Course Analytics - Reporting

[c_t_coltman]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea will be open for vote May 5th, 2015 - August 5th, 2015  Learn more about voting...

I would like to see more granularity in the report of course analytics such as page views, duration of visits both from desktop and mobile devices.

  Response from Instructure

Find more information in Canvas Data‌

[lfeng]

Regarding course level reporting for Canvas, we are working on a new service --called Canvas Data -- which will provide schools with access to their data optimized for reporting and query purposes.  There will be several options available for working with your data, either a flat file download or hosted in an Amazon Redshift data warehouse.  The data will be an extracted and transformed version of your school's Canvas activity including usage (page views, etc).   You will be able to use any ODBC compliant Analytics tool to connect to the data warehouse (Tableau, Excel, R, etc.).   This will allow you to create any reports that you need based on the underlying data. 

Page view information will be available in this environment, and we also plan to parse the requests to determine whether it was from desktop or mobile.   Duration of visits can be determined based on login/logout timestamps (however the issue is that Canvas allows sessions to time out so we may not have accurate data about when the visit ended).  There may be other ways to determine duration of visit, such as the time spent on one page request until the next page request.  However, it the user pulled up the page and then left their machine for a while, it may not accurately capture the active session.  Also, we currently do not have the ability to capture where on the page the user was looking or clicking. 

The Canvas Data environment (aka Hosted Data) will be available to admins via the analytics tools only, letting institutions decide how to consume and disseminate their data.  Long term we may surface more data back into Canvas for teachers, students and admins to view and take action on but that will not happen in the short term.  We are currently running a beta program with about 30 customers and there will be an announcement about it next week at InstructureCon.  Full production is planned for later this year.

[SHEBENE]

Can't wait for this to come out! We have a custom report that's waiting on this access.

[Renee_Carney]

The timeline and updates to the project can also be found at Canvas Studio: Canvas Data (Hosted data service)

[RebeccaMoulder]

Hi  @r_v_jones    I recall batchetl  saying at InstructureCon that Google Analytics could be used with Canvas pages, but only if it was set up correctly when the page is first created. Do you have any more details about this is done?

[KristinL]

I agree. There is a huge gap in information when students' activity via mobile apps is not associated with student analytic. A significant bulk of our activity (we're a school with 1:1 iPads) occurs via mobile, and teachers are missing out on a lot of amazing data. I'm excited to see that this flag is in development!!

[edavis]

Agreed. We use Dropout Detective to pull data from Canvas for retention and advising purposes and this is a huge gap in our data. I hope the mobile app part of the feature request is prioritized.

[clarkbra]

I was considering adding a suggestion, but it may or not be included in this update.  What I want is to be able to click one button and have it show the access reports for the past hour with 3 columns:  Student name; resource accessed; time accessed.  It should also auto re-load every minute or so.  On Moodle this was a report function I used daily.  Now that we've switched to Canvas I have to open an individual access report for every student and I constantly have to switch tabs and hit reload so I can see what each student is working on.   Is what I'm describing part of this update or is it something I should add as a new feature idea?

[cjeffcott]

It would be useful to draw down student activity (ie page views, participation etc) across all the student's activity on Canvas, not just per course.

[ccalderon]

Good morning! I am a little confused by this thread....is this request considered complete due to the implementation of Canvas Data?

Thank you!!

[Renee_Carney]

 @ccalderon ​

I think that is a great question.  Canvas Data does provide the information in the original feature idea.  What is your take on this?  Do you think the Canvas Data project covers the initial request?

My opinion is that Canvas Data met the underlying need, however there may be additional requests that build up on (like " modifiedtitle="true" title="Downloadable Analytic​).

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.