Analysis, Data, & Publications

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, L&S initiatives, and other strategic goals
review of academic policy to facilitate process improvements in student services

To request analysis or data not available in existing resources listed below, please complete the form linked at the bottom of this page.

AIM Publications

The resources linked below require NetID authentication and, if accessed off-campus, connection via VPN.

Active Reports

Students in L&S Undergraduate Majors [report]

Provides a data profile of each L&S undergraduate major, including enrollment/declaration/graduation trends, declaration timing, demographic profile, and combinations with other majors.

Updated each semester.

Students in L&S Undergraduate Certificates [report]

Provides a data profile of each L&S undergraduate certificate, including enrollment/declaration/graduation trends, declaration timing, demographic profile, and combinations with other majors.

Updated each semester.

L&S Inclusive Excellence Report

Summarizes indicators requested by the L&S Inclusive Excellence Committee to monitor progress toward the College’s goals in this area.

Updated annually.

Static Reports

Students in L&S Undergraduate Degrees [report]

Detailed analysis of how L&S undergraduates met the College’s liberal arts degree requirements for Breadth, Depth, Residence, and Quality of Work over a ten year period. Includes an analysis of overlap between degree and major requirements, plan awards & combinations, and Ethnic Studies attainment.

Produced for the Department of History with support of the Associate Dean of Arts & Humanities in Spring 2024.

Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science Foreign Language Requirement [report]

Detailed analysis of how L&S undergraduates meet the BA & BS foreign language degree requirements in effect since Summer 2007. Includes trends in outcomes in aggregate and across student demographic groups and historical context of previous L&S foreign language requirements.

Produced for the UW–Madison Language Institute in Fall 2022.

L&S Quality of Work Policies [whitepaper]

Provides analysis of the relationships between/among the four Quality of Work GPAs required of L&S undergraduate degree recipients and makes policy recommendations to rationalize Quality of Work requirements based on observations.

Published in Spring 2024.

L&S STEM Gateway [report]

Examines whether L&S student outcomes in introductory STEM courses are indicative of STEM awards upon graduation, including analysis of outcomes in student demographic groups.

Produced for Dean Wilcots in Spring 2021.

COM-A Outcomes [report]

Findings on whether midterm grades in COM-A courses predict final course grades and the effects of timing of COM-A completion.

Produced for L&S Academic Advising Services in Spring 2023.

English 100 D/F/Drops [report]

Findings on the D/F/Drop profile of ENGL 100 relative to other courses commonly completed in a student’s first year, and outcomes for students who earn a D, F, or who drop the course.

Produced for the Department of English in Spring 2023.

Visualizations

Courses Completed to Satisfy Undergraduate College/University Requirements

Provides aggregated information about how and when L&S and CALS undergraduates completed their University and School/College Degree requirements. Includes course count & requirement timing.

Courses Completed to Satisfy Undergraduate Major Requirements

Provides aggregated information about how and when L&S and CALS undergraduates completed their undergraduate major requirements. Includes course count & requirement timing.

Undergraduate Major Curricular Exceptions

Provides data about exceptions to L&S and CALS undergraduate major requirements. 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.

Other 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. Data, Academic Planning, and Institutional Research (DAPIR) also has a KnowledgeBase (KB) Program Review page. 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.

Resources Related to Enrollment Counts and Degrees Awarded

Trends in Student Enrollments

Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: DAPIR
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: DAPIR
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.

Courses Completed by Bachelor’s Degree Recipients

Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: DAPIR
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.

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.

Course Grade Distribution

Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: DAPIR
Data Access: Restricted

The report provides information about enrollments, average course GPA, and instructors at the course and course section level. It combines cross-listed courses and displays courses under each subject. Users can decide to view the grade distributions by the number of students or the percentage of students.

Undergraduate Course D, F, Drop Rates

Data Type: Tableau Visualization
Author: DAPIR
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 Graduate School Enrollments and Degrees Awarded

Graduate School Explorer

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: DAPIR
Data Access: Public

Provides comparison data for Peer Institutions and internal peers.

Resources Related to the “Wisconsin Experience”

DAPIR 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.