Where do I find course enrollment and IU information?
This can be found in Course Information dashboards.
How do I find the list of courses I’ve taught to include in my Promotion & Tenure (P&T) Packet?
This can be found in Course Information dashboards.
A course is missing from my P&T Packet. How can this be corrected?
The Instructor Teaching History (Promotion & Tenure Course List) dashboard shows courses that have registered students as of census. If there were no students enrolled until after the census for the course, our report would not reflect those changes. Faculty could use their rosters to supplement their teaching history as documentation that additional courses not listed in the P&T packet were taught.
Can I use data in the Course Information dashboards for research purposes?
For research purposes, approval is required from the Office for the Protection of Research Subjects. All data must be presented in aggregate. Suppress all non-zero counts which are less than five, unless they are in a category labeled “unknown.”
What if I receive a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for data in the Course Information dashboards?
No individuals should respond to FOIA or similar direct requests from external sources using the data or information from Course Information dashboards. All FOIA requests must be made to the External Relations and Communications.
What is the purpose of the Course Information dashboards?
The purpose of these dashboards is to create permanent records of the courses and sections offered each term, the enrollments and instructional units generated, the instructors assigned to each section, and which departments offered and paid for each section. These records will be used for internal management and external mandated reporting.
What is the source of section, instructor, and contact hour data?
Staff members in academic departments enter course and instructor information into Banner on the schedule (SSASECT) form.
Where can I find an overview of how instructor information should be entered into the Banner forms?
This information can be found on the Office of the Registrar Course Scheduling website.
Why are instructor names in the reports blocked with the word “WITHHELD?”
Students who request that their educational records be confidential under the Family Educational Rights to Privacy Act (FERPA) may not be identified publicly, even when assigned to teach a course.
What procedures are in place to verify current data and collect missing data?
During a reporting year, all course and instructor information is available on the Course Information dashboards. Department staff review the information and make modifications if necessary. DAIR sends messages during the academic year to remind department staff to review the anomaly report for missing or inaccurate data.
What are crosslisted courses?
These are courses that are identical but have subjects and numbers in several departments to allow the departments to share the teaching responsibility easily and to allow the student to select the subject to appear on the transcript. One subject/course combination is designated as the “controlling” listing, the others are “noncontrolling.” Every section of a crosslisted course should be offered under each crosslisting subject, and section ids, meetings, sessions, and instructor assignments should be identical. For reporting purposes, DAIR will use the information from the controlling listing and will ignore the data on the noncontrolling listings.
One common use of crosslisting is to manage a course that is appropriate for upper-level undergraduates as well as graduate students, so the course levels do not have to be consistent among all members of a crosslisted set.
For reporting, all sections of crosslisted courses will be consolidated and treated as one section. Controlling departments will designate one of the subject/number combinations as the “offering course” and the section will be listed and reported there.
What are crosslisted sections?
This refers to all sections meeting in the same place at the same time. This includes sections of crosslisted courses (as defined above) as well as “meets with” sections.
What are packaged sections?
This is used for some courses where a student must enroll in more than one schedule type. Each unique set of meetings is assigned one course registration number (CRN) so the student can select one CRN and get the whole package. The student record will show only one registration for the course. DAIR will count enrollments separately in each schedule type.
The section schedule type will be PKG; the meeting schedule type will show the actual schedule type.
What are linked sections?
These are similar to packaged sections in that the student must attend more than one schedule type. However, the student may select each component separately. Linking allows the department to ensure that the student takes at least one CRN from each link group. The student record will show multiple CRNs.
Linked sections are marked by a “link identifier” on the schedule (SSASECT) and SECT_LINK_ID on the section base information in the Enterprise Data Warehouse.
Credit can be assigned to different sections of a linked course. SSASECT will have the section specific credit, and it will also be added to the meeting block. Any schedule type that carries credit should have “gradeable” marked on SSASECT.
Why are sections missing?
There are several possible reasons a section might be missing from our lists:
- The section might have had no enrollment on the census (10th day) of class.
- The section might be cross listed. Crosslisted sections will be listed only once.
- The section might be “packaged.” Each part of a package will be listed only once even if there are multiple CRNS for that part.
How does DAIR determine which unit gets credit for offering a section?
The subject of the course (e.g., RHET) determines which department offered the section. Each subject is assigned to one department. If a course is cross listed (i.e., the same course is offered under several subjects), the department controlling the course receives credit for each crosslisted section.
What is an instructional unit (IU)?
One IU equals a student credit hour.
How do I calculate IUs?
IUs are calculated by multiplying the number of students registered in a course by the number of credit hours earned by an individual student in the course.
If a student is registered in a course for zero credit hours, IUs for the student is imputed as follows:
1 IU for a 100-level course
2 IUs for a 200-level course
3 IUs for a 300-level course
4 IUs for a 400-level course and higher
What is the difference between offering and paying IUs?
- Offering IUs are credited to the department that has been assigned the subject of the course: Each subject is assigned to one department. Many times offering and controlling are the same.
- Paying IUs are credited to the department paying for the course — i.e., the pay line to which the course is attached in the Activity Reporting System. Budget calculations use paying IUs.
- If an instructor is classified as “courtesy,” the paying IUs are credited to the offering department. They will be counted in the budget calculations, but they will have no money attached in the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) Cost Study.
How are IUs computed for noncredit sections?
Some courses require a student to enroll in multiple sections (e.g., a lecture and a discussion), and credit is awarded for only one of the sections. In this case, our system prorates the IUs across all sections of the course using the contact hours associated with each section.
Example: a student is enrolled for 3 credit hours in a class with 2 hours of lecture and 4 hours of lab. The lecture section receives 1 IU and the lab receives 2 IUs for this student.
How are IUs and enrollments divided when there are multiple instructors for a section?
In Banner, department staff enter the “Percent of Responsibility” for each instructor on the instructor page of the schedule (SSASECT) form. DAIR uses this percentage to split the contact hours, IUs, and enrollments among multiple instructors for one section. When the department does not enter a percent of responsibility for each instructor, the contact hours are divided equally. If no contact hours are reported for a section, the primary instructor receives all the IUs and enrollments.
How are contact hours entered and reported?
Banner computes the “hours per week” for a section based on the times and days entered on the meeting page of the Schedule (SSASECT) form. Department staff can manually update contact hours in Banner if they are missing or not accurate. Contact hours will need to be manually entered for sections with arranged meeting times, including independent study sections, because they cannot be computed. If the contact hours are legitimately zero (the instructor has no contact with students), you may enter zero. You do not need to enter any other fields.
We do not require contact hours to be reported for arranged and independent study sections, but it is recommended if:
- A section is part of a multiple-section set. Otherwise, the enrollments and IUs may not be distributed accurately.
- The department tracks the total contact hours for its instructors.
Why report contact hours accurately?
If contact hours are inaccurate, faculty may not be properly credited with time in the classroom, IUs may be incorrectly distributed to sections, instructors, and departments, and the cost of teaching may not be correctly computed and reported to the Illinois Board of Higher Education.
How does DAIR determine which department paid each instructor?
The paying department may be determined in two ways.
- Paying department is imputed using information in the Activity Reporting System. Human resource appointments, source of funds, National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) function code, and instructional activity are used in this process. An algorithm that determines the most likely paying department looks at factors such as whether:
- The payment came from the same department, school, or college that offered the section
- The payment was on state funds
- The NACUBO function code of the account permits payments for instruction
- The department has reported instructional activity in the Activity Reporting System
- A department can update the paying department for a section.
Note: The instructor must have received pay directly from a department for that unit to be counted as the paying department. It is not sufficient that one department reimburse another department for an instructor’s time; the instructor must be paid from an account owned by the department.
How can I correct the paying department for a section?
A department’s Activity Reporting System (ARS) updater can switch between available pay lines/sources of funds for an instructor, on the “View sections, update section SOF” dropdown. For DAIR’s permanent historical records, the paying department for the current reporting year can be updated through mid-August. However, for fall and spring courses, any corrections that occur after mid-May will not be included in the Integrated and Value-Centered Budgeting (IVCB) calculations for the next year.
What is a “courtesy” instructor?
Sections without instructors assigned are automatically classified as “courtesy,” i.e., unpaid. Assigned instructors can be designated “courtesy” if they have no available pay lines (e.g., an emeritus professor), or if the department indicates in ARS that they are not paid for a specific section (e.g., a full-time administrator). Sections with “courtesy” instructors are attributed to the department offering the course.
Note: If the instructor is a student, including a teaching assistant, the section cannot be assigned as courtesy.
Why are some of my department’s sections missing from the Anomaly Report?
Perhaps they are not “anomalies” — if the instructor was paid by your unit from state funds, the section may not be an anomaly. Verify that the section in question appears on your department’s list on the Section and Instructor Lists by College or Department dashboard. If you do not see the section on your department’s list in the dashboard, check the crosslisting departments in the dashboard; perhaps another unit received credit for offering the section.