of your name, in D2L. Select SIS Course Merge in the menu that appears.
2	Click the checkbox to the left of the course(s) that you want to merge. The blue Merge Courses button should no longer be greyed out after you choose at least two courses. Click on this to begin the merge process.
3	A pop-up will appear asking us to select the Primary course. When we have done so, click on the blue Merge button in the lower-left.
4	When we do, the pop-up will close. Reviewing the course list, we will see only the primary course listed and none of the secondary courses. We should also notice a banner appear letting us know that the merge has started and that we will receive a notification when it has completed. It also lets us know that we can make changes in the primary course and change the course name by clicking on the course offering information link. Click on it to do so.
5	Change the name following the above naming conventions. In this case, since we are merging Fall2025_ABEC220A_Animal Learning and Fall2025_ABEC220LA_Animal Learning Lab, the merged course name should look like: Fall2025_MRG_ABEC220A/LA: Animal Learning Then click on Save in the lower-left.
6	When we do, the page will reload and the title will update in three places on this page, the course home page, and the Course Widget.
7	When the Merge has completed, make sure to check the class list and ensure that the list in D2L and in My Canisius match up correctly. If they do not, contact Helpdesk ASAP.

Course Unmerge Tutorial

...

!!!WARNING: UNMERGING COURSES MAY HAVE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES!!!

BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN YOU WANT TO/NEED TO UNMERGE!

As noted in the SIS Course Merge description and additional times during the unmerge process, unmerging courses can lead to some oddities in your courses. For example, say we have a merged course where students uploaded documents to a dropbox and/or we graded some other assignments using the gradebook. If, later, we decide to unmerge the courses, submitted dropbox assignments, discussion posts, course content, etc. nor the grades will carry over to the unmerged spaces. In fact, we will only see the grades and submitted assignments from students that remain in the original Primary course. Any students work from the Secondary course(s) will “disappear”. The only way to retrieve these items is to re-merge the courses together.

...