Table of Contents

Overview
Enabling Demand Analytics
Understanding Section Demand Analytics
Understanding Course Demand Analytics
Best Practices 

Overview

• Coursedog's Demand Analytics is a powerful reporting tool that uses historical enrollment data to forecast enrollment and make recommendations on max enrollment capacity where applicable.

• We calculate forecasted enrollment through a multivariate linear regression.

• Demand analytics requires historical enrollment data to create any forecasts.

• Once historical data is loaded into the Coursedog system, it will take about one week until the initial forecasts are complete (there is no set number of prior terms required for forecasts to be generated). After that, forecasts will be available at any time and will be updated on a weekly basis and on saved section updates (calculations will take ~30mins to refresh). 

Enabling Demand Analytics

Once your institution has provided historical enrollment data, you will need to adjust permissions in order to see the “View Section Demand Analytics Button” next to every section and a “Course Analytics” button next to every course. 

Step 1: 

• Set "View Schedule Analytics" to "Allow". 

• PATH: Academic Scheduling > Settings > Roles > Course Editor 

Step 2: 

• Navigate to Admin Panel > Demand Analytics to enable settings.

• Suggested best practices are: 

  • Are Projections On? – YES

  • Section Tracking Field – Select “Section ID” or “Section Number”. “Section ID” is the default, but if your institution’s section IDs are unique or change frequently, switch to “Section Number”. 

  • Data Source – Select “Coursedog” as the source if you have section data for multiple terms in Coursedog. If not, select “School”. 

  • Term Comparison – Default suggestion is “Like Terms”, but this can be set according to your institution’s preference. 

Step 3:

• Once permissions have been turned on, you should see the “Course Analytics” and “Section Demand Analytics” buttons. 

• Click any course to open its accordion and to view the “Course Analytics” option to the right of the Course Description. 

• To view Section Demand Analytics, when available, hover over the relevant section to access the “View Section Demand Analytics” icon.

Step 4: Click the "View Section Demand Analytics" button to see a modal containing all analytics information for that section.

Understanding Section Demand Analytics

The Section Demand analytics modal contains the following information: 

• A stated recommendation if applicable – This is shown if there is a discrepancy between the forecasted enrollment for the current scheduling term and the max enrollment. In the example above, the term is Fall 2020, and the max enrollment is set as 45. However, the forecasted enrollment is 35, so we recommend decreasing the max enrollment capacity. 

• A graph with a line differentiating historical from forecasted data.

• A table with the underlying data from the graph – Includes term, enrollment, max enrollment capacity and waitlist.

Understanding Course Demand Analytics

The Course Demand Analytics modal is similar, except it shows information aggregated across all sections of that particular course. The listed Max Enrollment Capacity, for example, is the average Max Enrollment Capacity for all sections of a given course.

Best Practices

• Demand analytics work best when scheduling data is rolled over from term-to-term. This process creates an audit trail that makes it easy to track a section's particular history through various scheduling terms. By engaging in a rollover-based process, your institution will have access to the most accurate forecasts possible. Please note that forecasts are only displayed prior to the start date of a section. Once the section start date has been reached, only actual data will be displayed and the forecast will no longer be available.

  • Troubleshooting Note: if you are unable to view forecasted data, make sure you review the Section Start Date and End Date inputs and ensure these are future-dated

• Demand analytics use the course's id (course.id) and the section's id (section.id) to create the audit trail, term over term and year over year.  In case no recurring section id is found in the historical data, the engine will use the section number (section.sectionNumber). Speak to your Coursedog representative regarding how to best configure this in the Admin panel.

• We suggest viewing the forecasted enrollment trends before any room scheduling takes place at your institution and making modifications to the values of max enrollment and room preferences to ensure your space is utilized as efficiently as possible.