Untangling Ambiguity: When to Use Which Subject Area for Your Ad Hoc Query

You may find yourself with a data question that could seemingly be answered using multiple subject areas. Which one do you choose? Use the jump links below or scroll to view explanations and scenarios to help you out. To review more SIRIS FAQs, click here.

The Elephant in the Room: What is the difference between Plan Enrollment and Class Enrollment? 

When to use the Plan Enrollment subject area vs. the Census Enrollment subject area

When to use the Term Fact folder vs. the Event Fact folder fields in the Plan Enrollment subject area

When to use the Class Offerings subject area vs. the Student Class Enrollment subject area

When to use the Instruction by Main Class subject area vs. the Instruction by Any Class subject area

The Elephant in the Room: What is the difference between Plan Enrollment and Class Enrollment?

The word enrollment gets used a lot in higher education, often in multiple contexts. When we refer to plan enrollment, we are referring to a student’s enrollment status in a given plan(s) in a given term; for example, one student could be active and enrolled in their Computer Science BS plan, while another could be on a leave of absence from their Political Science BS in a given term. When we discuss class enrollment, we are talking about students’ enrollment in a class or classes.

When to use the Plan Enrollment subject area vs. the Census Enrollment subject area

Use the Plan Enrollment subject area if:

• You need an as-of-yesterday version of who is enrolled
• You have a very particular question that involves attributes/information not available in census data    
  
   

Use the Census Enrollment subject area if:

• You are reporting on historical trends over time
• You want/need to match official enrollment statistics
• You want/need stable numbers that aren’t going to change from day to day

However sometimes in the last case, you can pull a census population into the another subject area to pick up other attributes or information.

A note about the census count fields in Plan Enrollment versus those in Census Enrollment: Census counts in the Census Enrollment subject area are static; they are frozen in time as of the date of the census each quarter. In the Plan Enrollment subject area, SIRIS stores the latest status information for students, as of yesterday. Although census counts in the Plan Enrollment and Census Enrollment subject areas are normally close, they will differ because the data continue to change in Plan Enrollment. For example, a student who was enrolled in their program at the date of the census count but then takes a leave of absence later that quarter would appear differently in census and plan enrollment.

When to use the Term Fact folder vs. the Event Fact folder fields in the Plan Enrollment subject area

There are two facts in this subject area – you can only use fields from one fact at a time when building an adhoc query. The table below summarizes when to use the fields in either fact folder:

When to use the Class Offerings subject area vs. the Student Class Enrollment subject area

Use the Class Offerings subject area if you’re looking for aggregate data on classes. This subject area has:

• Quick enrollments and headcounts in classes, including students grouped by career
• All the different class sections that comprise a course, for example lectures and discussion sections
• Wide range of characteristics about class sections, including their inherited course characteristics, class component type, enrollment status, UG requirement fulfillment, instructors, location data, course tags, crosslistings, etc.
• Data are at the level of class section
• This is the only place you will find:
  • Information about class sections with zero enrollments (discussion sections, etc.)
  • A running total of headcount, drops, and waitlists per class until the add drop deadline (the second fact)
• Be careful about: Pulling units or headcounts for non-graded sections   
  
   

Use the Student Class Enrollment subject area if you’re looking for individual student enrollment data; data about drops or waitlists; or data about a specific population or group of students (for example, what are all my Computer Science BS students enrolling in for autumn quarter?). This subject area has:

• Data at the level of student enrollment
• If no student enrolls in a class section, that section will not exist in this subject area
• Wide range of characteristics about class sections, including their inherited course characteristics, class component type, enrollment status, UG requirement fulfillment, instructors, location data, course tags, crosslistings, etc.
• Dates that a student was enrolled in or dropped a class
• Extra term enrollment data, such as study agreements, GPAs, and units carried per term
• This is the only place you will find
  • Grades and GPA
  • Student bio-demo info linked to enrollment records (including gender, ethnicity, athletic status, transfer, cohort info, etc.)
  • Whether a student dropped or was waitlisted in a class
  • A student’s current, past (at the time of the class) and completed academic plans
  • Lists of waitlisted students who never made it into the class after the waitlist purge in the second fact (from inception of SIRIS 2B only)
• Be careful about: Specifying an enrollment status for your student, since enrolls, drops, waitlists, and withdraws are all available in this area

When to use the Instruction by Main Class subject area vs. the Instruction by Any Class subject area

Use the Instruction by Main Class subject area if

• You only need the headcount and/or unit counts for the main section (usually the graded, lecture section) of a course
• You are ok with crosslisted classes being combined into one main class
• You want to avoid double counting enrollments double-counting enrollments in classes which have multiple sections, as this subject area will only count the graded sections in almost all cases.   
  
   

Use the Instruction by Any Class subject area if

• You want to examine each and ever class section individually, regardless of whether or not the section is a graded one or not
• You are ok with crosslisted classes being treated as separate class sections.
• You want to look at teaching assistants and the number of students enrolled in their non-graded discussion sections