Overview
A common question among students is, "Why am I seeing the .01 section of a course in CoursePlus if I registered for the .41 section?" The simplest answer is that the two course sections are merged into one course site, and everyone enrolled in either section uses the .01 site. Merges are a common occurrence in CoursePlus, and they not only simplify administration but allow faculty and TAs to manage all students from within a single section. This ultimately reduces error, improves consistency across sections, and facilitates discussion and interaction across sections.
What Gets Merged
Most .41, .43, .49, and .84 sections are merged into their .01, .13, .11, or .80 section counterparts. This means that everyone in both a .01/.41, .13/.43, .11/.49, or .80/.84 section uses the same site in CoursePlus. Occasionally, there are exceptions to these rules, such as when a faculty member has requested that a section not be merged for a specific purpose.
Problems Switching Between Sections
Because of the way courses are merged this sometimes leads to issues in which a student may find they are not seeing a course appear among their list of courses at all. This is usually as a result of adding one section and then dropping the other section with the same course number afterward. Given that the course uses the same CoursePlus site for both sections of the course, the drop record will get processed last, which prevents a student from seeing the class. If this occurs, you should reach out to CTL Help and explain the issue.
When Merges Occur
Prior to 2023, conflicts in how course numbers are reused at the Bloomberg School of Public Health prevented the merging of CoursePlus enrollments in courses with the same course number but different section numbers until just before the start of each academic term. Starting in 2023, however, the merging of student registrations occurs as soon as that registration is processed by CoursePlus. There is no longer a delay for processing those registrations.