Student user analytics

[SimonHubbard]

We are often required to speak to students about their course learning engagement on Canvas.  Often we speak to students about a lack of engagement and use the data from Canvas, to be told by them that they view via their tablet/phone on the mobile app.

Is there some way of viewing the access reports on the mobile app or combining the app and browser activity?  Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you. 

[chriscas]

Hi @SimonHubbard,

I moved the post over to the Data and Analytics area so you can hopefully get the most accurate info possible.  I know data from mobile was not included in many areas years ago, but I thought Instructure fixed most of that perhaps around 2017 or 2018.  If mobile data is still missing from some areas, I agree it's something that should be addressed because inaccurate data is worse in my mind than having no data at all.  Let's see if anyone in this group has more info on the topic.

-Chris

[SimonHubbard]

Thanks, Chris

[LeventeHunyadi]

As of today, we don't expose mobile page views via Data Access Platform Query API (a.k.a. Canvas Data 2 or CD 2), only web page views data (a.k.a. web requests) is available in the canvas_logs namespace. To the best of my knowledge, the table export for mobile page views is also on the roadmap, and will be made available later this year.

DAP is primarily for bulk data export. If you are looking for a visual dashboard or an aggregated reports view, Admin Analytics might be a better choice.

[SimonHubbard]

Hi Levente

Thanks for the reply, i certainly hope this, long overdue data stream is added, as so many of our students access via the mobile app.

I have looked through Admin analytics, but cannot seem to see what I'm looking for.  Also, many of my colleagues do not have Admin access rights.

[AjnaRivera]

Thank you, this is important information to get out to the users of New Analytics.  I graded an assignment based on whether they spent enough time on the page to watch a video.  Now I'm dealing with dozens of student regrades because I was not aware they needed to watch videos on their PCs (not phones/tablets) to show up. 

[simon_hubbard]

Hello, this is reason I made the initial post, it paints such a false picture if mobile usage is not included.

Simon

[canninga]

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but I was hoping for some clarification. Does this mean mobile interactions aren't recorded at all or that they're not included in Data2? If an instructor were to look at analytics data within their course, would students who interact with course content fron only mobile devices not appear?

[simon_hubbard]

Hello, yes that is certainly my understanding. Mobile data is not included in usage data.

Simon

[craig_thompson]

Chiming in, we have the same issue, and a specific example that I can share:

We're interested in reporting on student behaviour in the Canvas mobile app, but we've discovered that the Caliper Live Event logs don't match up one to one with actions that students take in the app. In particular, we looked at a sequence of 3 taps starting from the dashboard: tap on a course, tap on grades, tap on a specific assignment.

However, the Caliper logs only show 2 distinct events corresponding to two API calls:

/api/v1/courses/<COURSE_ID>?include%5B%5D=banner_image&include%5B%5D=course_image&include%5B%5D=current_grading_period_scores&include%5B%5D=favorites&include%5B%5D=permissions&include%5B%5D=sections&include%5B%5D=syllabus_body&include%5B%5D=term&include%5B%5D=total_scores&include%5B%5D=observed_users

and

/api/v1/courses/<COURSE_ID>/assignments/<ASSIGNMENT_ID>?include%5B%5D=submission&include%5B%5D=score_statistics&include%5B%5D=can_submit

I believe it's the second tap, where the student accesses their course gradebook, that does not generate a Caliper event. It would be great if the Caliper navigation events more closely mapped to actual taps/clicks, rather than API calls.