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Section Code and Section School Code

Why do my Courses need a Course Code and Section Code/Section School Code?

Courses and Sections in Schoology must have a Course Code and Section Code/Section School Code to use the Import and Export features. Assigning these unique identifiers to your course sections enables System Administrators to bulk create and update the courses within an organization or export information from those courses.

If you use the Enterprise version of Schoology, you may integrate your SIS with Schoology to provision courses and enrollments. In this case, these codes may be created by your SIS, and you may not be able to edit the Course Code and Section School Code fields in Schoology.

If you use Manual Imports or Auto-Import to provision courses and enrollments, Course Code and Section Code or Section School Code are required fields to create and update courses. To import enrollments, you must designate either Section Code or Section School Code to be used in the sections you import. Therefore, it's important to understand these fields and how they function.

Understanding Courses and Sections

Course vs. Section

Courses are created as shells for sections. You can create multiple sections within the same course.

We recommend that you separate different class rosters into their own sections. For example, if a group of students meets during Period 1, you should consider creating another section for the group of students that meet at another time (Period 2).

If your school has different rosters for a class throughout the school year, you may consider creating sections for different grading periods, such as semesters, quarters, or trimesters.

Course Codes

A Course Code serves as the unique identifier for each course shell. Course Codes must be unique across the schools in your organization and across all grading periods.

For example, if you have a Biology course that is taught at two high schools in your organization, you will need to use separate Course Codes at each school:

You might choose to format your Course Codes like this:

SchoolCourse NameCourse Code
West High SchoolBiologyWHS_BIO
East High SchoolBiologyEHS_BIO

In this example, the Biology course at West High School contains all past, current, and upcoming sections of Biology at West High School:

Sections setup with course codes.


Once a section has been created under a course shell, it cannot be moved to another course. Sections cannot be moved to a different course shell by editing the Course Code.

Should I use Section Code or Section School Code?

The decision to use Section Code or Section School Code will depend on how your organization structures courses and sections throughout the school year.

Section Code

Section Codes only need to be unique within each course shell per grading period. You can re-use the same Course Code/Section Code combo within the same school building for different grading periods.

For example, within the Biology course in the example above, you can use the Section Code 1 for the first-period Biology section in the Fall semester. You may create another section within the same Section Code under the same Course shell for the Spring semester.

This system enables you to re-use the same Section Code in the following years without affecting the previous sections using the same code.

SchoolCourse CodeSection NameSection CodeGrading Period
West High SchoolWHS_BIOSection 11Fall 2017
West High SchoolWHS_BIOSection 11Spring 2018

Section School Code

Section School Codes must be unique across all courses, grading periods, and buildings. This means that, if you have a Section School Code of 1, you can never use that Section School Code for another section within your organization again.

For this reason, it helps to create Section School Codes that are unique to that specific class, school, and term. For example, the Biology course from the example above may set Section School Codes in the following format:

SchoolCourse CodeSection NameSection School CodeGrading Period
West High SchoolWHS_BIOSection 1WHS_BIO_1_F17Fall 2017
West High SchoolWHS_BIOSection 1WHS_BIO_1_SP18Spring 2018

Importing Courses and Enrollments based on Section Code/Section School Code

While importing course information and enrollments, keep in mind that you are creating or updating sections based on the Section Code or Section School Codes contained in your import file, along with the grading periods and settings configured on the file setup page.

If you are importing courses manually, you will see the option to Update existing records. If you are importing courses via Auto-Import, existing records are always updated.

Using Section Code

Auto-Import OR Manual Import with Update existing records enabled

  • If you import a file with a Course Code/Section Code combo that matches existing sections in Schoology but uses different grading periods, then new sections will be created under the existing course shells with the information from your enrollment file.
  • If you import a file with a Course Code/Section Code combo that matches existing sections in Schoology, with the same grading periods, the existing sections in Schoology will be updated with the information from your enrollment file.

    You cannot update Grading Periods for sections that use Section Codes. If you import a file with an existing Course Code/Section Code combo, the existing sections in Schoology could be associated with several grading periods so the file wouldn’t know which section to update. Therefore, only new sections can be created by importing an existing course code/section code combination with different grading periods. To update the grading periods for a section that uses Section Code, you must manually edit the section.

Manual Import with Update existing records disabled

  • If you import a file with a Course Code/Section Code combo that matches existing sections in Schoology but uses different grading periods, then new sections will be created under the existing course shells with the information from your enrollment file.
  • If you import a file with a Course Code/Section Code combo that matches existing sections in Schoology, using the same grading periods, an error will appear in the Preview/confirm phase of the import: An existing course or section was found and updates of existing courses and sections are disabled. This row of data was skipped.

Using Section School Code

Auto-Import OR Manual Import with Update existing records enabled

  • If you import a file using Section School Code, the importer will look for existing sections in Schoology with the same Section School Code.
  • If a section exists with the same Section School Code, the existing section will be updated with information from your import file.
  • If no sections exist with the same Section School Code, a new section will be created with the information from your import file.

Manual Import with Update existing records disabled

  • If you import a file using Section School Code, the importer will look for existing sections in Schoology with the same Section School Code.
  • If no sections exist with the same Section School Code, a new section will be created with the information from your import file.
  • If a section exists with the same Section School Code, an error will appear in the Preview/confirm phase of the import.
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