Feature Request: Separate Permission for Instructors to De-Cross-List Sections

Hi Canvas Community,

I’m wondering if Canvas could add a more granular permission setting for section management — specifically, a setting that would allow Canvas Administrators to grant Instructors the ability to de-cross-list their own courses (without having to give them full admin-level powers).

In our K–12 school district, instructors currently have permission to cross-list sections, but they do not have permission to de-cross-list in Canvas.

Every year, at the beginning of the third quarter, we receive a very high volume of support requests from instructors who have accidentally cross-listed their new third-quarter courses with courses from previous terms (first and/or second quarter). When the term for the parent course ends, that cross-listed course disappears from the dashboard for both instructors and students, since it’s tied to the earlier term.

We have been training our instructors for years not to cross-list courses that do not share the same term, but despite ongoing training and reminders, this continues to be a recurring issue at the same time every year.

Right now, the only solution is for Canvas Admins to step in and de-cross-list these sections so the current-term courses reappear and are clearly visible for instructors and students. This creates a yearly support bottleneck for our admin team.

What we are requesting:

We would love for Canvas to create a separate, admin-controlled permission that:

Allows Canvas Administrators to grant Instructors the ability to de-cross-list sections they manage.
Can be enabled/disabled at the role/permission level (e.g., toggle for “De-cross-list Sections” separate from the existing cross-list permission).
Preserves existing safety checks (e.g., warning about enrollment loss if applicable) while still enabling instructors to correct their own mistakes.

This would:

Empower instructors to fix cross-listing issues themselves.
Greatly reduce the volume of de-cross-listing tickets our admin team receives each term change.
Help K–12 institutions with shorter, multiple terms (quarters, trimesters) who are especially prone to this type of cross-listing error.

Is anyone else experiencing this same challenge in a K–12 or multi-term environment?
If so, how are you handling it, and would a separate “de-cross-list” permission for instructors help your workflow as well?

Thank you for considering this feature request!

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Accepted answers

melodyc_lam

@StevenHolst Hi, and welcome to the community!

If your instructors have the ability to crosslist, they actually have the ability to de-crosslist — or re-crosslist, but they also need to be a teacher in the target course (either the original one or the new course they want to crosslist to). Of course, when you crosslist a section, everyone in the section comes along, including the teacher that has that section enrollment. This probably means that the original course is now empty, and since the teacher is not in the original course, they can't de-crosslist. The crosslisting permission requires that the person doing the crosslisting has access the course.

What I've found is that if you have a SIS integration — and you probably do, as a K-12 — that the teacher is added to the sections that contains students but not to the "default section" that gets created in the course (that normally has the same section name as the course itself and usually only contains the 'test student'). Normally, when a course gets created manually and you enroll someone into a course, a 'default section' gets created to place that user into (normally, the creator of the course as a teacher).

A workaround/solution to the issue is to ensure there's always an enrollment in the course through a section that only contains the teacher. You may need to create this section through a manual SIS import if needed.

If you're programming inclined or have someone that can create a custom tool for you at your district, you could create a crosslist tool that allows teachers to submit a form to crosslist or de-crosslist sections, and turn off the crosslisting permissions for teachers. We have a similar setup for creating courses — we don't allow staff to create courses except through a particular form, so that staff are aware of the implications of creating courses manually.

All comments

melodyc_lam

@StevenHolst Hi, and welcome to the community!

GaryBassler

@StevenHolst Melody is partially correct that they may be able to de-crosslist if they can crosslist. However, it might be turned off. We have de-cross-listing turned off because it was causing too many issues, as assignments and submissions were "lost" when decrosslisting occurred. We are a district with roughly 45,000 users, and we limit de-crosslisting permissions to five people on our Canvas Support Team.

StevenHolst

Hi @melodyc _lam,

Thank you so much for such a clear and detailed explanation of how cross-listing works under the hood, especially around sections, enrollments, and SIS behavior. Your description of the mechanics really helped clarify why teachers lose the ability to de-cross-list once the original course is effectively empty, and your workaround of ensuring there’s always a teacher-only section in the course is both clever and practical.

I especially appreciate your idea of handling cross-list/de-cross-list via a custom tool and form, so that permissions can be controlled while still giving teachers flexibility. That’s a very thoughtful approach to balancing usability and safety.

I think your workaround actually points to a potential product-level solution: Canvas could implement similar logic natively by keeping teachers enrolled in both the “parent” and “child” courses when cross-listing occurs, or by ensuring there’s always a persistent teacher-only section that preserves their access. That way, the need to de-cross-list wouldn’t depend on manual SIS adjustments or custom tools.

I really feel this kind of functionality should be provided directly by Canvas, and your explanation/workaround could serve as a strong model for how they might implement it.

Thanks again for taking the time to share such a helpful and thorough response!

StevenHolst

@GaryBassler Thanks so much for sharing how your district handles this . I’m sorry you’ve had to turn de-cross-listing off because of the issues with “lost” assignments and submissions—that sounds like a lot to manage, especially in a district your size, and it makes sense that this work is in the hands of a small, trusted Canvas Support team.

We’ve been debating how our own district should handle cross-listing and can really see the benefits of both approaches: giving teachers more flexibility vs. tightly controlling de-cross-listing to protect data integrity.

In our case, we would like to use Canvas settings to minimize data loss by only turning de-cross-listing on during key transition windows—at the change of quarters—and then turning it off again after the first week of the quarter. After that point, any additional requests would go through our Canvas Support team, where we can emphasize proper practice and explicitly review the data-loss risks with staff at the time of each request.

Thanks again for the helpful context; it’s really useful to hear how other large districts are handling this.

melodyc_lam

@StevenHolst You're very welcome! If you do go the custom form/tool route, we have a great Developer community here that can help and Instructure provides Canvas API documentation to help with the API calls for crosslisting. Good luck!

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