Access Reports

[jmalone1]

I just about lost it this morning after appearing to discover that not a single student has been watching my lecture videos on Canvas. 

I clicked "People" on the left side. Then clicked names, and went to the Access Report. One after the next, there was no record of the lecture file being opened. Then I performed a test of my own. I opened a lecture video myself and then went back to the Access Report for myself, and sure enough, there was no record of me opening it. Secondly, I went back to the lecture video, opened the file, and then clicked to download it. After going back to the Access Report, it now showed up as having been accessed.

Long story short, when you open the lecture video file, it shows the video on a screen within the file. If you simply watch the lecture by "streaming" it rather than actually doing a download, it will not show up as having been accessed.

This is a problem. Am I alone in making this discovery, or am I doing something wrong?

[Shar]

Hi  @jmalone1  Welcome to the Canvas Community!

You are not alone in discovering that there is no way to track if learners/users are actually watching videos. Unless.... you provide some mechanism to verify they have viewed the content: like a quiz question with content only from the lecture video. Even if someone downloads the video, there's no guarantee that they actually watch it.

How do you have the lecture videos recorded/embedded on the page? Are you using Canvas Studio or are you just uploading narrated PPT mp4?

• How do I create a Canvas Studio video quiz in a course? 
• How do I embed a Canvas Studio video quiz in the Rich Content Editor as an instructor? 

If you'll be happy just knowing they went to the page with the lecture video, then you can enable the module requirements and set it for View this page. How do I add requirements to a module?  

Then you can quickly see the progress of learners through the module. How do I use modules to view the progress of students in a course?  

Module Progress will show you the things the learner has not completed yet:

In general, I typically set the first item in the module as View, and then the next items as Mark as Done so that the student has to deliberately take action to say they "did" (consumed the content on) that page.

I also include a reminder message at the bottom on the first few Mark done pages.

Hope this advice helps,
Stay home, stay healthy,
Cheers - Shar

[jmalone1]

Uploading narrated MP4’s