Student Enrollment

Question

Hello,

My team is attempting to quantify the growth of student enrollment in our course. How can I find the number of students enrolled at any specific date? We would really like to see the data by month.

Example

January 1- 252 students

February 1- 289 students

dbrace · Accepted Answer

Hi @AutSpec,

My institution does not use it but this might be possible in Canvas Data.  Maybe someone else in the Community can help you with that or with how they do it.  Also, taking the LMS out of it, does your school have a institutional research team?  We have a team that on a weekly basis tracks enrollment, which is helpful when comparing from one year or semester to another.

From solely a Canvas perspective, we enroll students using scheduled SIS imports and CSV files. We keep an archive of CSV files for three months.  Specifically for enrollment CSV files, this allows us to (if needed) see a student's enrollment status at desired point-in-time and this is helpful for when a student registers for something for the first time in our SIS (Banner) or when they switch from one section or course to another).

What my institution does for Canvas probably does not help you obtain what you are looking for right now but it might help you make adjustments.

-Doug

Chris · Accepted Answer

Hi @AutSpec,

I would agree with the direction @dbrace was going with his response.  If your students are being enrolled through a student information system (SIS, like Banner, PeopleSoft, Powerschool, etc...) that system may have a more direct way to get enrollment data by date.

I'd say that Canvas isn't quite designed for this task exactly, but depending on your situation you may be able to get some results.  The Canvas enrollments API should show you the last enrollment date for each student in the course, so you could get all enrollments in the course, then use the date field to figure out when the enrollment happened.  This would work really well if people don't ever unenroll.  It would require a bit of programming knowledge (or maybe use of GenAI to try to help code), but it's at least an idea that would rely only on Canvas.

Hope this helps a bit.

-Chris