Questions CEDAR Answers
Common questions about courses, students, and programs, and how to use CEDAR to answer each one.
Every answer has the same parts: a short answer, where to go in CEDAR, what to watch out for so the number means what you think it means, and where to read more. The watch-outs matter most: they are the places where a plausible number can quietly answer a different question.
Not sure where to start? The User Guide has a quick reference by role.
Jump to: Scheduling and seats · Students and programs · Outcomes · Trends and resources · Trusting the numbers
Scheduling and seats
Which of my sections are at risk this term?
Short answer: Look at sections below your enrollment thresholds, and at courses running well below their own history.
In CEDAR: Explore → Enrollment → Low Enrollment lists active sections under configurable thresholds by course level; for a future term, its concerns mode uses prior patterns to flag courses likely to struggle. The Dept Dashboard (pick campus, department, and term, then Gather Data) shows courses running above and below their historical averages for the same kind of term.
Watch out for: a term still in registration is a snapshot, not a final count — it is labelled in progress. Compare it with earlier terms at the same point in registration, not with their final numbers.
More: Enrollment · Dept Dashboard
Is a course turning students away?
Short answer: Check true waitlist demand against seats, across several terms, together with how full the course gets.
In CEDAR: Registration → Waitlists (then Inspect Waitlists) shows who is waiting, by course, program, and class standing. Registration → Regstats flags High Waitlists and Saturation against each course’s own history.
Watch out for:
- CEDAR’s waitlist count is distinct students still waiting who are not already registered in the same course — not the raw Banner waitlist field.
- A small waitlist in a past term does not prove demand was small: old extracts keep only students still waiting when the term closed.
- Students who wanted a course but never joined a waitlist are invisible here.
More: Waitlists · Regstats · What CEDAR counts
Where are there open seats students could take?
Short answer: Find courses with room in the term, compared with the same term last year.
In CEDAR: Registration → Open Seats, set your filters, then Find Open Seats. Tabs separate common courses, courses that ran last year but not this year, new courses, and Gen Ed.
Watch out for: availability is counted from CEDAR’s enrollment data and can differ from Banner’s live capacity during registration. Campus defaults to ABQ and EA.
More: Open Seats
How many sections will we need next term?
Short answer: Start from the saved demand projection for each course, then read how much its history supports it.
In CEDAR: Registration → Projections shows projected demand and section need for the next Spring or Fall, for ABQ and EA together. Its Scenario sub-tab answers “if one group of students grows, what happens to the courses they take?”
Watch out for:
- Each projection carries three separate ratings — stability, depth, and accuracy. They can disagree; read all three rather than looking for one verdict.
- A course that filled its seats can only show demand up to capacity. Those rows are marked Capacity-bounded: the true demand may be higher.
- Branch campuses are not included.
More: Enrollment Projections
What is unusual about registration this term?
Short answer: Compare each course with its own history at the same point in the term.
In CEDAR: Registration → Regstats sorts courses into signals — Enrollment Bumps, Enrollment Dips, High Waitlists, Saturation, Early Drops, Late Drops, and Downstream Concerns.
Watch out for: a signal says a course differs from its history, not why. Early drops (before the drop deadline) are registration churn; late drops carry a grade consequence and are counted with DFW.
More: Regstats
Which sections were cancelled, and how close to the start?
In CEDAR: Admin → Cancellations, then Find Cancellations, by term, department, course, level, part of term, or delivery method.
Watch out for: the view shows what was cancelled and when, not why.
More: Cancellations
Students and programs
How many majors do we have, and is that changing?
Short answer: Count unique students with an active declared program, term by term.
In CEDAR: Explore → Headcount (then Update Headcount) for majors, minors, and concentrations over time, by college or program. Dept Trends → Headcount shows the same for a department alongside its other trends.
Watch out for:
- Headcount counts declared programs; it is not the number of students in your courses. A department with few majors can teach many students.
- Pre-majors are counted separately from admitted majors where the program records say so.
- A department’s total depends on which programs map to it — see Why does a department look smaller than it should?
More: Headcount · Why numbers differ
Who takes our courses?
Short answer: Look at the majors and class standing of the students in a course, over time.
In CEDAR: Course Dynamics → Rollcall for one course, by classification and declared major. The Dept Dashboard’s Student composition and Where your majors also study / Who minors here panels do the same for a department.
Watch out for: a student’s major is the one declared in that term, so a student who switches majors appears under each in turn.
More: Course Dynamics · Dept Dashboard
Where do students in a program move — into, within, or out of it?
Short answer: Follow a defined population’s program records over time.
In CEDAR: Pathways — build a population (for example, a program and its pre-majors), then Define Population. Major Changes shows movement into, within, and out of the unit, separating pre-majors from full majors; Course to Major shows which courses students took before they first entered it.
Watch out for: these views are descriptive. They show where a pattern is worth asking about, not why students moved. Recent cohorts have not had time to change majors yet.
More: Pathways
Which courses do students in a program take, and when?
In CEDAR: Pathways → Course Timing shows when in their career students take each course; Course Pairs shows courses students commonly take before or after one another.
Watch out for: course pairs are observed sequences, not catalog requirements. Course Timing places students by class standing or by the credits CEDAR counted itself — never by Banner’s cumulative credit fields, which show today’s totals on every past term.
More: Pathways · Field reliability
Outcomes
What is the DFW rate for a course, and is it changing?
Short answer: The share of students who did not pass, including those who withdrew late, term by term.
In CEDAR: Course Dynamics → DFW for one course, with trend lines and an optional breakdown by instructor type. Dept Trends → DFW for a department.
Watch out for:
- Only A+ through C (and CR) count as passing. C-, every D, F, W, incompletes, NC, NR, P, S, and late drops all count toward DFW. Early drops are never DFW.
- Terms without posted grades are left out, not counted as zero.
- The instructor-type breakdown depends on faculty HR data, which currently ends in Spring 2025.
More: What CEDAR counts · Course Dynamics
Which courses are roadblocks for a group of students?
Short answer: Find courses where students in the group commonly do not pass, and whether they continue afterward.
In CEDAR: Pathways → Roadblocks for a defined population, including courses outside the department if those students take them.
Watch out for: Roadblocks uses each student’s first observed outcome in a course, so it differs from a course’s all-attempt DFW rate on purpose.
More: Pathways
Do students keep enrolling after taking a course?
In CEDAR: Course Dynamics → Retention shows how many students enrolled in a course were still enrolled in later terms, optionally by instructor.
Watch out for: “still enrolled” means anywhere at the university, not in the same department or campus. Students who took the course too recently to have the follow-up terms are left out rather than counted as gone.
More: Course Dynamics
Does taking course A before course B help?
In CEDAR: Course Dynamics → Downstream → Course Sequence compares later results for students who did and did not take one course first; Instructor Patterns compares later grades by the instructor students had.
Watch out for: students choose their own sequences and sections. The balance table shows how alike the groups were; a difference is a lead to investigate, not proof that one path causes better results.
More: Course Dynamics
Trends and resources
How is credit hour production changing?
In CEDAR: Dept Trends → Credit Hours by course level (lower, upper, graduate) over time. The Dept Dashboard shows this term’s credit hours by level.
Watch out for: credit hours are counted from registered (attempted) hours, so the current term appears as soon as students register — marked in progress — rather than waiting for grades.
More: Dept Trends
How many degrees does a department award?
In CEDAR: Dept Trends → Degrees.
More: Dept Trends
How are Gen Ed courses doing?
In CEDAR: Explore → Gen Ed (then Run) for Gen Ed enrollment by modality, which majors fill Gen Ed seats, department summaries, DFW rates, and grade distributions.
More: Gen Ed
Trusting the numbers
Why does this number differ from another tab, or from an official report?
Short answer: Usually because the two numbers count different things, at different times, or for different campuses.
In CEDAR: start with Why Numbers Differ Across Tabs, then What CEDAR Counts.
Watch out for:
- Enrollment is not one number: a section’s count at a moment in registration, its count after drops, and the number ever registered all differ.
- Course figures are grouped by the campus that taught the course. A filter on students’ home campus does not keep branch-taught courses out.
- CEDAR’s data comes from MyReports, not the official census files, so it will not match census reports exactly.
More: Understanding Your Data
Is this term’s data complete?
In CEDAR: Admin → Data & Usage → Data Summary shows what is loaded and how fresh each source is. Charts label any term still in progress.
Watch out for: a term arrives in stages — registration first, grades weeks after it ends. Questions about grades stop at the last term with grades posted; questions comparing years stop at the last complete term.
More: Data & Usage · Understanding Your Data
Why does a department look smaller than it should?
Short answer: Some of its programs or course subjects may not be mapped to it yet.
In CEDAR: Admin → Data & Usage → Mappings. The Mapping decisions table lists every program and course subject whose department is not yet confirmed, largest first. Reported today as … (phantom) means its students are counted under a department named after the code itself, not under their real department.
Watch out for: a decision is made by editing CEDAR’s mapping files (each row links to its line). A course-subject decision reaches the numbers at the next data refresh; program decisions take effect once CEDAR switches department assignment over to the mapping files, which is in progress.
More: Data & Usage → Mappings
Getting started
CEDAR runs as a web dashboard — no R knowledge required for users. Setup requires someone with basic R skills and access to your institution’s standard enrollment data exports. It is typically a one-time project that a technical staff member handles, after which the dashboard updates each term.