Merged courses

For courses that have been merged in BrightSpace, there are a few extra steps that must be taken in Alma for it to work correctly and map to the reading list. First, we need to be sure to get the correct Course ID Code from BrightSpace. If you have access to Brightspace, you can find the Course ID in there. To do that, bring up your course and go to Course Admin. It should look something like this:

Click on “Course Offering information” and look for “Course Offering Code”:

The Course Offering Code is the match-point between Brightspace and Leganto. Without it, the connection between the two will not work.

Note: If you do not have access to the Course Admin area in Brightspace, please submit an INFORM.

STEP 2

Second, in Alma, there needs to be a matching Course Code ID that matches the one from BrightSpace. It is recommended to use one of the unmerged courses listed in Alma, choose “Duplicate”. For example, if the course code in Brightspace is this – 2026F.1.ENGM.2440.01.02.MERGE – then in Alma, look for 2026F.1.ENGM.2440.01. Then click on the More actions button and select Duplicate:

 

Then in the form that pops up, edit the following fields:

• Code – needs to be the exact same code as what is found in BrightSpace
• Section – add the appropriate sections (i.e., 01-03)
• Name – remove “Copy of ” and edit the field appropriately. Normally that means just removing the section number in the name.
• Number of participants – this should be the total from all sections. If you don’t want to do that, you could just enter 0.
• Searchable IDs – I like to add the individual courses here.

Then click Save.

Before:	After:

STEP 3

Now it is time to create the reading list. Since you created a new course, there will not be a reading list associated. So depending on your circumstances and how you want to proceed, you can either create a reading list from scratch or duplicate a reading list from a previous course. For this example, we will use “Copy Reading List”:

We have courses back to 2023 to the easiest thing to do is to search for the course – either by code or name:

Click the check box and then click Select:
It will then return you to the Courses list, so the next step is to update the reading list you just duplicated. So click on the More Options button and select “Reading List”:

This will list the reading list you just copied. Notice the Code still has “2025” on it – that needs to be updated. The Name often will include something that identifies the list as being a copy as well (like a (1) after the name) – I would suggest removing that. Just click on the More Options button and select “Work On”:

From there, modify the Code: to that it also matches what is coming from Brightspace (though this is not required). Then click on the Courses tab and make sure the reading list is linked to the course. It might also be beneficial to associate the course with the unmerged courses, just in case, though this is not required.

After these changes are made, click “Save”. From there, I would do the rest of the work in Leganto:

 

By doing the steps above, we 1) make sure the BrightSpace code matches the Course Code and the Reading List; and 2) makes sure only students enrolled in the courses are allowed to access the course materials included in the reading list. This has to be done each semester.