Misleading details in student Access Reports

[pattene]

I thought that this had been covered in the past but I couldn't find anything while searching this forum.

I'd like to know if anything is being done to streamline the student Access Report so that it doesn't show each and every embedded image as though the student clicked on (accessed) it? It clutters the report and is misleading. For example,  IMG_0920.PNG is not something a student clicked on. It is, however, an embedded image on a Canvas page in the course. 

Thanks!

[chriscas]

Hi @pattene,

While I don't work for Instructure and have no idea what they may have planned for the future, I don't know that this would rank very high or even get majority agreement on.  As an admin, it's actually helpful to have logs and access reports showing everything that a student accessed, but there's a very low likelihood of missing data with this methodology.  While you may not want to see embedded content in the report, other teachers and admins may feel very differently, especially based on how they design their course.  Embeds are sometimes the only way something like an image is available in a course, so if those views weren't included it could appear students missed material when they did not.

Just me quick two cents here for consideration.  I'm sure others would totally agree with you, but I honestly can't envision how to make this feature work for every different desire without creating a technical nightmare.

-Chris

[dbrace]

I understand this from both sides, the list can get quite long and be overkill.

It will be interesting to see how helpful having everything listed will be now that Canvas uses pagination when displaying access reports.

-Doug

[paul_fynn]

if you load images in svg format they seem to be ignored by analytics, however it does glitch out as broken links periodically according to Canvas's latest updates... Course Analytics (if you have it enabled) seems a bit cleaner, but student access report not only reports images but, where the student is in more than one section each hit is reported that many times .....

[Llinsmu]

What kills me is that it stores when a student is near an image, but replaces data each time they visit the same page, doesn't contain data for assessment interaction (i.e., Moodle captures each stage of a submission attempt so we can see if a student tried and failed etc), and hides timestamps for 24 hours forcing people to hover.... such a terrible report functionality.  

[paul_fynn]

I would want a bit more detail on those observations to be able to comment in full @Llinsmu .

I can see each attempt of a file uploader in Speedgrader (in our institution we can see previous submissions but are only allowed to mark the first attempt.

I can see all attempts and progress for New Quizzes in the moderate function.

I can draw every visit to an assignment or asset from the User Account details which are very forensic.

I am not sure that it is *healthy* for teachers to be able to immediately see every move that their students have made - it can be useful when investigating claims about the tech misbehaving, or that the student had been trying to upload before a hard deadline (when in fact they logged on two minutes after), and possibly in using site analytics to judge how well the pedagogy is working.

Any more detail is going to take more resource, and that brings additional downsides across teh board.

[Jess_M]

@paul_fynn you can only see successful attempts, not cases where a student claims they uploaded a paper that is no longer there (a claim I get multiple times per teaching period). 

The quiz functionality and logging is good. I should have been clearer that this was with regard to file uploads. 

The two institutions I work at do not record every visit to an assignment or asset, it logs the first and most recent. If a student visits a page/asset more than twice, it loses the records in between. Your level of access may be something visible at an admin level or specific to your institution,.

The type of logging I'm referring to is OOB for Moodle. For example, it logs every page and asset visit, when a student commences a file upload and once it has gone through (levels depend on the stages required for submission) etc. 

Edit: just realised I logged in to reply using the other account, oops. 

[paul_fynn]

I'd differentiate between successful and unsuccessful upload attempts - we have about a 0.05 issue rate with failed uploads which is typically associated with attempts to upload a cloud file and as Learning Technologists we know fairly quickly whether this was, or should have been, within the student's competence or control. Successfully submitted files do not just disappear in Canvas. You could direct students to their profile > files > submissions folder.

I can't speak for how your institution has chosen to configure Canvas, but the granular level data exists and could be accessed subject to your local technical capabilities and governance, whether as a one off, or as something that could be built into a local custom function.