Table of Contents
Overview
Leveraging Predicted Demand
Enrollment Monitoring
Assigning Meeting Patterns that Reduce Student Conflicts
Related Articles
Overview
In order to build a student-centric and resource-optimized schedule, it is important to take into account student demand.
Coursedog’s Course Demand Projection (CDP) module – also known as “Scheduling Analytics” – surfaces insights directly in Coursedog’s Academic Scheduling interface so that you can easily incorporate recommendations.
You should aim to review all recommendations, and leverage your institutional knowledge to determine whether or not to implement a given insight.
The recommendations are meant to be a helpful guide and tool when you are scheduling.
Leveraging Predicted Demand
Step 1:
Navigate to Academic Scheduling > Section Dashboard > Courses
If predicted demand is available for the given course, it will be visible in the “Predicted Demand” column. Learn more about how demand is predicted.
Not all courses will have predicted demand due to a lack of historical data or issues in the data such as sections with an enrollment capacity of 0.
Step 2: To view additional insights underlying predicted demand, select “Course Analytics”.
Step 3:
You will be navigated to the course’s projections page in CDP in a new tab.
Once here, review the recommendations.
For a full overview of how to navigate and understand the course projections page in CDP, see How to Navigate the Courses View.
Step 4: Navigate back to the section(s) you are editing in Academic Scheduling by selecting “Go to Section Dashboard” from within CDP or by returning to your original browser tab.
Step 5: Once you’re back in Academic Scheduling, you can act on the recommendation by adding or removing sections and/or adding or removing seats (enrollment capacity), modifying modality or campus, or assigning a meeting pattern that will reduce student conflict likelihood.
Enrollment Monitoring
Overview
Once the enrollment window for the given term opens up, you will be able to view actual section fill rates within Academic Scheduling > Section Dashboard.
This enables you to make changes to align the schedule with demand based on actual student behavior for the given term.
Note that if you proactively followed demand insights there should be fewer adjustments to the schedule needed during this period.
How to Do It
Step 1: Navigate to Academic Scheduling > Section Dashboard > Sections.
Step 2:
Ensure the “Current Demand” column is visible and add it if it isn’t.
It’s required in order to view the “current demand” bar.
Step 3:
View “Current Demand (Enrl/Seats)” directly within the dashboard.
The shading of this bar will reflect whether the section is underfilled (orange), balanced (green), or overfilled (red).
It is recommended that you create a saved view with this column that can be referenced during enrollment windows.
Step 4:
Select “Course Analytics” to drill deeper into the data available to the course, including enrollment trends and students in need of the given course based on their program of study and requirements met.
You will be navigated to the course’s projections page in CDP in a new window.
Step 5:
Review the recommendations.
For a full overview of how to navigate and understand the course projections page in CDP, see How to Navigate the Courses View.
Step 6: Navigate back to the section(s) you are editing to adjust the aggregate number of seats and section offerings by selecting “Go to Section Dashboard” from within CDP or by returning to your original browser tab.
Step 7: Once you’re back in Academic Scheduling, you can act on the recommendation by adding or removing sections and/or adding or removing seats (enrollment capacity), modifying modality or campus, or assigning a meeting pattern that will reduce student conflict likelihood.
Assigning Meeting Patterns that Reduce Student Conflicts
Overview
Regardless of whether or not a course is offered, it is only beneficial to students’ progression if its sections are scheduled at times the students are available.
CDP’s “Time Conflicts” heatmap looks at which classes students are likely to take and recommends windows of time classes should be scheduled based on predicted load. This reduces scheduling conflict likelihood by creating a distributed schedule for students.
This heatmap is helpful to reduce current email back and forth between Department Schedulers to ensure critical classes are offered at different times.
For a full overview of how “Time Conflicts” insights work, see Navigating the Courses View.
How to Do It
If time conflicts exist for a section you’re reviewing, a “Show Best Times for Students” button will appear on the “Meeting Patterns & Room” card (Scheduling > Section Dashboard > [Open Section]).
The conflict courses within the heatmap are driven by the “Default” saved view the user has set on the Course in CDP
Follow the below steps to assign a meeting pattern that reduces student conflicts.
Step 1: Open a section.
Step 2: Click “Show Best Times for Students".
Step 3:
Review the conflict heatmap to determine which windows of time are least likely to create scheduling conflicts for students.
The lighter the shading on the map, the less likely the time will create conflicts for students.
Step 4: If you would like to modify the courses deemed “conflict courses”, you can do so in Course Demand Projections.