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Scheduling Principles
To improve enrollment management, we are adopting three general principles with respect to scheduling:
- For low-volume courses (LVC), particularly if they involve sequences, we’re adopting a two-year “pipeline” approach to schedule planning. The most basic form of this approach is to have level 1 and 3 in the Fall and level 2 and 4 in the spring, with a “catch-up” option (and possibly an intensive 5+5 week sequence of levels 1 and 2) in the summer.
- This is the general principle; we’ll make adjustments based on enrollment and student demand.
- For all our programs, we are moving toward a baseline schedule approach (also with a two-year planning horizon). According to this approach, we will
- offer a slate of sections that reliably make based on history
- offer a robust mix of modalities (including f2f modalities like LEC and HYC and DIL modalities such as ONL, DLS, and HYD) based on discipline/course characteristics and patterns of student demand
- monitor enrollments closely using not only familiar tools (like waitlisting) but also new tools coming online in Ad Astra (enrollment velocity by section, course, campus, etc.)
- Add sections throughout the registration cycle based on student demand
- Establish coordinated “packages” of f2f and DLS sections
- maximize student ability to “get a load” on a particular campus or schedule-based modality (e.g. DLS)
- DCs: Coordinate where possible with the programs we serve (see discussion below)
Discussion
This is a departure from our historical approach, which was more akin to an “build it and they will come” model. On closer scrutiny, the old approach was not an effective approach to enrollment management — as evinced by very basic metrics such as the number of empty seats for many courses, by modality, campus, etc. We can do better — and serve students better in the larger picture — by an approach that provides predictable offerings (meaning, we’re confident they will make) and takes account of student needs. This will require a longer-term view, which, as instructional leaders, we need to explain to students and our faculty. It is certainly gratifying to tell a student who wants to start, e.g., level 1 of some sequence in the spring semester that we offer level 1 every semester, but it will be more disheartening in the longer run when those sections are canceled. Similarly, we need to be sensitive to the impact a baseline schedule will have on adjunct faculty, but we also need to be realistic that adjunct faculty interests are not served by the “build it” model if, in fact, “they don’t come.” Advance schedule planning gives everyone time to plan.
It’s important to note that it’s not just enrollment that’s changing; the historical patterns of demand for courses and their distribution are changing as well. A few quick examples: The “swap” in popularity of NRG and HYS that we discussed yesterday illustrates that our old expectations and impressions about “popular” campuses (and modalities) needs rethinking. We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the demand for DIL modalities. We might imagine that this demand will wane with the pandemic, but a great many students who were forced by COVID to try an online learning environment have now decided that online learning fits with the realities of their lives. In other words, most of this greater presence in distance learning is here to stay. Finally, three or four years ago, it would not have occurred to me that the program in our division experiencing growth that’s outstripping our ability to recruit faculty would be INRW. It’s a great problem to have — particularly with our mission as an open-enrollment institution — but it’s a challenge not just to our capacity but to our expectations as well.
In our approach to scheduling, we need to address the issue of scheduling intentional “packages” of courses that address the frequent complaint about not being able to “get a schedule” at a campus, etc. In my mind, there are two issues:
When I hear this complaint from students, I do a little probing. In the majority of cases, the motivation is one of two things. (1) Students want to take an LVC course on “their” campus, but precisely because it’s a LVC, it’s offered less often at some central campus. A good (recent) example:
Student: “I can’t get my whole schedule at Cypress, which is 10 minutes bike ride from my house.”
me: What do we need to offer that you don’t have at CYP?
Student: Korean
Me: Ah — well, there’s not enough demand to offer Korean at multiple campuses — but do we offer it online as DLS so students like you can take it no matter where they need to be.
Student: Oh — that could work.
The obvious lesson here is that it’s not possible to offer everything at every campus “for convenience.” (The other lesson is that offering DLS sections of LVCs to meet the needs of students like this means we ought to create DLS-friendly spaces/labs on campuses — but that’s another story.)
The second situation is that we have logical “packages” of sections in competing time slots. I realized this (again) by talking to students about their actual situations (rather than reading a response on a survey). At one campus, sections of comp II and a core government course all happened to compete — meaning, no one could take both at that campus. That problem isn’t brain surgery; it’s communication and cooperation. I don’t see us solving that problem without direct involvement by and coordination among deans. (I found similar example with core math courses and composition, etc.)
There is are also problems of omission — meaning, we aren’t offering something in the “core of the core” at a campus. I found a couple of examples where we weren’t offering courses like comp 2 at a campus, but the truth is, that’s more rare than the volume (in numbers and loudness) of the complaining suggests.
In my view, the biggest challenge to addressing this “package” problem is that we need a methodology. With the current tools, it’s very difficult to eyeball a spreadsheet and tell definitively what we need to do to prevent competing sections or omissions. I think we could solve much of this problem with two things:
We need an analysis, perhaps by major, of actual student choices. For instance, if I knew what nursing majors tended to take with comp 1, then I could prioritize action on those concomitant courses (as I call them).
Aside from very sophisticated analysis — which we obviously wish we could do (well, some of us wish) — there’s actually a pretty simple way to find out, operationally, what we need to know about student “consumer behavior.” I’ll bet that, for instance, someone in the nursing program knows right now where nursing-track students tend to take their prereqs. So we need to ask them.
Becoming sufficiently nimble to respond to trends that defy our expectations and experience requires intentionally building in room to maneuver, and that is the best reason for adopting the approach delineated here. There are, of course, many details to work out, but in general, I hope you will take the fact that I am raising questions and asking for data and justification as assistance in making the transition to better enrollment management. Thanks!