See which students have viewed a particular page or activity and when

(10)
I would like to see who has viewed any particular page or activity and when it was viewed.

 

I can find some of this information by going to every student and looking through their page views, but I want to be able to quickly see who has/hasn't seen a particular page or activity, i.e., if I post an information page, I'd like to be able to access a report about view of that page. That way I can easily remind those who are overlooking something important.

 

Also, the time of most recent access per student is not enough. I often need to know when a student first accessed the information. i.e., after the assignment was due? 15 mins before the assignment was due?

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/4495-view-access-by-file-or-item-not-user here so we can keep these related ideas associated with each other.

72 Comments
hvaughn
Community Contributor

I agree that this is very useful.  Seeing only the last time a particular student has viewed a page (by looking up each student's access report individually) doesn't provide enough information when trying to troubleshoot.  I'd like to be able to see a history with names and time stamps of student access. We had this ability in our previous LMS and would love to have it again.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Cool! Kind of like a "message students who" for pages.

anthonem
Community Contributor

This functionality is frequently requested by faculty at our institution.

loftind
Community Novice

How about a class overview in analytics that shows how many students have accessed certain pages? I have an instructor who would LOVE this.

ejackson
Community Champion

This is definitely needed. We have instructors who need to know this information when there is a conflict about a grade, or when needing to prove whether or not a student actually did do what they say they did. I hope this does get implemented soon!

lcroney
Community Novice

This is crucial, and a feature we had in our previous course management software. Very helpful in dealing with student complaints about grades.

r_v_jones
Community Contributor

It is really useful information to know as it can help identify areas of heavy traffic but also could identify those students who might be struggling either by the lack of hits on pages or high numbers of hits on pages where specific resources appear.

Can this be extended to include open courses too so we can track hits. By open courses I mean ones like support sites etc, where users don’t have to be enrolled.

mfreund
Community Novice

Yes, I would especially want this for Announcements since I currently have no way to know which students have viewed specific announcement items. The Student Access Report only indicates that they have viewed the Announcements tab, but not which announcement(s) they have viewed.

scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

This is a great idea and we understand the need you're presenting here. We've scoped the work required to add this feature and learned that we won't be able to fit it into the current six month development cycle. However, we've added this idea to the list of priorities for when we readdress how users interact with analytics in the next development cycle.

I will go ahead and mark this feature idea as archived for now, but we will come back and update the thread when we have completed our prioritization work for the first half of next year.

kona
Community Champion

Thanks for the update! Sorry to hear it's not on the current six month cycle, but very happy to hear it's been added to the list of priorities for how users interact with analytics. Our faculty used this a lot in our previous LMS and would hugely appreciate having this in Canvas. As an Admin I'd also love it if faculty had this feature because then I wouldn't have to search through page view logs to see when a student accessed certain things for a course!

Beth_Young
Community Contributor

Thank you for the update. I'm disappointed that it will be delayed for now, but happy that you'll be looking at it again in the next development cycle.

scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

Thank you,  @kona ​ and  @Beth_Young ​  The more I learn about prioritization and product design and what an incredibly complicated and nuanced process it is, the more I respect our Product team and engineers.

catherinejeppse
Community Novice

It's very strange to me that this isn't already available within Canvas. I'm glad it's something people are considering/working on, but it's a feature that's been available for years in other LMS I've worked with.

scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

Hi Deactivated user​,

One of the challenges with activity tracking, especially when you have many variable such as large course enrollments or a gradebook with many assignments, is system performance.  Last year Canvas had a 99.9% uptime (or less than four minutes per week of downtime).  I'm not trying to make excuses but just highlight that it is a challenging area of product development.

kedgecomb
Community Champion

This would be a great addition to the Canvas infrastructure!   I hope it moves up in the ranks soon! 

RobDitto
Community Champion

Our faculty regularly ask for this capability. I eagerly await news of the prioritization decision for 2016.

hvaughn
Community Contributor

It is the challenges that make our jobs most interesting!  Smiley Happy

aferris
Community Novice

I agree!  This is a feature that I would like.  As a teacher who would like to use videos for homework it would be great to know if the students have viewed them. 

I hope that this moves up in priority for Canvas.

hallmans
Community Contributor

I've just gotten another request from faculty for this feature. They would find it really useful to see if students were reading the materials (and when).

waz107
Community Contributor

I am currently using ANGEL and will be transitioning to Canvas in the next year.  This is a feature that I used almost daily in ANGEL for two reasons.  First, I like to see overall when my students are beginning their assignments.  If I can see that students aren't opening their lab assignment until the evening that it's due, then I know that they aren't spending enough time on it.  Second, when students contact me after they've received a poor grade and tell me that they've spent days preparing, I can see if that is realistically honest or not.