Counter Culture

[bruguier]

Hello: 

I'm a member of the library faculty at my college; thus, I'm part of a "course" in Canvas that Library faculty and staff have developed, designed to make available to our patrons (students, faculty) library resources/created content beneficial to them. But, because we are not instructional faculty, our "course" does not have students "enrolled," even though our "course enrollment" is conceivably *all* of the College's students and faculty.

I write now since I recently learned that what I seek as a "tool" does not exist in Canvas:  i.e., an instrument that will count usage of or "hits" on the library's resources/content included in our "course."  I am not interested in identifying users as individuals in any way.  All I want is an aggregate number. I would imagine, my library is not alone in wishing Canvas could capture all courses offered at our institution.

Though considered "Teachers" in Canvas, after I provided a link to our "course," the highly helpful Canvas staff member informed me that "... The issue here is ...Canvas analytics are only pulled for student enrollments, which in your shell/course there are none..."

To my way of thinking, that is an unfortunate and functionally limiting categorization, since the libraries serve the College's full body of students and faculty in Canvas.  Being able to evaluate usage would be most helpful to know (i.e., adjustments would be made, new content created, etc.). This in turn would better serve instructional faculty and students, and improve learning outcomes.

Thus my plea--  would the Canvas Development team please consider creating an instrument that would capture "hits" on/usage of resources, made available in our  Library "course" which has no "enrollment"?

Thank you for considering this request.

[Renee_Carney]

 @bruguier  

There are some outside tools you could possibly use.

I've personally used Bitly | Custom URL Shortener, Link Management & Branded Links to create links to a course or within a course to get data on usage.

There are also ways to leverage https://analytics.google.com/ 

   Here's more details on using Google Analytics with Canvas - https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-9211-how-to-set-up-google-analytics-for-canvas 

Because you are not looking for specific user information, but just general use, either of these would be a good option!

[ProductPanda]

Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.