New in Canvas Catalog: Course Recommendations Based on Real Enrollment Trends

[matekiss]

 

 

Building on Our First Recommendation Feature

At Canvas Catalog, we are continually improving how learners discover relevant courses. Earlier this year, we introduced a recommendation feature that helped surface suggested courses on the Homepage. This allowed institutions to increase course visibility and guide learners toward additional opportunities.

Now, we are taking it a step further. Our new Recommendations Tab on the course listing page builds on this foundation, using real enrollment trends from the last six months to surface Frequently Bought Together courses. This makes recommendations more dynamic and data-driven, helping learners explore courses that others have already enrolled in together.

What’s New?

• A Dedicated "Recommendations" Tab—Now available on course listing pages, displaying courses frequently bought together over the last six months.
• Automatically Generated Suggestions—Recommendations are based on actual purchase data from the past six months, dynamically reflecting learner enrollment trends.
• Fallback Recommendations—If not enough "frequently bought together" data is available, the system suggests popular or trending courses instead.
• Expanded Course Visibility—Recommendations can include courses from the same subcatalog, other subcatalogs, or the root catalog, ensuring learners see relevant offerings across their institution.

How This Evolves Course Discovery in Catalog

Our first recommendation version helped improve course discovery, but this new update goes further by dynamically reflecting real purchasing behavior.

With this enhancement:

• Recommendations on the listing page are fully automated, based on real enrollment data
• They appear directly within course listings, ensuring that suggestions are shown at the moment of decision-making, when a learner is actively considering enrollment.
• The system continuously updates recommendations, ensuring they remain relevant over time.

While our Homepage recommendations remain a valuable tool for showcasing popular or trending courses, this new tab ensures that learners see suggestions tied to real purchasing patterns while browsing individual courses.

How It Works

1. A learner visits a course listing page.
2. The "Recommendations" tab appears.
3. The system analyzes past six months of enrollments and suggests courses frequently bought together.
4. If not enough data exists, the system defaults to Catalog-wide most popular or trending courses.
5. Learners can explore and enroll in recommended courses seamlessly.

What Admins Can Configure

While recommendations are automatically generated, admins still have control over key aspects of the feature:

• Enable or disable recommendations at the root catalog level.
• Set the number of recommendations displayed.
• Decide whether to allow fallback recommendations when frequently bought together data is limited.
• Allow subcatalog admins to override settings, ensuring flexibility for different departments and learning programs.

This ensures that institutions maintain control over their Catalog experience while benefiting from automated, real-time recommendations.

How This Benefits Learners and Institutions

With the new Recommendations Tab, learners now receive smarter, more relevant course suggestions while browsing. This enhancement:

• Encourages continued learning by surfacing courses that align with real enrollment trends.
• Reduces friction in course discovery, making it easier for learners to find their next opportunity.
• Provides institutions with a hands-off way to increase course visibility and engagement.

By combining automated recommendations with admin flexibility, this update represents the next step in our mission to make learning more accessible and intuitive.

Get Started

The Recommendations Tab is now live in Canvas Catalog. Enable it today to enhance course discovery, drive engagement, and help learners explore valuable learning opportunities.

Turn on Recommendations today and let real enrollment data guide your learners to their next course.

[GarethLogan]

Hi @matekiss thanks for this update. I am messaging here as couldn't find a more relevant forum with Comments still turned on. I was reading this blog post 'Which integration would you love to see in Canvas Catalog?' and I work for a HE institution who are configuring Catalog at the moment. We have Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I saw it mentioned in that Blog post and I am wondering if there was enough interest to see an integration with MS Dynamics to be considered?

Thanks again for all the hard work on making Catalog great! 

Have you got anything on the roadmap to add more permission choices to the Sub catalog Admins? Ive just been doing a technical deep dive into Catalog Config and i feel that is one area where there could be more nuance added. all the best, Gareth 

[JenniferJWhite]

Hi, @GarethLogan!

I've just seen your post, and wanted to say a quick "hello" and let you know about the Catalog Users' Group, if you're not yet aware of our existence. We at the University of Maryland have managed this group for the past several years, and we welcome folks from HE who are currently using or considering using Catalog at their institutions. We hold monthly meetings, and Instructure folks join our meetings to give us updates, hear our questions/concerns, and to float ideas to us (Máté usually joins us every other month!). We also have a listserv.

It's a good, collegial group in which we share our Catalog experiences (successes, challenges, feature wishlists). If you'd be intersted in joining us, please send a message to itsupport@umd.edu and mention "Catalog Users' Group" -- we'd be happy to have you onboard!

Best,
Jennifer

[matekiss]

Hi @GarethLogan,

thanks so much for reaching out and for the thoughtful feedback, it’s always great to hear from anyone who is actively working with Catalog day to day! You’re spot on about MS Dynamics. It was the top-voted option in the CRM category from our recent poll, and it’s definitely in a strong position for consideration as we plan out future integrations.

Regarding your point on subcatalog admin permissions, really appreciate you bringing that up. It’s not something we’re actively investigating at the moment, but we’d love to better understand what you’re running into. If you’re up for sharing a bit more about the types of permission granularity or control you’d like to see, that would be super helpful as we think about longer-term improvements.

Thanks again for the kind words and for being part of the community!

Best,
Máté