Open Seats
Courses with available capacity, compared year-over-year, with DFW history
Open Seats shows which courses have room in the selected term, how that availability has changed from the same term last year, and what the historical D/F/Withdrawal rate looks like for each course. It is most useful before a term begins or during early registration, when there is still time to route students toward open sections or flag courses that may need capacity adjustments.
Set your filters — campus, college, department, term, part of term, instruction method, and level — then click Find Open Seats. Results appear across six tabs.
Filters
| Filter | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Campus | Which campus locations to include. Defaults to ABQ and EA. |
| College | Narrows to courses in a specific college. |
| Department | Narrows to a single department’s offerings. |
| Term | The target term to examine. Defaults to the upcoming term. Supply two terms (202410,202510) to compare specific years; otherwise CEDAR automatically compares to the same term one year prior. |
| PoT (Part of Term) | Filter by part-of-term codes (e.g., 1H = first half, 2H = second half, FT = full term). |
| Method | Delivery method (online, face-to-face, hybrid, etc.). |
| Level | lower, upper, grad, or split. |
Tabs
Courses
The primary availability table. One row per course per part-of-term, filtered to sections with at least one open seat.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| avail | Seats currently available (max enrollment minus registered). |
| enrolled | Current enrollment count. |
| DFW % | Historical D/F/Withdrawal rate for this course under the same college/department scope, averaged across all prior terms with final grades. Blank if no prior grade data exists. Grades from Fall 2019 onward; pre-census drops excluded. |
| avail_diff | Change in available seats compared to the same course in the prior-year term. Positive means more open seats than last year; negative means fewer. |
Common
Courses offered in both the target term and the comparison year, with year-over-year enrollment change.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| enrl_diff_from_last_year | Enrollment this term minus enrollment the same term last year. Negative values indicate lower enrollment than the prior year. |
Use this tab to spot courses where demand is declining or growing relative to prior-year patterns.
Prev
Courses offered in the prior-year comparison term that are not scheduled this term (discontinued or not yet added). These are potential gaps — students who took this sequence in prior years may now have nowhere to go.
New
Courses scheduled this term that were not offered in the prior-year comparison term. New offerings that have no enrollment history; DFW data will be blank.
Gen Ed
Gen Ed courses with at least one open seat in the target term, sorted by gen ed area and then by availability descending. Use this to answer “which gen ed areas have room?” at a glance.
Gen Ed Likely
Gen Ed courses with zero available seats and zero enrolled students. These sections exist in Banner but are fully capped and empty — they may open later as capacity is adjusted. Useful for tracking planned offerings that haven’t gone live yet.
Methodology notes
Term comparison
When you select a single term, CEDAR automatically pairs it with the same term one year prior (term code minus 100). To compare across a different span — say, two consecutive spring terms — enter both codes separated by a comma in the Term filter: 202410,202510.
DFW rate
The DFW % column pulls from all historical grade records for the selected scope (college or department), excluding the current in-progress term. Because grades are not yet assigned during an active term, including the current term would inflate DFW rates by counting every enrolled student as ungraded.
DFW is calculated at the course level (e.g., all sections of HIST 101), not the section level, averaged across all instructors and delivery methods within the selected filters. A blank cell means no prior grade records match — either the course is new, or no grade data has been loaded for that scope.
Availability vs. Banner capacity
avail is derived from Banner’s max enrollment minus the registered count at the time data was last refreshed. Waitlisted students are not counted as enrolled; a full section with a long waitlist will still show avail = 0.