Student Use of Interest Lists

Interest lists have a couple purposes in the LMS that a) help an LMS student express interest in a classroom course or b) act as a pre-enrollment status for self-paced courses that may be pending prerequisites or pending approval by a manager.

Feature Overview and Requirements

Here are some examples of how interest lists work for or impact students:

  1. There is no existing classroom offering available.
    For example, a student is interested in taking a Classroom course that has no offerings scheduled, so he is unable to attend. Or perhaps the course is only offered at a Locale in California, and he lives in Michigan. In these scenarios, students can add an interest in a course to let their administrator know that users would like to take a class at places or times it is not currently being offered. Administrators can then run reports about course interest and use the information in planning new offerings.
  2. The student is unsure of their ability to attend or take the course (i.e. scheduling, budget, managerial approval).
    One scenario may be that a student is interested in taking a course that requires tuition, but cannot or is not willing to pay for it at this time. That student can add the course to their Interest List, where it will sit on their homepage as a reminder until they are willing and able to pay for and attend the course.
  3. The student enrolls in a course that is part of an established series of coursework.
    Administrators can set up several courses in a Series. When enrolling in one course in a series, the LMS creates an “interest” for all the other courses in the series. Interests for self-paced courses and Classroom courses can cause enrollments to take place automatically soon after the interest is established depending on how the course. Students could even miss that it was ever on the interest list due to the speed in which it turns into an enrollment. Interests created for courses with prerequisites or with manager approval required will continue to appear on the student interest list in a Pending status until that requirement is met, after which the enrollment will take place.
  4. The student is assigned a goal in a portal configured for auto-enrollment from Accreditation or Course goals.
    Students whose Administrators or managers assigned them Accreditation or Course goals may see these requirements on their interest list either transiently or until any prerequisite or manager approval requirements are met. When a goal is assigned and the system is set to create auto-enrollments, there are some differences in how the interests are handled based on the type of goal.
    – Accreditation Goals: The process that turns a goal assignment into an interest runs every 6 hours at 6:00 am/pm ET and 12:00 am/pm ET. This means you may see the goal assignment but no automatic enrollments taking place for over 6 hours. When the interest is created, the status will move from Pending Interest to Scheduled/Enrolled after your eligibility to enroll is verified and if there are no prerequisites or approvals required for it to continue.
    – Course Goals: These go through the same process as Accreditation goals but the timing for interest creation is on a one hour schedule.

Add a Classroom Course to Your Interest List

To add a course to your Interest List:

  1. Using the Course Search function, find the Classroom course you are interested in taking.
  2. Click on the Course Name in the course tile or list entry.
  3. On the resulting slide-in page, if you are eligible to add yourself to the interest list for the course, click Add Interest (raised hand icon).
  1. The system will update the status of your request. Depending on the settings in your LMS, your status may show “On Interest List” or the request will be “Pending Manager Approval.” An Administrator or Instructor will be able to add you to an available offering.  

View Your Interest List

To see the courses go to the Courses to Complete – Interests tab. You can click the course name and click Cancel on the resulting course slide-in page to remove a course from your list of interests

On the Classic LMS Home page, expand the “Interest List” section. It displays information about the status of the entry, including pending prerequisites. You have the option to click Cancel to remove a course from your list of interests.