Popular Courses: What Students Are Looking To Transfer

Transferology Lab's Popular Courses report provides institutions with a list of all the courses that students have entered into Transferology. Institutions can analyze this data, with the help of the search field and/or filters, and review courses that do not have Active Rules.

Overview

The Popular Courses report provides institutions with a way to proactively evaluate courses and thus attract prospective transfer students to their institution. Since it gives you a list of actual courses that students are looking to transfer, you can build evaluation decisions that are more likely to impact students than reviewing an entire catalog or reviewing just general education courses. Defining rules for as few as 20 courses at a top partner institution can provide answers for the majority of the "transfer traffic" from that school.

To access the Popular Courses report, you must have the Transfer Specialist role.

1. Navigate to the Rule Management menu.

2. Select Popular Courses from the drop-down.

The generated list of popular courses is displayed in order of decreasing count:

By default, the Popular Courses report displays all courses entered by students: 

• over the last 30 days (using the Custom date range).
• from institutions in the state your school is located.
• for any school type (public or private).
• from both 4 year and 2 year institutions.

By default, the report will display courses that meet these parameters, whether your institution has active rules associated with them or not. This means that the number of courses found does not reflect the total unfiltered number of courses. Select the Clear filters button to view the complete list.

In the example above, between 06/08/2022 and 07/07/2022, 6,180 courses from Minnesota institutions were entered into Transferology: 

Each row of the Popular Courses report will detail the following information: 

• Course - Course code
• School - School name
• State - State the school is located in
• Distance - Distance from your institution's zip code, in miles
• Count - Number of students who have entered the course in Transferology, regardless of whether they have viewed Matches at your school
  • In the example below, a Count of 85 means that 85 students have entered ENGC1101 from Normandale Community College into Transferology between 06/08/2022 and 07/07/2022. Click on the count to see details regarding the year(s) in which the student(s) reported taking the course.As noted, Count only indicates how many students have entered the course in Transferology. It does not mean the students have expressed an interest in your school.
• Active Rule - Describes whether your institution has a rule that would award transfer credit during the current term. 
  • If "No" - your institution may have an inactive rule that awarded transfer credit if taken in a past term, or will award transfer credit if taken during a future term.
  • If "Yes" - your institution has an active rule that awards transfer credit if the course is taken during the current term.
  • To view the rule, select "Yes":

Searching Popular Courses

Because the list of popular courses may contain thousands of courses, Transferology provides a way to manage the results display, including pagination and filters. 

Pagination

Use the First, Previous, and Next buttons above/below the list of courses on each page to navigate through the content, page-by-page. 

Filters

By default, the Popular Courses list is filtered to the home state of your institution and includes the last month's timeframe. A variety of filters may be applied to the data to customize the display using either the keyword search or the Filter box. For example, filters can allow you to focus on a particular state, school, military course/occupation, and much more!

Apply/clear keywords and filters using the Apply button, and Clear Filters buttons. After adjusting any filter, select Apply to activate the filter.

Key a specific school name or course into the search field to filter results. For example, with "Math..." applied as a filter in the keyword search field, all popular courses that match the keyword "Math..." are generated (in order of descending count). If you want to look beyond your institution's home state, be sure to adjust your State filter (see below).

With the new filter applied, the list of popular courses has gone from over 6,000 to 360: 

Filter Box

To the right of the list of popular courses, you will see a Filter Box: 

You can filter popular courses by:

1.  Date range

• Click within the Calendar field to change the date range via selection from the drop-down menu. The Popular Courses date filter can accommodate any date range within the last year (twelve months). Drop-down options for date ranges include the following: 
  • Last 30 Days
  • Last 60 Days
  • Last 90 Days
  • Custom

As noted above, the default setting on the date range filter is set to the last 30 days via the Custom date range.

2.  Location

• Select from an alphabetical listing of US states, Canadian provinces, US territories, Military Occupation, or even All Locations.
  • As noted, the default setting on the location filter is the state in which your school resides.

3.  Distance

• Select an incremental distance from the designated zip code or even online only:

  Drop-down menu options for distance include the following:

  • Any distance (default)
  • less than 25 minutes
  • less than 50 minutes
  • less than 100 minutes
  • less than 250 minutes
  • less than 500 minutes
  • online only

  The default setting for the distance filter is Any distance from the zip code of your institution. If you wish to use a different zip code in the filter:

  • Select the underlined zip code. The Update Zip Code pop-up dialog box displays a field to manually enter the desired zip code.
  • Alternately, you may choose your current location using the Use My Current Location button.

  4.  Presence of rules

  • Choose to include all courses in the filter, or restrict to courses with or without rules via the drop-down menu options. Options include:

  If Courses with rules is selected, all courses with active rules will display.

  The default setting is "All courses." 

  5.  School Type

  To search by School Type, select from:

  • Any school type
  • Public
  • Private not-for-profit
  • Private for-profit

  The default setting is "Any school type."

  6.  Year

  You have the option to filter by 4 year institution, or 2 year institution. Select one of the following:

  • Any year
  • 4 year
  • 2 year

  The default setting is "Any year."

  7. Include my school?

  The Include My School? checkbox is selected by default. This means that courses from your own institution will appear in the list of Popular Courses. To remove them, unselect the checkbox and select Apply.

  After appropriate filter selections are made, be sure to select the Apply button to apply the selected filter selections. Clear filter selections using the Clear Filters button.

  Creating Evaluation Tasks via TES Mode

  Users with both the Transfer Specialist and TES Evaluation roles can create evaluations in TES from the Popular Courses area of Transferology Lab. Those with the needed permissions will see the TES Mode tab next to the Filter box: 

  For an overview of how to initiate evaluation tasks in TES from Transferology Lab, see the Related Article on TES Mode below.