view access by file or item, not user

[mcdowela]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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I've searched on this topic repeatedly, so if it's been addressed, sorry. I would like to be able to run analytics on a specific file or assignment to see which students have accessed it. I know how to look at each student's record, but that's extremely cumbersome.  For example, I uploaded a PDF of model (anonymous) essays from the class and want to know how many students have looked at these before submitting their next essay. It would be helpful to run a report on that item.  I really dislike having to go student by student to see who has done what vs. being able to run a report on individual files or individual modules, etc.

Thanks, Andrea

General Comments

Comments from Instructure

Please refer to Canvas Release: New Course and User Analytics.

Note from the Community Team: We're including the link to https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1221-see-which-students-have-viewed-a-particular-page-or-activ... here so we can keep these related ideas associated with one another.

[cward]

 @RobDitto ​, we're definitely planning on doing a much better job of surfacing data like this in the UI, but we have several Canvas Data infrastructure pieces we need to complete before we're ready to tackle something like that. Know that you're being heard and that I agree this is an unmet need (now go hire me lots of engineers so we can get to this quicker )

[mcdowela]

Chris, I appreciate that your team "will consider" adding this feature to Canvas. I think most of us feel great frustration because we HAD this feature with Angel-- a far inferior LMS. So it's baffling that such a logical need of instructors wasn't part of the original Canvas design. Leads me to question whether actual *instructors* were involved in the planning, or only engineers who hypothesized what instructors might want?

Frankly, Canvas has many features I don't need that seems like someone else thought they'd be "cool."  Meanwhile, it shouldn't take "lots of engineers" to implement a feature that was basic to the old Angel.  Indeed, Canvas does have some nice features -- but to lose what might have been one of the most critical tools of all makes me wish for Angel again. Fewer bells and whistles, more pedagogical functionality.  😞

[cward]

I'd like to reframe this discussion in terms of the problems we're trying to solve with this data. From what I gather, this seems to be a (non-exhaustive) list:

• Inform my lesson planning--if I know students are spending a lot of time with the material outside class that may change how I set up the time spent in class
• Help me improve the content that is seeing a lot of use, so I can focus my efforts where they'll have the most impact
• See what resources students are getting the most value out of, and which ones could use improvement or be removed

• How far in advance are students beginning their assignments?
• Do students look at the material before class?
• Understand the relationship between time spent with the materials and assessment performance

If I've missed anything, please feel free to add comments below.

Chris

[RobDitto]

In addition to what you described above, one of our institution's most common use cases is investigating who accessed unintentionally-released content. Instructional teams can be accident-prone, and these investigations help with decision-making surrounding academic rigor.

[woodsdm2]

I'll agree, but offer some more details.

The first three are all variations on seeing how much a resource is used.  I'd find these useful, but would want to see them in Canvas directly.  Some of the discussion thread talks about having these in the Canvas Data tool, which from what I've seen would be an additional tool.

The other three are more about relating when a page was access to some other event - due date for an assignment, class meeting, overall performance.  I would be interested in these, but find them less interesting than the first three, mostly because I tend to teach smaller classes, so would expect more limited statistical power.  I would expect that these would need to be implemented in Canvas Data.

[scollins]

Gosh, I don't have time to be involved in this. I only want to know if and when this change could happen. How long is "voting" open, how many "votes" does it take, and how long before some definitive answer addressing this feature might be available? (I will mention that this feature of accessing individual items was available on Blackboard, and this is the biggest reason I wish my institution had not switched to Canvas.)

[Renee_Carney]

Thank you for the continued conversation around this feature idea.  We have collected a number of use cases and this is something we definitely want to do, however this project is not currently allocated for.  We're not confident when this feature will be allocated for, so we are going to archive this thread for now.  Archive doesn't mean it's done.  Please continue to comment and add use cases to the thread.  Also, follow the idea to receive updates when they come available.

[nolaug]

We have some faculty requesting this capability too. We currently support two LMS's on campus, Canvas is the newer and we want faculty to move toward Canvas, but our other LMS does provide some basic access to data on resources use and the ability to generate a report that shows all students. Clicking one student at a time is too cumbersome for the faculty that expect to use this feature often. I agree with others that this would certainly help us see what pages/resources/files students are getting the most value out of.

[f000f2p]

We built a Shiny app that analyzes the access report raw data and generate a visualization of the content access. You can install the userscript (slightly modified based upon James Jone's ​original version) to harvest the data, and save it in a csv file on your local computer. Open the app Content Access Analytics, and load the csv file to the app, you will get all sorts of analytics.

[cward]

This is amazing! Thanks for building out, and sharing this, f000f2p​!