Manage Classroom Waitlists

As students register for limited seats in an instructor-led course, some may learn there is no longer space available in the course they want. Waitlists serve to both manually and automatically manage who can be added to a roster after space opens up.

Feature Overview and Requirements

When a Portal Administrator or Instructor is enrolling others in a Classroom course, some scenarios are likely to occur:

  • There are not enough seats left in the Offering to accommodate those who are trying to enroll in it.
  • There is room for some extra students, but the maximum enrollment limit has been reached. For instance, an Offering may have moved to a room with a larger capacity than originally noted.
  • An enrolled student cancels, opening a seat for another user.

LatitudeLearning® helps you manage these and other scenarios using the flexible functionality of the Wait List feature.

Course and Offering Settings that Affect the Wait List

When you create a Course Offering, several settings impact the behavior of student enrollment and user notification functionality within Wait Lists. You can find these settings in several places.

  • Classroom Courses: when adding, in the Offering Defaults section; or when editing, under the Offering Defaults tab
  • Offerings: when adding, in the General Information section; or when editing, under the General tab

Use the enrollment settings as described below, noting that they are all required fields, as marked by asterisks (*).

  • Waitlist Days: Set the number of days prior to the Offering “Start Date” in which enrollments will be automatically processed from the Wait List. Example: If set to 2 days, and a student cancellation occurs before the cutoff date, waitlisted individuals are automatically enrolled in the order they were added to the list. After the Waitlist Days cutoff date is reached, users must be manually enrolled in the offering by an Instructor or Portal Administrator.
  • Maximum Number of Students: Indicate the maximum number of users allowed in the offering. The Wait List feature kicks in when the maximum number of enrollees is reached, regardless of their location.
  • Maximum Number of Students Per Location: Indicate the maximum number of users from a single Location allowed in the offering. Even if there is adequate seat availability in the offering, a location may meet its per location enrollment limit, causing other potential enrollees from that location to be waitlisted.

Useful Links

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Step by Step Procedure and Field Description

Placing Students on the Wait List

When an Instructor or Portal Administrator is enrolling others, they choose students either by entering their Usernames in the box or by clicking Choose Students to launch the Search Users picker. If there are enough open seats, all the students selected may be enrolled in the course.

Once the Maximum Enrollment limit has been met, students without a confirmed seat can be placed on the Wait List. In the example below, the offering has met the Maximum Enrollment of four, but the administrator wants to add three more students.

  1. Click Choose Students to search for and select the students you want to add to the offering.
  2. Click Submit and Continue.

    The LMS then checks each student’s eligibility status. In this case, the system will warn that the enrollment request exceeds the maximum seats allowed. This is just a warning and will not prevent you from continuing the enrollment process.

  1. In the Add column, choose the Select All (top) check box or select individual users.
  2. Click Submit.

    The LMS informs you again that there are more students to enroll than the maximum enrollment setting allows. You can use this page to tell the LMS how you want it to handle the potential attendees going forward, including their priority for enrollment and what to do with any remaining students without a seat.

    Note: Administrators and Instructors can both opt to exceed the pre-set maximum for an offering at this point by selecting Enroll/Override Available Seat Limits.

  3. If you choose to waitlist students, set a Priority for each student listed. This determines the order in which they will be enrolled in the course as openings arise.
  4. Select Enroll to Limit/Add Others to Wait List to place users who are currently unable to enroll in the offering onto the Wait List for available seats. Note: To continue with the Wait List functionality, you must select this option.
  1. When finished with enrollments or Wait List additions, click Submit and Continue.

    The LMS then displays a list clearly stating which students were enrolled, if any, and which students are now on the Wait List.

Note: Students cannot add themselves to the Wait List for an offering, but can add themselves to the Interest List for the cour

Managing a Roster Using the Waitlist

When reviewing the Roster Detail tab for an offering, Instructors and Portal Administrators can view the list of enrolled students, as well as students who were waitlisted or cancelled.

Allow the Wait List Feature to Auto-Enroll Students as Seats Become Available

Until the “Waitlist Days” cutoff date for the offering is reached, when “Scheduled” students cancel their course enrollment, waitlisted students are automatically promoted to the Scheduled list, according to their set Priority.

After the “Waitlist Days” cutoff date is reached, users must be manually enrolled in the offering by an Instructor or Portal Administrator, who can override course seat limits. Remember that LMS administrators can select, during the Enroll Others process, to “Enroll/Override Available Seat Limits” to automatically overbook an offering and forego the Wait List process.

Manually Enroll Students in a Full Offering, Overriding Enrollment Limitations

Under the Roster Detail tab, administrators have the option to enroll users from the Wait List, even if the maximum enrollment has been reached. To select waitlisted students to be enrolled:

  1. Check the Change to “Scheduled” box for the user you want to enroll.
  2. Click Submit.

Selected students move from the Wait List to the Scheduled list. As shown below, the Roster is updated to indicate that there are five students enrolled in a class that had a maximum enrollment of four.

Note

Once an offering is closed, no further actions are taken for waitlisted students. They do not receive any notifications, and no Interest record is added for the course. Therefore, they would be expected to begin a fresh enrollment in future offerings.