Sections, Rosters and Exceptions

Sections are made by an instructor, in one of two places. The Students page has a Create Section button at the top, and Course Settings has a Sections section with the same button under its list. Give it a name, such as "Section A, Morning Class". Classla gives every section a short code of its own, which you see when you make a join link for it.

The Sections list shows every section with its student count, and each row can be renamed or deleted. Deleting a section that still has students asks where they go: pick No Section or another section under Move students to, then Delete Section.

There are three ways into a course, and all three can put a student straight into a section.

Join code

It sits on the course summary as Join Code:, and clicking it copies it. A student who joins with the code has no section until you give them one.

Join link

The link icon beside the join code is Manage join links. Create New Link asks for a section (Course-wide (all sections) or one section) and an Expiry Date and Expiry Time, which start a week out at 23:59. A student who uses a section link lands in that section, and an enrolled student who uses one is moved into it.

Managed account

One you create and enroll yourself. See below.

Course Settings, under Students, has Allow students to join this course. Turned off, the join code and every join link stop working, and only you can add people.

To move a student who is already in, use the section select on their row of the Students page. The confirmation says what moving does not do: "Any assignments already published to this student will stay published. They will not automatically receive assignments previously published to their new section." To move several at once, tick their rows and use Move to section....

A managed account is a student account you create, with a username and a password instead of an email address. It is the roster path for students who have no school email, or who should not make their own accounts. You own the accounts you create: no other teacher sees them.

Open Settings in the top bar (your account settings, not the course's), choose Managed students. It shows how many accounts you manage and the first few; press Manage all (or Create accounts when you have none yet). The Managed Students page has two ways to add accounts:

• Add Student creates one. Type the name, a username and a password (the button beside each field generates one for you), and optionally pick a course under Enroll in Course (Optional). Usernames are 3 to 30 letters, numbers or underscores, and must be unused across all of Classla. Passwords are at least 8 characters.
• Bulk Import creates many. Paste names on the Name List tab, one per line or separated by commas, or upload a file on the CSV File tab with columns First Name, Last Name and an optional Username. Passwords are always generated. Preview Students shows the usernames and passwords and flags any username that is taken, and you can pick a course and a section for the whole batch before importing.

After a bulk import, Download Credentials CSV saves every name, username and password in one file. Save it before you close the dialog: the passwords are not shown again. For a single student, Reset Password makes a new password and shows it once in a Password Reset box to copy; any session that student had open is signed out.

Each account's row also has Enroll (a course you teach, a role and an optional section), Edit name (first and last name), Edit username, and Deactivate, which stops the student signing in but keeps their work (Reactivate undoes it, from the Inactive tab). The delete button removes the account permanently, "including submissions and grades". Tick several accounts to enroll, deactivate or delete them together.

Student Account Controls

At the top of the Managed Students page, two switches decide what your students can change themselves. Both are on until you turn them off, and they apply to every account you manage. This is for younger students, where you want names to stay as you typed them.

• Students can change their name. Off: the name fields in a student's account settings are read-only and say "Your teacher manages your name." Use Edit name to change it.
• Students can change their password. Off: Change Password disappears from their account settings, and they ask you. Use Reset Password.

A per-course display name (Edit display name on a course's Students page) is separate: it changes how the name shows in one course, not the account.

How a Managed Student Signs In

On the sign-in page they type their username into Email or Username, and their password. Anything that is not an email address is read as a username. Once in, their account Settings has Change Password, which needs the current password, unless you turned off Students can change their password. A managed student who forgets their password cannot reset it themselves: the Forgot password? page tells them to ask you, and you use Reset Password.

A managed student cannot join a course with a join code, so they never see a way to type one. You enroll them, or send them a join link, which does work for them. Until they are enrolled, their dashboard says "Your teacher adds you, and it appears here."

The Students page is headed Course Members for staff, with a count of students enrolled. Filter by Section shows All Members, No Section or one section, and marks empty sections (empty). Deactivated students are hidden until you press Show inactive students; the same switch is in Course Settings under Students, and it is saved for the course, so it also decides whether inactive students appear in the gradebook.

Each member's row carries their role and these controls, for an instructor:

Role

Student, TA, Instructor or Audit. An auditor sees the course as a student does but is left out of the gradebook, Analytics and the attendance report. A co-teacher is a member with the Instructor role and can do everything you can. To add a TA or a co-teacher, have them join with the code or a link, then change their role here.

Section

The section select, described above, is for students and auditors.

Deactivate and Reactivate

A deactivated student loses access to the course, but "Their work is kept and you can reactivate them anytime." They show an Inactive chip.

Remove

Deletes their enrollment. This cannot be undone; to keep their work and history, deactivate instead.

Edit display name

The pencil beside a name sets the first and last name this course uses for that person, for a student whose account name is wrong or who goes by another name. Everyone in this course sees it: the gradebook, grading, attendance, analytics, live games, partner work and the name on their code cursor. Their account name does not change, and Reset goes back to it.

Tick students (or the select-all box) for the bulk bar: Move to section..., Deactivate, Reactivate and Remove, each with a confirmation that lists the names. If some changes fail, the toast reads Partially completed and the students it could not change stay ticked, so you can try again.

Students see the same page as Students, in three groups: Instructors, Teaching Assistants and Classmates, with their own section shown at the top.

Schedule, in the assignment header or on the assignment in the course tree, opens one grid. Its rows are Everyone, then every section in the course, then No section if any students have no section. Its columns are Opens, Due and Closes. The top of the dialog counts how many students will get the assignment, such as "48 of 73 students will get it".

Who Gets It

Each row has a checkbox. A checked row gets the assignment; an unchecked one does not, and its dates show as a dash. To publish to one section, check that section and leave the others unchecked. A row with no Opens date opens now when you check it, so on an assignment that is not published yet, checking Everyone and saving opens it now, with no due date, and it stays open.

The arrow beside a section shows its students, indented under it and checked. Uncheck a student to leave them out. The section's box then shows a dash, and the section reads "23 of 24".

Dates

A gray date comes from the row above: a section's from Everyone, a student's from their section. Click it to give that row its own. The menu offers Now (for Opens), the dates already used in that column, a few common ones such as Today, 11:59 PM andTomorrow, 11:59 PM (for Due), and an exact date and time. A row's own date has a purple outline, and its cross goes back to the row above. No due date and Stays open remove a date for that row even when the row above has one.

So the student who was out on Tuesday gets Thursday. The section that is a week behind gets its own Opens date. Nothing is duplicated, and the gradebook still has one column. Students with no section always use Everyone's dates, but each of them can have their own.

Not Open Yet, Open, and Closed

Before its Opens date an assignment is Scheduled: students do not see it, and your sidebar shows a clock with the opening time. Between Opens and Closes it is open. After Closes it is Closed, a lock in your sidebar and in theirs. Students can still open it and see their work, and their score when you release it, but nothing can be changed, started or handed in. Work still in progress at the close stays unsubmitted. A closed assignment is not unpublished. It still counts in the gradebook, the student's own grades and Analytics, and work not handed in by the due date is missing. An assignment that never opened for a student (no Opens date, or one still ahead) is never missing for them.

Attendance, and Saving

If you took attendance in the last day, the dialog lists each section that took it, such as "21 of 24 checked in", with Only who checked in. That makes the section match attendance: students who checked in are checked, and everyone else in the section is unchecked and marked Absent today. Undo puts the section back, and All sections does every section at once (see Attendance).

Nothing in the dialog takes effect until you press Save. Until then the bottom of the dialog reads Unsaved changes with how many students changed, and closing it asks first: Discard, Keep editing or Save and close. A row that closes before it opens cannot be saved. A row that closes before it is due can, with a warning, because those students would lose access before the deadline. If the course posts to Google Classroom, the message after saving says what was posted (see Google Classroom).

On a folder in the course tree, Schedule opens a grid of every assignment in it, with Opens, Due and Closes for each. Open all now opens them all, or only the rows you tick. Set dates gives every row the Same date, or a Weekly pattern: pick the days and a start date, and the first assignment gets the first day, the next one the next day, and so on. A select at the top switches between All sections and one section. Students with their own dates keep them.

The same folder menu has Publish All and Unpublish All, which act on every assignment in the folder and its subfolders at once, without a dialog. Publish All opens each one now for every student and auditor, replacing any Opens dates they had. Unpublish All clears every Opens and Closes date, so nobody sees them; due dates are kept.

Course Settings has a TA permissions section. Default TA Permissions apply to every TA, and under Individual TA Permissions each TA has the same switches to override them; a TA with their own settings has a Reset to Default button. Only an instructor can change these. The checks run on the server, so a TA cannot get around one by sending a request by hand.

Create Assignments

Make new assignments and duplicate existing ones.

Edit Assignments

Change an assignment's content and settings. Create or Edit also lets a TA upload, rename and move course files.

Delete Assignments

Delete assignments, create, rename and delete folders, delete course files, copy assignments to another course, and change a student's files in a coding block. It is content management only: it gives nothing on this page.

View Students

Open the Students page and see who students are, make join links, set display names, and mark attendance by hand.

View Grades

Grade, open the gradebook and Analytics, read rubrics, and run attendance sessions. A TA with View Grades but not View Students sees every student as "Anonymous" in the gradebook and attendance.

Manage Publishing and Due Dates

Schedule, Publish All and Unpublish All, sharing course files with students, and Google Classroom. Publishing is kept apart from editing on purpose: a TA who may publish cannot change content through the same save.

Some things are an instructor's whatever the switches say: every Course Settings section (including TA permissions and sections), changing a member's role or section, deactivating or removing members, enrolling managed students, and archiving or deleting the course.

• Moving a student between sections does not re-run publishing. Assignments already published to them stay published, and they do not receive their new section's earlier work until you open Schedule and save it for them.
• A schedule is saved against the roster as it was when you saved. A student who joins later has no dates of their own, so they do not see assignments published before they joined. Open Schedule: they appear as their own student row, and they get the dates of the rows above once you remove that row and save.
• Hide does not take back an assignment a student has already started. A student with work on it can still open it, even though Schedule lists them as Hidden.
• Publish All replaces each assignment's Opens dates for everyone, including a section or a student you had given later dates. Use the folder's Schedule grid to keep them.
• A deactivated student cannot rejoin by code or link: they are told to ask you to reactivate them. An archived course refuses new students.
• A section code is not a way in by itself. Only the course join code and join links enrol anybody.
• Members are added by a join code, a join link, or managed accounts you create. There is no way to add someone by typing their email address.
• Managed students cannot reset a forgotten password themselves. You reset it and tell them the new one.

• Organizing a Course
• What Students See
• Attendance
• Assignment Settings
• Grading in Classla
• Google Classroom