Both of the common approaches to Academic Program Capacity Management (mentioned last week) can be effective. They provide a partial picture of the need for courses, faculty to teach those courses and the resulting capacity of the programs that use those courses. However, both approaches have drawbacks. Specifically, historical demand analysis only gives a limited, potentially skewed picture of student demand for courses. Templated scheduling is either overly restrictive or not reflective of student needs and wants.

What approaches might be more fruitful? We believe that the introduction of student-specific course demand analysis is a key step. This approach features an analysis sample of active students likely to participate in an upcoming term and simulated students likely to join progressing students (e.g. Freshmen, transfers, returning students). While this method is complex and data-intensive, it is the only way, short of polling your students, to determine unmet course needs.

Rather than using templated or even lock-step scheduling, we favor student-specific academic career plans. These plans can incorporate partial course templates, but also serve many additional purposes. For the student and advisor they become an interactive roadmap to career completion. For the institution, they become an invaluable source of information. Specifically, data is collected regarding each student’s career intent (major, minor, goal graduation date, etc.) and preferences (desired courses, desired terms and times of week, etc.)

Next week, we’ll discuss best practices in the deployment of these two approaches.