This document explores the rights of LMS Instructors, Administrators and Portal Administrators to use the "Interest List" feature as a managerial and data analysis tool. All pages listed under Interests in the Left Navigation Menu help them to either create interests as a technique for mass enrollment, or review students’ expressed interests to produce useful training insights. 

The Interest List feature and its extensive tool set were built into the Latitude Learning LMS to serve four separate, but interrelated functions. 

1. Portal Administrators can use the “Add Interest” tool to auto-enroll students by Organization, Course, or User .
2. Employ the Course Series functionality  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. However, when a student enrolls in a course that is part of an established Series, but requires approval or prerequisite training, related courses will automatically pull into the “Interest List” section of the student’s homepage. 
3. The most common reason students will add a course to their “Interest List” is because there is no existing classroom offering available to them. When a user is ineligible or otherwise unable to enroll in a desired course, he or she may express an interest in attending in the future. For more information on the student experience, see related document: Student Use of Interest Lists 
4. 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.

Note: These features can work in different ways based on your course and system settings. 

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

MASS ENROLLMENT FEATURE

Add Interest

LMS administrators and instructors can use the Enroll Others function to mass enroll students in required coursework. However, this batch enrollment option can only add up to 100 users in a single course at a time to ensure automated eligibility and enrollment activities can process completely.

Driven by customer demand for a more robust mass enrollment option, Latitude Learning enhanced the Interest feature to function as a dynamic auto-enrollment tool as well. When generating interests for self-paced courses, or for instructor-led courses having offerings configured to use the system's auto-enrollment services, you can mass enroll others as follows:

1.  From the Left Navigation Menu, select Interests => Add Interest.
2.  Use the dynamic filtering tool to scope enrollment by User, Course, or Organization. Your selection in the “Filter by” field determines the data fields and resulting user lists to which Interest records will be added.

• Filter by User: This option allows you to add interest records for one user in multiple courses at a time. To complete the form, enter a single username or click Select a User to search for and select a single user. Then, click Select Courses to search for and select one or more courses in which you want the user enrolled. Click Continue to run the automated “Interest Eligibility” check. 
  
   
  
  The next page will inform you of any eligibility conflicts preventing course enrollment, and allows you to select the Location in which the user should complete training. Click Submit to complete the “Add Interest” process with the final course list.
  
   
  
  
• Filter by Course: If enrolling by course, click Select a Course to search for and select a single course. In the “User” field, enter a list of usernames separated by commas or click Select a User to generate a user list for submission. Click Continue to run the automated “Interest Eligibility” check for each user listed.
  
  
  
  The next page will inform you of any eligibility conflicts preventing course enrollment, and allows you to select the Location in which the user should complete training. Click Submit to complete the “Add Interest” process with the final user list.
  
  
  
  
• Filter by Organization: First, click Select a Course to search for and select a single course. Then use the hierarchical organization filters to select the Organization in which you want to enroll all associated users -- Location, Division, Business Unit, or even the entire Company. Note that you can filter on user Position assignment as well.
  
   
  
  Prior to generating interest records, the LMS will show you the target number of users to be enrolled within the selected organization, and ask for final confirmation. Click OK to complete the process.
  
  
  
  Once confirmed, the LMS will generate all interest records, placing them into the queue for standard eligibility and conflict checking, and eventually processing them.
  
  

NOTE:  When self-paced learning activities (eLearning, Assessment, Self-Study delivery types) are set to Allow Interest, and instructor-led courses (Classroom, Virtual Classroom) have offerings setup to allow Auto-enrollment, all these processes will result in automated enrollment for fully eligible students.  The interest processor for Self-paced courses runs constantly, so auto-enrollment happens as soon as the records move through the queue. For Classroom Offerings, the interest processor runs in an overnight scheduled job, so auto-enrollments are held until that process is completed each day.

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.
  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 set.
• Approval Required: Because Add Interest is an administrative tool, all approvals are assumed. Even when set to “Yes”, student enrollment will not require approval.
• 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.
  
  

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. 



Click Print on any screen to view a printable version of the Review Interest page.

Review Interests Graph