What's on this page?
Who is this for?
Teaching staff, Curriculum Coordinators - for setting up courses for sectioning
When to section
The Sectioning Tool cannot be used to move students among sections after the add/drop deadline (Fifth Monday Deadline). Please make any necessary section changes before this date.
There is no pre-enrollment sectioning; students cannot be sectioned prior to being enrolled in course. Sectioning uses real enrollments, so students need to be fully enrolled in order for you to be able to section a course.
- Sectioning Tool opens in my.harvard on August 16, 2021
- Sectioning Tool closes on October 5, 2021
- Sectioning Tool opens in my.harvard on January 10, 2022
- Sectioning Tool closes on February 22, 2022
Getting started
Use the my.harvard Sectioning Tool to create or edit sections for courses with discussions or labs. You can also use the tool to move student into classes with multiple enrollment sections, like language courses.
As you are getting started with sectioning, you should review the following documents:
- IT Help – Sectioning Instructions: Learn the basics of sectioning.
- Documentation – Sectioning Workflows: Find instructions based on your course's needs.
We also offer instructional videos that highlight key features of the Sectioning Tool:
Guidelines
- Students must be fully enrolled for you to add them to sections.
- All sections must start at designated start times.
- Many courses section at the same time which may impact students’ time availabilities. If a student was available at a certain time but later has a time conflict, it is probably because they provided that time availability for multiple courses and they’ve now been enrolled in a section for a different course at that time.
- Never edit the placeholder discussion section (typically called DIS or LAB). This causes substantial enrollment problems and will prevent students from enrolling in your course. Do not delete or add a meeting pattern to the placeholder discussion section, even after the course registration deadline.
- Only hit the Submit button once. Every time adds a new job to processing queue.
Using models
We recommend prioritizing students who submitted preferences first. After you have finished sectioning, you can then move students who did not submit preferences.
Models that consider preferences
Consider student preferences: Only moves students who submitted preferences. You can move students who did not submit preferences manually or run another model that does not consider preferences.
Models that do not consider preferences
Sequential: Builds groups one section/student at a time depending on preferences.
Example: The sequential model will place a student into section 1, another student into section 2, and another student into section 3, repeating this pattern until all students are sectioned (1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3).
Even Class Distribution: Fills sections completely before moving on to the next section.
Example: Fill section 1, fill section 2, fill section 3.