Academic Information Management provides consultation, analysis, & data to L&S academic departments & programs, administrative units, committees, faculty, and other stakeholders. AIM’s analytic services include:
- consultation on curriculum & policy to support planning for new programs or changes to existing programs
- support for the implementation & assessment of L&S curriculum and undergraduate policy
- analysis of student outcomes, enrollment activity, curricular & degree award trends
- creation of reports that support program review, DEI initiatives, and other L&S strategic goals
- review of academic policy to facilitate process improvements in student services
AIM has curated a list of institutional data resources below. To request analysis or data not available in existing resources, please complete the form linked at the bottom of this page.
Data Resources
This set of resources is intended to provide guidance for UW–Madison personnel who need “self-service” options for accessing data related to academic program creation, revision, and review. AIM has compiled a list of resources and URLs for commonly requested data, along with instructions for how to get started. Academic Planning and Institutional Research (APIR) also has a KnowledgeBase (KB) Program Review page, and there are many additional resources; these are data sources we frequently recommend.
See the section titled “How to Use Institutional Data Exporters (IDE) and Tableau Visualizations” if you need help getting started.
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Resources Related to Enrollment Counts and Degrees Awarded
Trends in Student Enrollments
Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: APIR
Data Access: Public
Provides numbers of enrolled students in Fall/Spring terms for the past 10 years. Users can filter on student characteristics (e.g., academic level, male/female, minority status, admit type, tuition residency, full/part-time status) using the “Select Topic” filter, and obtain student counts by department, major and named option.
Trends in Degrees and Related Data
Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: APIR
Data Access: Public
Provides information about degrees, degree recipient demographics, majors, named options, certificates, and doctoral minors. Users can filter on student characteristics using the “Select Topic” filter, and obtain student counts by School/College (of the student and the major), department, and major.
Course Enrollment Counts
Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: Registrar’s Office
Data Access: Internal
Course enrollment data by plan and catalog number; includes data on low enrollment courses.
Course Undergraduate Enrollment Snapshot
Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: Registrar’s Office
Data Access: Internal
Data can be viewed at the section, course and subject level, with standard demographic breakdowns.
Resources Related to Course Outcomes (Grades)
Course Grade Distribution and GPA Reports
Data Type: PDF Files
Author: Registrar’s Office
Data Access: Public
This report does not combine cross-listed courses; it includes section-level grade distribution.
Course Grade Distribution IDE
Data Type: Institutional Data Exporter
Author: Registrar’s Office
Data Access: Restricted
This IDE contains the same information as the pdf files, but access is restricted. It does not combine cross-listed courses, but it does include course grades by section and by instructor.
Undergraduate Course D, F, Drop Rates
Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: APIR
Data Access: Public
Shows course D, F and Drop rates over time, and by several commonly reported demographic categories. The total counts and percentages are downloadable, but the counts by demographic breakdowns are not.
Resources Related to Courses Completed
Courses Completed to Satisfy Undergraduate Major Requirements
Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: L&S Academic Information Management
Data Access: All UW-Madison Employees
Provides information about how and when students completed their undergraduate major requirements. It includes data about course counts and Time to Degree for graduates since Summer, 2013. The “Majors Counting Courses” worksheet provides information about the Majors for which specified courses satisfied Requirements. (L&S and CALS undergraduates only.)
Courses used to Satisfy Undergraduate College/University Requirements
Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: L&S Academic Information Management
Data Access: All UW-Madison Employees
Provides information about how and when undergraduates completed their University and School/College Degree requirements (L&S and CALS undergraduates only). Includes course counts and Time to Degree for graduates since Summer 2013. Only Requirements completed with course credit are included (e.g., excludes students who completed a Requirement through a placement test score).
Courses Completed by Bachelor’s Degree Recipients
Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: APIR
Data Access: Public
Provides information about the UW-Madison courses completed by bachelor’s degree recipients in the last five years, and percentage of graduates who completed each course. Includes coursetaking patterns by major, school/college, admit type, tuition residency, and semester type.
Resources Related to Curricular Exceptions
Undergraduate Major Curricular Exceptions
Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: L&S Academic Information Management
Data Access: All UW-Madison Employees
Provides data about exceptions to undergraduate major requirements since Summer 2014. This includes total exception counts for current and past major versions, exceptions/awards with comparisons to Field of Study in School/College averages, counts of exceptions according to major requirement, as well as by courses used in substitution. (L&S and CALS undergraduates only.)
Resources Related to Graduate School Enrollments and Degrees Awarded
Graduate School Explorer:
Admissions, Enrollment & Funding and Degrees, Completion & Career Outcomes
Data Type: Tableau visualizations
Author: Graduate School
Data Access: Restricted
These visualizations allow users to filter by Degree, Division, School/College, program plan, and program sub-plan/named option. They include:
- Applicant, admit, and new enrollment 5-year average demographics (Targeted Minority, international, & gender)
- Type and average amount of funding for graduate students
- Degrees, completion (includes median time to degree), and career outcomes
PhD Retention/Completions and Time-to-Degree Metrics
Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: APIR
Data Access: Public
Provides comparison data for Peer Institutions and internal peers.
Resources Related to the “Wisconsin Experience”
APIR creates annual reports for the number of students who have engaged in “Wisconsin Experience” activities that can be analyzed from students’ academic records. Each report explains the activities that were analyzed (e.g., First-year Interest Group, Seminar Participation, and Study Abroad), and breaks out results by demographic subgroups and Schools/Colleges. There is a 2020 Supplement report “by Major”.
Links to the annual reports (pdf format) are found here.
How to Use Institutional Data Exporters (IDE)
and Tableau Visualizations
Where to Begin
Tableau visualizations and Institutional Data Exporters are located on the Web. The best way to search for them is through the campus data search tool, RADAR. You can also navigate to a data resource using a direct link. For data resources that are not public, you will have to log in using your UW-Madison credentials. Resources that require a higher data access restriction level (indicated by a pad-lock icon in RADAR) will require you to request access to that access restriction level.
Institutional Data Exporters do not have a graphic component; they are tools for people to filter data to the desired level and then download a file.
Visualizations provide graphic displays of data; most visualizations include a home page that includes clickable links to the available data views. Click on the link (or the tabs across the top of the visualization) to view the graphs of the data. Some visualizations require you to scroll down to see more information. You may save image or pdf files of the graphics by clicking the “download” icon and choosing the desired file type.
Data Access
You should have access to any IDE or visualization of “Public” data. You will need to request access (following on-screen prompts) in order to view and download “internal” or “restricted” data. There is a colored “button” at the bottom right of each visualization or IDE that will tell you what level of access is required.
You are responsible for maintaining the appropriate level of security for the data you access. See University data governance policies for more details.
How to Download Data
In many cases, you may download the data “behind” a Tableau visualization. Once you have navigated to a data view of interest, click on the small, gray and white “download” icon located near the top right of the screen (usually just under the black ribbon, though sometimes the download icon will be at the bottom of the screen). Click “crosstab” when presented with options for the download file type, then “csv”. If you click “Excel”, the download will work, but the formatting of the file will likely make sorting and filtering difficult. A file with a generic name will be saved to your “Downloads” folder.
To download data from an IDE, navigate to the appropriate page, then follow the step-by-step filtering and download instructions. Some IDEs allow you to select individual students, and you may also type or paste in a list of ID numbers to get results for a set of students (provided you have access to the data). As with downloading from visualizations, a file with a generic name will be saved to your “Downloads” folder.
Additional Data Requests
Seeking data not available via the self-service resources listed above? Please complete an AIM Analysis/Data Request. AIM personnel will review the data request within 10 business days and follow up via email to discuss the data need detailed in the submission.