Course Dynamics
Enrollment patterns, student flows, and grade distributions for a specific course
Course Dynamics is a one-course workspace: enrollment history, who takes the course, where students come from, grade outcomes, and what later enrollment looks like. It lives under Course Dynamics in the top navigation.
Select a course using the search box (type a subject code or course number to filter), choose your campus, and click Analyze Course.
Enrollment
Class-list registered enrollment. Distinct students still registered in the selected class-list group when the extract was pulled; only RE, RS, and RR statuses count.
Exclusions. Waitlists and all drops are excluded from registered enrollment.
- This is a snapshot, not a frozen census count. It describes final enrollment only after the term is complete.
Reconstructed census enrollment. Class-list registered enrollment plus late drops (DG/DW) estimates the population that stayed beyond the early-drop period.
Exclusions. Early drops (DR/DD) and waitlists are excluded.
- No census-frozen count exists in the source. This reconstruction does not recover registration dates or actual peak occupancy.
- Latest-Term Snapshot cards — census enrollment, current enrollment, active sections, average section size, early drops, late drops, and waitlisted students for the latest available term in the selected term type. The exact term is printed above each campus’s card row; the plots below retain the full history. For a crosslisted course, the headline enrollment combines all active partner codes and the card also shows the selected course code alone. Each card compares the crosslist-aware value with the same term type one, two, and three years earlier.
- Enrollment History — census and current enrollment over time, with campuses kept separate. Crosslisted offerings combine the full course family once rather than showing only the selected department’s listing.
- Census vs Current Enrollment — the same crosslist-family lifecycle series used by Overview, rather than a separate selected-code calculation
- Classlist Enrollment History — a table of the plotted crosslist-family registered counts, drops, and same-term-type averages from class-list records
Useful for seeing whether course registrations are growing, declining, or stable. Every enrollment surface in Course Dynamics uses one shared crosslist-aware payload: registrations under active partner codes are combined and deduplicated per campus and term, one home section represents each crosslist group, and standalone sections of the selected course are added normally. The selected course code alone appears only as an explicitly labeled comparison on Overview cards.
Course Flows
What do students take alongside this course, where do they come from before it, and where do they go after? The first view is a treemap and ranked table of the 20 most common same-campus, same-term companion courses. Rectangle area shows co-enrolled student-term enrollments; the table also gives the share of all selected-course student-term enrollments that included each companion course. A student taking the selected course in two terms contributes two student-term enrollments.
The flow diagrams below the treemap show the most frequent ordered pairs — courses students took in the term immediately before or after the selected course.
Configurable settings:
- Minimum students per term — filters out low-frequency connections (default: 2)
- Maximum courses to display — limits the diagram to the most common connections for readability (default: 6)
Click Update Flow Diagrams after adjusting these settings.
Course flows work best for courses embedded in sequences. Isolated electives or highly variable topics courses may not show strong directional patterns.
Reading flow diagrams: The diagram shows courses students took before (left) and after (right). The width of each connection represents how many students took that path. A strong flow from MATH 1215 into PHYS 1310, for instance, tells you something different about the de facto prerequisite structure than the catalog does.
Only registered class-list rows (RE/RS/RR) are used for both same-term and before/after views; waitlists and drops are excluded. Every course result keeps campus in its grouping, so a Main-campus schedule is not silently combined with Online or branch-campus schedules.
Rollcall
Who’s taking this course? Rollcall shows the composition of students by classification (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, graduate) and by declared major, broken out by term type (fall and spring shown separately) and across time.
- By Student Classification — fall and spring bar charts showing class-year distribution
- By Major — which programs send students to this course, and in what proportions
- Classification Trends Over Time — how the class-year mix has shifted across terms
- Major Trends Over Time — how the program-of-origin mix has shifted
- Data Tables — the underlying numbers for the above charts
Knowing that many students in an upper-division elective come from outside the home department can change how the course’s curricular role is interpreted, especially for course design, prerequisites, and advising.
DFW
Course DFW / nonpassing rate. The share of classified course attempts that did not pass. By default only A+ through C, CR, and passing retake equivalents pass; non-audit late drops count as DFW. AUD is excluded even with late-drop status. Each term's attempt counts separately, even when a section number (CRN) is reused.
Exclusions. AUD is excluded from numerator and denominator regardless of registration status, including DG/DW. Early drops never count as DFW. Blank/NA grades are excluded unless late-drop status supplies the withdrawal outcome.
- A visible opt-in control may also count C- and D-range work as passing; it does not make P or S pass.
- Rates from versions before 2.0.0 may differ because reused section numbers could suppress later-term attempts.
- Before 3.0.0, some outcome paths counted late-drop AUD as DFW. Saved outcomes must be rebuilt under the corrected policy; older files are rejected rather than silently reused.
Course-level results remain visible. Instructor-level results require a configured password due to their sensitivity; when the administrator has not configured one, those results remain disabled.
The DFW tab is intended to support conversations about course design and student support — not to evaluate individual instructors. The instructor-type breakdown (tenure-track vs. contingent faculty) is one lens for understanding patterns; it should be read alongside section size, student composition, and course context.
Retention
Course retention over time. Among students registered in a course, retention means registered enrollment anywhere at UNM in the follow-up term or a degree awarded within the follow-up window.
Exclusions. Future follow-up is missing, not zero. Late-drop-only follow-up records do not count as registered return.
- This is a course cohort, not the first-time degree-seeking cohort used for official institutional retention reporting.
- Differences between pass and DFW groups do not establish that a course caused departure.
Summer terms are skipped when counting forward.
You can configure how many semesters to track, set a minimum cohort size per row, and optionally break out results by instructor.
Downstream
The Downstream tab combines two related views that use the same observed follow-on-course list but answer different questions. Choose Course Sequence when the question is about taking this course before another course. Choose Instructor Patterns when the question is about later continuation and outcomes among this course’s students, grouped by their first instructor here.
Course Sequence
Course sequence comparison. Compares outcomes in course Y between students who passed course X in an earlier term and students with no observed prior pass in X. Balance diagnostics classify measured standardized differences as small below 0.10, review from 0.10 through 0.25, or substantial above 0.25.
Exclusions. Same-term X passes do not count as prior passes. Required context and optional filters can remove students. An active HS GPA range excludes students without HS GPA.
- No observed prior pass does not mean never exposed to X. Unobserved earlier or external courses are unknown.
- Balance bands summarize measured continuous and binary covariates only. Categorical distributions require direct review, and an unavailable SMD is not evidence of a small difference.
- The 0.10 and 0.25 thresholds are descriptive review aids. They do not match students, adjust the outcome comparison, establish comparability on unmeasured factors, or prove causality.
- Restricting both groups to the same HS GPA range is a sensitivity check, not an adjustment for other observed or unobserved differences.
The optional HS GPA filter restricts both groups to a selected range; it is a sensitivity check, not an adjustment for unobserved differences.
The balance table uses the absolute standardized mean difference (SMD) for measured continuous and binary covariates. CEDAR labels values below 0.10 as a small observed difference, values from 0.10 through 0.25 as requiring review, and values above 0.25 as a substantial observed difference. These labels do not adjust the comparison or establish that the groups are comparable on unmeasured factors. Categorical distributions must be reviewed directly, and an unavailable SMD is not evidence of a small difference.
Useful for checking whether a prerequisite or recommended sequence is associated with the outcome difference that motivates it. The comparison is descriptive and should be read with the balance table and local curriculum context.
Instructor Patterns
Among students who took this course and later took a downstream course, do downstream grades differ by the instructor students had here? This tab compares downstream grades for students grouped by which instructor they had in this course.
A balance table is included to show whether different instructors’ sections enrolled different types of students. Self-selection is a major confounder here, since students often choose sections based on schedule, availability, or reputation. Check the balance table before treating differences as instructor effects.
Common questions
Why is my course not in the list?
The dropdown shows courses with enrollment data in CEDAR. If a course is missing, it may not have been offered recently enough to appear, or it may use a different subject code than expected.
Why are the course flows empty?
Flows require multiple terms of data and students who take other courses before and after this one. New courses, highly isolated electives, or courses with very small enrollments may not generate meaningful flow data.
How far back does the data go?
This depends on what your institution has loaded into CEDAR. Check with your CEDAR administrator for the data range.
Related analyses
- Dept Dashboard — current-term view across all courses in a department
- Dept Trends — multi-year historical analysis including DFW trends and credit hours
- Pathways — population-level analysis of course timing, roadblocks, sequences, and major movement