Benchmark against peers

Use the Comparable Set Workbench to establish that starting point. Its intake brief covers credential form, delivery mode, audience, price, and duration, then resolves to a ranked candidate peer set. This structure gives a team a clear rationale for reviewing selected offerings together, rather than treating every program with a similar keyword as equivalent.

Credential form matters because a Course, Certificate, MicroCredential, CertificateOfCompletion, LearningProgram, Diploma, Badge, ApprenticeshipCertificate, Degree, or CertificateOfParticipation can represent different market positions. Delivery mode matters because online, hybrid, and in-person offerings address different learner circumstances. Audience, duration, and price further shape whether an offering is a useful comparator.

Once the workbench has established candidates, review them in the Program Explorer. Each detail page presents the available structured information for an offering, including description, audience, credential type, credit status, delivery format, schedule, self-paced status, duration, price details, topic categories, skills and competencies, and collection timestamp. The record provides a consistent source for examining how each provider represents its program.

Side-by-side comparison supports the next part of the workflow. Place selected offerings together and assess credential form, delivery mode, duration, price, audience, and other captured fields. This makes differences explicit and helps distinguish close peers from offerings that merely share a broad subject area.

Semantic search can expand or test the peer set when needed. Search by topic, audience, or related language, then use location, source platform, credential form, and delivery mode filters to check whether the initial set has missed relevant alternatives. Search results should inform peer-set review, not replace the criteria established in the intake brief.

Trends provides the market-composition context around the selected peers. Examine composition by province, category, credential type, skill facets, price range, and price median to understand where a peer set sits within direct-crawl market data.

One caution when a peer set mixes sources. Platform catalogue records support discovery, but direct-crawl records are what underpin market composition measures, and platform entries carry field limitations that affect how you read them in a comparison. See Sources and Coverage.

A raw list cannot explain why its entries belong together. A peer set built around explicit criteria can support an accountable benchmark discussion, with the institution deciding the conclusions and actions that follow.