Platinum Analytics and Sectioning processes need to account for estimated new, transfer, and returning students per program when calculating course demand and/or registering students for sections.  Simulated student values can be automatically calculated based on user-provided "like" and "prior" term configuration to determine the trend in new enrollments across previous terms, or manually manipulated to represent a change to a certain population of students.  Simulated student data is provided along with the attributes of the new students that are estimated to be starting for a given term.  In other words, the system will need to know the programs, majors, minors, test codes, attributes, etc, with which the simulated students should be associated, so that demand can be shown for the correct courses.

 

Multiple sets of simulated students may be created and saved as sandboxes to be reused depending on the process being run.  For example, a user may want to perform modeling based on an expected influx of new students for a particular program, or they may need to apply simulated values for Fall versus Spring term types, etc.

Create a Simulated Student Sandbox

To create a simulated student sandbox, perform the following:

 

1.Click New on the Analytics Sandbox List page.
 

2.Choose Simulated Students from the list of options.
 

 

3.Enter a name for the sandbox.
 

4.If applicable, select one or more campuses to which the sandbox applies.  This selection will filter the data considered for determining a simulated student population.
 

5.Click Add Terms to add a new row to the Simulated Student Trend Terms grid.

 

6.Click in the row and select a "Like Term", and "Prior Term", to be considered for simulated students.
 
Selecting a Like Term defines a term that is similar to the term for which the sandbox will be used (e.g. another Fall term), and selecting a Prior Term defines the term prior to each of the Like Terms chosen.  This allows the system to establish new student trends by evaluating the number of students from one term to the next that continued, dropped, or were new starts.  This setting defines the scope of data (how many terms to consider) to be used for trending.
 

 

7.Click Save to save your selections and run the sandbox process.

View Simulated Student Results

When the simulated student sandbox is finished processing, click the name of the sandbox on the list page to open and view the results.  A summary of the simulated student trend data is provided at the top of the results, indicating the total number of simulated students determined by type, the total number of simulations, and the net new student impact on the schedule if this sandbox were to be used during analysis or Simulated Registration.

 

 

The grid below displays simulated student trend groups that were identified by program and major.  The number of new, returning, transfer, and departing students are shown for each group, as well as their percentage of the total population.

 

The Simulated Student types include:

 

•New – Students that have academic history in the given term, but never before that point.

•Returning – Students that have academic history in the given term, no academic history in the prior  term, but have history for some term in the past.

•Departing – Students that have academic history in the prior term, but not in the given term.

•Transfer – Students that have just started in the given term that have transfer history from another institution.  They have no prior history at the institution.

 

You can manually manipulate the population of simulated students in the sandbox by removing or editing the trend groups.  Click the X button to remove a trend group from the list.

 

 

To edit the values for an existing trend group, click the group name on the list to view the trend group detail.

 

 

You may edit the individual simulated student type values either by entering the number directly, or by entering a percentage increase or decrease and clicking Update.

 

Additionally, you may edit the specific attributes that are applied to the simulated student group in question.

 

Click OK to save your changes.

 

NOTE: If desired, you can clone a sandbox as an easy way to save a copy for editing.