Course Demand Updates

As feature updates and additions are made, they will be described here, starting with the most recent. 

Filter Improvements

Oct 22, 2024 | Available for all

There are several usability improvements to how filters work in Course Demand:

• The icon for clearing current filter selections (saved or not) is now the word RESET.
• Saving or deleting a filter now opens a dialog box to confirm your choices, which will be leveraged for upcoming features.
• The new trash can icon next to each saved filter makes it easy to delete it.

Time Frame for Alerts

Oct 1, 2024 | Available for all

In this update: This release has reengineered the processing of course demand alerts for better relevance, based on your census date. Once your census date is reached, sections and courses are locked in, so alerts now stop processing as soon as that deadline is reached. If your institution does not have a different census date mapped, it defaults to 14 days after the start of term (or session).

Action needed:  None. The new alert processing behavior is available for all users. 

Alerts are now only evaluated for terms (and term sessions) whose census date is still in the future, while it’s still possible to make course and section adjustments.

• Section-level alerts stop after the census date of the term (or term session) in which the section falls.
• Course-level alerts stop after the latest census date for any of its associated sections across all career types (undergraduate, graduate).

When is your census? If the Session Census Date field is mapped for your institution, alert processing uses that. Otherwise, it defaults to 14 days after the first day of the term. If you have sessions set up within terms, then alert processing uses the census date for each session.

Full Data for “Who takes this course?”

Sep 10, 2024 | Available for all

In this update: This release has reengineered the “Who takes this course?” chart to offer full data for the program areas. Previously, the chart summarized the non-top-5 groups into a single “Other” category, shown as a single slice of the pie chart. Now, the chart and descriptions list all programs and include the student counts as well.

Action needed:  None. The complete data is immediately available to all users. 

In response to your feedback, the “Who takes this course?” chart has been reengineered to remove the “Other” bucket for programs that are not in the top 5, and it surfaces more details about each program group:

• “Other” bucket — On the chart, you no longer see lower-percentage programs bundled into an “Other” bucket; all program areas are now included. 
• Paging — You now have paging buttons (bottom right) to see all the programs that used to be rolled into “Other”.
• Program counts — The chart now adds a column for the student count as well as the percentage.
• Details — The summary at left now includes more detail, with counts and percentages across 3 years of data.

Download for “Who takes this course?”

Sep 10, 2024 | Available for all

In this update: This release adds export capability to the “Who takes this course?” chart. The download generates a CSV with student counts and percentages for every program involved.

Action needed:  None. The download feature is immediately available to all users. 

In response to your feedback, the “Who takes this course?” chart has been extended with export capability. It now includes a new button at the bottom left that you can select to download the full list of programs. It exports as a CSV that you can share and open in your spreadsheet application.

The CSV file is named to include both the ID of the course and time you downloaded it: 

<course ID>_who_takes_this_course_<timestamp>.csv

The download includes all available columns:

• Program Name
• Student Count
• Percentage

Chart Averages by Season: “Too many seats?”

Aug 20, 2024 | Available for all

In this update: The chart “Are we offering too many seats?” has been reengineered to support seasonal comparisons: “Are we offering the right number of seats per term?” This update replaces the overall average line with seasonal average lines, answering the question by term (rather than across all terms).

Action needed:  None. The new chart is immediately available to all users, on the Course Trends tab. 

In response to your feedback, the chart “Are we offering too many seats?” is now reengineered to support seasonal comparisons: “Are we offering the right number of seats per term?” This addresses the concern that an overall average fill rate line proves unhelpful when noncritical seasons such as Summer are included, skewing the year-round average. 

On the chart, you see a new summary at left and Fill Rate Average added to the legend (top right). When you hover over a bar, the chart highlights all bars of the same season (below, Summer)  and shows the average fill rate.

The Yes/No evaluations are based on the percentile ranges shown in the legend:

• Yes — Assigned to green values only: 80 – 100%
• No — Assigned to all other values: < 80% or > 100%

Seasons with no enrollment data are excluded from this summary.

Demand Changes

Aug 20, 2024 | Available for all

In this update:  The Demand Analytics insight dashboard expands the Demand Trends overviews with a new table, Demand Changes, that lets you page through and sort courses by their growth or decline in seasonal historical trends and in forecasted demand. Filters apply.

Action needed:  None. The new course listings are immediately available to all users. To view them, select the Demand Analytics tab, at the top of the page.

For this release, an extension of Demand Trends data is now available. The Demand Changes table at the bottom of the Demand Trends tab lets you sort courses by the size of their demand change, to find ones with the highest drop or surge in demand for the timeframe of interest. You can apply and change the filters (at top) to see only the courses you need.

For each season available at your institution, you now see a pair of columns summarizing that course’s past (Trend) and future (Forecast):

• Historical Trend — Gives the percentage change in the seats filled between the earliest and most recent terms (over the last 3 years) of this course for the given season.
• Forecast — Gives the percentage change in seats you’re predicted to need for this course for this coming term. The popup will alert you whether this course has a Forecasted Increase, Forecasted Decrease, or Steady Demand.

When you hover over the table entries, you see either the seasonal historical trend data or the forecasted growth, as relevant.

You can navigate this table the same way you do the All Courses list:

• Select a course name (highlighted in blue) to open its Course Profile > Sections tab.
• Paging — Select the arrows at the bottom right to page through 10 courses at a time (the default), or change it to page 5 or 25 rows at a time.
• Filter — When you apply filters, it refreshes the entire page, including the courses shown in this table. If you see no courses and a “No data” message, try changing or removing a filter.
• Sort — Select the column headings to toggle the sort order of the current courses. You can sort by every column in the table. Hover around a column heading to display its sort arrows.  

Counting Withdrawals in Enrollment

Aug 20, 2024 | Available for PeopleSoft and Banner

In this update: This release adds the following enhancement to PeopleSoft: The calculation of total enrollment counts throughout Course Demand Analytics has been clarified around withdrawals, to offer a better representation of demand. Students who withdraw before the census (the add/drop deadline) are still excluded, but those who drop during the term (after the census date) are now counted. 

Action needed:  None. The new enrollment counts are immediately available to all users. 

Demand Trends, Seasonal Summaries

Jul 9, 2024 | Available for all

In this update:  The Demand Analytics insight dashboard expands the Demand Trends overviews with new seasonal summaries, to make it easier for you to spot those trends. The “Seat Fill Trends: Historical vs. Forecasted Demand” chart is now followed by panels that compare historical and projected trends by your term seasons (Fall, Spring, Summer). 

Action needed:  None. The new panels are immediately available to all users. To view them, select the Demand Analytics tab, at the top of the page.

For this release, an extension of Demand Trends data is now available. The “Seat Fill Trends: Historical vs. Forecasted Demand” chart shows a historical picture of seats filled, color-coded by term type. Below it are the new summaries, by season:

For each season in your data (as set for your institution), you see the past and future snapshot, with green calling out 1% or greater increases and red calling out –1% or greater drops:

• Historical Trend — shows the average trend across the past 3 years of the season
• Forecasted Demand — shows the predicted change for the next term of that season

To drill into the data, hover over one of the summaries:

• Historical Trend — hovering pops up the seats-filled data for all of the past seasons available, up to 3:
  
• Forecasted Demand — hovering pops up the number forecasted and how many were filled previously:
  

Filtering supported — The seasonal trend summaries also update dynamically when you apply and remove filters, such as to only see data for a particular department. If the trend data is not what you expect, verify which filters you have applied, if any.

Demand Trends

May 7, 2024 | Available for all

In this update:  The Demand Analytics insight dashboard now includes Demand Trends overviews, above the alerts. The “Seat Fill Trends: Historical vs. Forecasted Demand” chart is the first of a set of overview charts that will provide visual summaries of your demand data, reflecting your filters. 

Action needed:  None. The chart is immediately available to all users. To view it, select the Demand Analytics tab, at the top of the page.

For this release, the first of a set of Demand Trends is now available. The “Seat Fill Trends: Historical vs. Forecasted Demand” chart shows a historical picture of seats filled, color-coded by term type. It also includes forecasted demand for future terms, which you read like this:

• Slashed bar: For a future term, this is the forecasted demand for seats
• Solid bar within the slashed bar: If registration is active in the future term, the solid bar tracks the number of seats filled so far

Filtering supported — The Demand Trends charts update dynamically when you apply and remove filters, such as to only see data for the Accounting Department:

Insights to come — Demand Trends insights that are under development for future release will show seasonal trends and a drill-down of courses. 

Demand Alerts for Future Terms

Mar 26, 2024 | Available for all

In this update:  The Alert Settings now offers Future Term Alerts, so that you can track forecasted increases and decreases in demand for courses, to inform your planning.

Action needed: Review Alert Settings for new ones to enable. All alerts remain disabled until each user opens their own Alert Settings and enables some or all of them.

For this release, alerts are now available for future terms (beyond the ones currently enrolling). (Note that email notifications/subscriptions are in development). The new alerts are triggered when a course’s forecast reaches the change in demand you specify:

• Forecasted increase — Alerts you when the predicted number of additional seats needed for a future course hits your threshold (defaults to 25% more, compared to the last time the course was offered).
• Forecasted decrease — Alerts you when the predicted number of empty seats for a future course hits your threshold (defaults to 25% fewer needed, compared to the last time the course was offered).

Term view — The Demand Analytics tab now includes any forecast-driven alerts that apply to courses offered across an entire future term, based on your alert settings. The alerts listed are for the term you selected at left (listed chronologically), and you can download this data as CSV:

Course view — The Course Profile page’s Course Alerts tab now includes any future alerts you enabled that apply to this course, and the tab includes a counter for all alerts, to notify you at a glance whenever you open a course profile. The download button gives you the alerts as CSV:

Configuration — You define your set of course alerts on the Alert Settings tab, in the main view:

By default, all alerts are disabled so that you will see only those you select intentionally, with the thresholds (percentages) you choose:

Standalone Access for Course Demand

Mar 26, 2024 | Available for all

In this update:  To give you greater control over what users of Course Demand Analytics can do in the rest of Admin Analytics, additional permissions have been added under the Admin Analytics area of Access Permissions, so you can selectively disable sensitive areas. 

Action needed: None. The new permission structure will not affect your existing users: their access remains the same until you edit their permissions.

In response to requests for greater control over what Course Demand Analytics users may see in Admin Analytics, the User Management Access Permissions have been reworked to offer more options. 

All your existing users will keep their prior access until you edit their User account to change it. When you create new or edit existing user accounts, you can grant basic access to Administrative Analytics without granting access to some or all of these feature areas:

• Trends (Dashboard tab)
• Persistence Insights (Dashboard tab)
• Completion Insights (Dashboard tab)
• Course Demand Analytics (side menu)
• Scratchpad (side menu)
• Nudge Hub (side menu) 

Planning Data Integration

Mar 26, 2024 | Available for all (with Academic Planning)

Now that Course Demand Analytics has data integration with Academic Planning, a new course column, Planned By Student, appears for institutions using Academic Planning:

Note: This appears only if you have Academic Planning.

In addition, under each course’s Course Trends tab, the chart for “Are students planning this course?” pulls summaries from your Academic Planning data. This trend looks one year into the future, calculating the total number of students who currently have this course slated for future terms on their plans in Academic Planning:

This trend chart can help you with anticipating demand, scheduling courses optimally, and planning resources.

Data refreshes — This planning data refreshes daily, versus active registration data, which needs frequent updates (every 15 minutes). To verify the freshness of the planning counts and charts, open the Data Information page and locate the Academic Planning Extract timestamp.  

Filtering Dashboard Alerts

Mar 5, 2024 | Available for all

On the dashboard of Demand Analytics, the Insight List now supports filtering: applying new or saved filters dynamically updates your view of the alerts on the page. The filters also apply to the Download link, which means that the CSV contains only the alerts that match your current filter.

Because alert selections are personal to each user, no alerts appear until you enable them under Alert Settings. When no filters are applied, you see all of the enabled alerts for the given term, across all courses. When you apply filters, the page redraws to show you alert data only for courses that meet your criteria:

Counters call out the total number of alerts as well as the total courses per alert type. You can toggle the column headers to sort up and down, and you can select Download to export a CSV file of the current view.

Click through a blue course ID to open the course’s Sections details, to see the sections triggering the alert. Scroll down to the individual sections to see the fill rates compared:

Faster Loading of Alerts

Mar 5, 2024 | Available for all

Performance has been improved around the loading of alerts, for both the displaying of large numbers of existing alerts and the loading of the page when many types of alerts have been enabled.

Course Alerts

Feb 13, 2024 | Available for all

Basic course alerts are now available for Course Demand Analytics, enabling you to track enrollment issues for the specific course issues that you care most about. 

Scope: For this initial release, alerts apply only to active terms (those enrolling now, through census), and you work with alerts within the application only (email notifications/subscriptions are planned).

This first release of course alerts lets you set up your own alerts and to see those current-term alerts from one of two views:

Term view — The Demand Analytics tab lists any current alerts that apply to courses offered across the entire term, based on your own alert settings. These alerts are for the active term you selected (if you have more than one that’s in open enrollment), and you can download this data as CSV:

Course view — The Course Profile page’s new Course Alerts tab lists any current alerts you enabled that apply to this course, and the tab includes a counter for the alerts, to notify you at a glance whenever you open a course profile. The download button gives you the alerts as CSV:

Configuration — You define your set of course alerts on the new Alert Settings tab, in the main view. By default, all alerts are disabled so that you will see only those you select intentionally, with the thresholds you choose.

Good to Know

• When do alerts refresh? — Course Alerts refresh about every 15 minutes; check the Last Updated timestamp to verify when it happens. When you change your alert settings, the alert list updates when the next refresh runs. 
• Who sees my alerts? — The alerts you define here are for your use only and are only seen by you. That means you can disable alerts and change thresholds without affecting anyone else on your team. 
• Is something missing? — If you’re not seeing information you think you should, it may be due to how you configured your alerts. For example, if you disabled waitlist alerts, no waitlist alert will show, even if a course has an active waitlist.
• Where’s the section code? — If you don’t see a section code in a row of the CSV download, it means the alert applies to the entire course.

Combined Enrollment/Forecast Chart 

Feb 13, 2024 | Available for all

When you view a specific course, the Sections list now includes a summary chart for its Enrollment + Forecasted Demand. 

To read the bar chart, follow the color to focus on the season (such as Spring being blue), and follow solid versus hatched to distinguish the current/past terms from the future ones. Hover over a bar to see its details:

Use the panel to the right of the bar chart to review the demand and/or enrollment data for the specified term, as it’s available (enrollment must be active). Choose a different term from the drop-list:

Course Growth Charting

Oct 11, 2023 | Available for all

To support easier tracking of course growth across similar terms (such as only Fall offerings), the Course Trends chart for “Is enrollment for this course growing?” has been reengineered. 

Legend colors now help you spot trends across a given term type:

Hover over the legend to highlight just one term (or only the capacity planned):

Hover over a bar to see its details:

Highlighting Registration Windows

Oct 11, 2023 | Available for all

To help you quickly recognize where registration is active, we made several improvements to highlight the registration dates and statuses you need:

• On both the Course List and Course Profile, when you select a term that’s taking registrations, an ⭐Active Registration flag appears next to the term. In the Term Selector,  the ⭐Active Registration flag appears below every term where enrollment is currently active. Terms in Active Registration are sorted by the closest term start date.
  
• On both the Course List and Course Profile, the dates for the Registration Window appear to the right of the Term Dates. If you see “Not specified” for a date, it means the information is missing in the SIS data. For easy reference to the dates affecting a given term, changing the Term selection displays both its Term Dates and Registration Window dates:
  
  

“Active Registration” — Registration is “active” if today’s date falls within the term’s Registration Window (inclusive). A term is considered active from when its registration opens until it closes.

Save Named Filter Sets

Oct 11, 2023 | Available for all

You can now save your important filter combinations by name, which lets you quickly jump to the set of courses you need to work with. As you save named filter sets, they’re added to the drop-down list for quick selection:

The saved filter feature lets you manage your sets by names you choose:

• Name and save the set of filters you just applied
• See all and select from your saved filters (you only see your own)
• Delete a filter you saved (🗑 trash can icon)

Visibility — Any course filters you create appear only in Course Demand Analytics because they handle unique course data. Only you can see the course filters that you named and saved.

Changes to Demand Forecast

Sep 12, 2023 | Available for all

The original Demand Forecast column has been renamed and broken out to improve understanding and usage of the forecast (course demand prediction). In the Courses list, the single column is now two:

1. The existing Demand Forecast column is now Seats Predicted (count). This count includes plus, minus, and steady icons for the trend’s direction and shows alerts (yellow triangle icon) for any missing comparison data.
2. A new Forecast Trend (%) column shows the change in the demand forecast as a percentage (delta). Hover over the value to see the details of the forecasted change:

This is the same information that appears when you view an individual course:

The Demand Forecast filter is also updated for these changes: In the Filters panel, the Demand Forecast filter is now Forecast Trend:

Missing predictions: If a forecast is not available for Demand Forecast or Seats Predicted, you will see N/A and a message. If you do not see these columns displayed, check whether you have a future term selected. Only future terms include predictions.

Improved Sections Download

Sep 12, 2023 | Available for all

In response to requests for a more usable download file for course section information, the CSV file has been rearchitected. 

• The JSON formatting has been removed, for both readability and better usage in spreadsheet applications.
• The column data has been flattened to remove unhelpful levels of detail per column.

SIS Statuses for Sections

Aug 22, 2023 | Available for PeopleSoft and Banner

For institutions using PeopleSoft (Oracle) or Banner (Ellucian) for their SIS, integration now pulls in Status data for all sections, whether active, inactive, canceled, or reserved. 

This section data populates the Status field, which shows up under Availability when you expand a section’s details.

Demand Forecast Filter

Jul 18, 2023 | Available for all

A new Filters category, Demand Forecast, is now available for filtering your view of the course list. When you choose a forecast trend (Increasing, Decreasing, Steady, or Not available), the list hides courses based on their value in the Demand Forecast column. 

• Selecting the Increased Demand filter helps you focus on courses that might need intervention, such as adding sections or faculty. 
• Selecting the Decreased Demand filter lets you focus on courses that might be candidates for consolidation or elimination of sections. 
• Selecting No comparison available lets you see which courses have no calculation for the change in demand forecast. Keep in mind that forecasts do not apply to past terms.

Usability Improvements

Jul 18, 2023 | Available for all

In response to Early Access Program feedback, several improvements have been added:

• Disabled Terms — Terms for which there is no data are now disabled (grayed out) in the Term selector drop-down. These situations include current and future terms with no course data and future terms that are missing data or demand forecasts.
• Seats Available — Because it is important information, the Seats Available column now appears by default on the Course Profile > Sections list as well as the main Courses list.

Features Under Development

May 11, 2023 | Available for all

These features are currently under development for future release to Early Access:

•  DEMAND ANALYTICS | Your primary dashboard view
• COURSE ALERTS | Automate enrollment monitoring 
• Course Demand Forecast (column for future terms)

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