Is there a way to see the length of time students spend on Canvas for each login?

[heckler]

I know that we can access the analytics and see how often students view pages and whether or not they are submitting assignments, but is there a way to track how long students spend on Canvas rather than the total amount of time online? I am trying to hold students accountable for time spent outside of class working on assignments for their hybrid classes.

[kmeeusen · Accepted solution]

Hi  @heckler  Welcome to the Canvas Community!

There really is no way to actually do this in Canvas, other than for quizzes which track the time in the quiz. Once I publish a quiz, what kinds of quiz statistics are available? 

However, I am not sure there would be any value in such a metric even if it were available; or rather, how accurate that metric would be. For example, both my work and home computers are always logged into Canvas, and during an active term, they are almost always logged into a course. My computers are on 24/7 unless I am rebooting for some reason or another. So my stats could show that I am in a Canvas course more than 2,000 hours each term. Not particularly useful. Your student can log into Canvas go to a page or activity, and park there while they have SnapChat open on another tab. Just sayin'.

But, if you think this could be useful, there is a feature idea open for voting at https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/13975-total-time-in-canvas-data 

Check it out and support by voting if you think it is appropriate.

Kelley

[awilcox01]

I see that Canvas show total activity time in the PEOPLE area. Could you answer these questions as well? Thank you!

Does the time system have a time-out function that stops tracking time when a student is logged in but inactive? *

Referring to the previous question, if the LMS has an auto-timeout function, after how many minutes does it time out?

[awilcox01]

Many Career Pathways classes require a time on task feature. For example, the State of MN Nursing Assistant Board requires online/hybrid Certified Nursing students to complete 80 hours (and track part of the student time on task in an LMS). We are running the class now through D2L because we can see how long students work each week on assignments. Yes, students must not "leave the D2L tab window" and go to another tab (to view Youtube, etc.) or else D2L will stop tracking student time. We try to embed everything in D2L and tell students not to view another tab while doing assignments in there... it is not perfect but is required for more career training classes. I would prefer Canvas over D2L for many reasons - please add the analytics feature to track student time... you will get more business since this is the reality of career training/classes now. I think Canvas is the very best LMS available and would use it if it were not for the time on task requirement by certification programs. I look forward to your response!

[tandddriving]

Many TDLR (Texas Department of License and Regulation) courses require time-tracking for AMI (Alternative Method of Instruction) courses. This feature would open the door for Driving School Owners to use Canvas extensively for their online needs, since owner and Instructors would then have a means to time-track.