Feature Overview and Requirements 

The Interest List feature and its extensive tool set were built into LatitudeLearning® to serve four separate, but interrelated functions.

1. To use the Course Series function to bundle multiple courses into a logical chain of predecessor and successor coursework. This feature can serve to auto-enroll students into a series of courses that are set to allow interests and do not require any type of approval or prerequisite course completion. When a student enrolls in a course that is part of an established Series, an interest and auto-enrollment is established for all courses in the series. If any of them require prerequisites or manager approval, the courses will remain on the student’s interest list until the requirement is met, after which auto-enrollment will proceed.
2. The most common reason students add a course to their “Interest List” is when there is no existing classroom offering available to them. When a users are ineligible or otherwise unable to enroll in a desired course, they can add themselves to the interest list so they can be enrolled in the future when options are available. For more information on the student experience, see related document: Student Use of Interest Lists
3. Administrators and Instructors can use Interest Lists to analyze student demand for classes and determine when or where they should offer a Classroom course next. Demand forecasting can also assist in identifying the population of learners who are interested in similar training topics, or the areas in which training programs should be expanded based on student interest.
4. For portals using Accreditation or Course Goals with either or both of the Auto-Enroll from Interests flags enabled on the LMS Information settings page, interests become part of the auto-enrollment process. When a goal is assigned, the LMS creates and interest record. The interest processor reviews the user’s eligibility to be enrolled and if no impediments exist, such as pending approval or pending prerequisites, they are enrolled in the courses required by the goal.

For an overview on configuring courses to allow interest lists or managing approval-required interest requests, please see related document: Manage Approvals for Enrollment, Course Interest, and User Self Registration

Step by Step Procedure and Field Description

Course Settings that Control Add Interest and Auto-Enrollment Behaviors

The Interest List feature can be used in a multitude of ways, based on how you have configured your LMS courses. Here are the important settings that allow “Add Interest” and “Auto-enrollment” processes to function:

• Allow Use of Interest Lists: Must be set to Yes. If set to No, administrators will not be allowed to generate interest records for the course.
• Auto Enrollment: This setting only applies to Classroom Offering configuration.
  o  No Action — Interest records can be added for the course, but students will not be auto-enrolled in the offering.
  o  Auto-Enrollment — Students can be auto-enrolled in the offering based on their course interest. Note: Auto-enrollment in offerings will only occur for offerings that are between 15 to 90 days in the future.
  o  Notification Only — Students with expressed interest in a Classroom course will receive an email notification when a new class offering has been created. Users are still expected to enroll themselves in the offering. Note: Another element that is required in order to make Classroom Offerings auto-enroll enabled is to ensure the selected Facility record has Auto-enrollment enabled. Notifications about available offerings will only occur for offerings that are between 15 to 90 days in the future.
• Approval Required: When set to Yes, any interests generated will be placed in a Pending Approval status. Once approved an enrollment can take place.
• Prerequisites: Prerequisite rules function as a “hard stop” to the enrollment process. Courses with rules applied will be added to the selected user’s interest list, where they will stay until that student meets all prerequisites, and therefore passes an enrollment eligibility check. Only then will the system auto-enroll the user in said course.

LMS Settings that Control Interest and Auto-Enrollment Behaviors

These settings are found under Site Management > LMS Information in the Goals Configuration section.

a) Automate Interests from Certification Goals: Enabling this feature will automatically place all courses from assigned Certification goals (when using a Primary “All Of” Rule) on a student’s Interest List. It does not work for Primary rules set to “One Of” or Generic rules using “Not” exceptions.

Before turning on this option, it is important to have a strong understanding of the following aspects of LMS Accreditation Management functionality:

• Interest Lists
• Goal Assignment (via manual Set Goal, Goal Rules, or legacy automated Goal Transitions)
• Generic and Primary Rules
• Position Codes and Position Groups

If you do not thoroughly understand these concepts, enabling this option could create mass enrollment situations with the following issues:

• If the course’s listed Accreditation Completion rules do not have prerequisites, this feature could place all courses in the assigned certification goal on the student’s interest list at the same time and lead to auto-enrollment all required courses. Courses on the interest list cause auto-enrollment if there are no impediments such as unmet prerequisites or pending approvals.
• The process could enroll ALL of your users in ALL of your courses in the following instances:
  1. If you have nested certifications (e.g. one certification is a requirement for another certification), but you still use Goal Transitions and they are not properly set up.
  2. If your Position Groups are too broad.

b) Automate Interests from Course Goals: Enable to automatically add interests for Course Goal assignments. This can enable automatic enrollments based on interest list processing if no impediments to enrollment are found, such as a requirement for manager approval or pending prerequisites.

Data Analysis

To view the distribution of student interests over Courses and Locations, select Interests > Review Interests Summary or Review Interests Graph. Assuming that your LMS Facilities and Locales have been properly managed, both Review Interest tools allow you to query, sort, view details, and print Interest List records with the same search function. The difference is in the results, one being displayed in a Summary format in the other in a Graph. 

1. First, use the radio button to select whether you want search by Facility or Locale.
2. Then use the linked pickers, drop-down menus, or LMS codes to enter all other search criteria. As always, an asterisk [*] indicates a required field.
3. Click Search to display results.

Note: When searching by Locale, you must select a Business Unit in order to populate your options in the Training Locale field. See the screenshot below for an example.

If more than one Locale is listed, you must select only one value, highlighting it as your desired search criteria. If you do not select any values from the list, the search process will produce an error, citing “missing” data in the required field. Using the [Ctrl + Click] action to highlight more than one value will also result in a system error.

Review Interests Summary

The Review Interests Summary option allows administrators to filter and look into the details of course interest records. In the search results list, you can sort by clicking on the column headers, or drill into more detailed information by clicking on the Course Title, Interest Counts or Location Counts.