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
mcdowela
Community Novice

This topic was originally posted THREE YEARS ago, and at that time, the response was that it was in some 6-month development phase (or would be considered?). Then there was a vote last year again, and here we are three years later, and this feature still hasn't been added.  If it existed more than a decade ago in ANGEL, why is it taking years for Canvas to figure out how to implement it?

This feature is pedagogically critical, as many users above have explained. If Canvas truly values the input of faculty members and wishes the LMS to be helpful and functional (not merely pretty with many bells and whistles), then this feature must be prioritized. In 2018, is it truly as challenging and impossible as they claim? Or has this not been moved to the top of the priority list?  Meanwhile, I can do all sorts of cool and snazzy things with my site. Great. But as a faculty member, I need functionality -- and I consider this a basic functional element that should have been provided by the start (as other LMSs do).

Especially in a time of increasing  and hybrid courses, not knowing which items our students have viewed and for how long -- in a reasonable, quick manner that doesn't take convoluted searching -- blindfolds us to the interactions critical for pedgagogical success.

ercasey
Community Novice

The lack of this feature greatly hampers several aspects of my teaching in both  and face to face environments.  Knowing which students (and how many) saw a particular page or downloaded a particular article would help me to tailor each class session a bit more (like informing when to include a pop quiz, or see that students are overwhelmed and may need more in-class time to tackle content).  It would help with grade disputes or to diagnoses problems with exam performance.  It would help to assess overall engagement across time.... SO MANY.  Please add this feature!

hvaughn
Community Contributor

We are still missing some of the wonderful features ANGEL had as well.  This is a big one.  Sigh~  

maguire
Community Champion

It is possible to get lots of page view information via the API. Two example programs are shown at Page view statistics: Chip sandbox 

One odd feature I found is that students cannot get their own list of page views.

This has revealed some very interesting information about what kinds of activities students did via a smartphone versus another type of computer.

One could make a new program to take a course id and get all the page view information for all of the students enrolled in the course. Note that this shows all of the pages that each user enrolled in the course access and not just those in a given course. So one could filter the set of pages to only includes those for the specific course.

timothy_maw
Community Champion

Man this feature would be nice. I had an instructor ask about it just last week. I know this is been looked at for some time and may present some engineering difficulties, but this would be extremely helpful for us.

dwights_thompso
Community Novice

I would agree that this would be an awesome report for teachers to be able to see where students are focusing most of their attention. This would give the teacher instant feedback on how to better redesign the course. I have found in the courses that I have created that certain areas are heavily underutilized but the report would confirm this without having to ask every single student that is participating. I also think if the report could be linked to a specific notification once per week would be awesome so the instructor can take a look at page usage and gauge what the next step is for instruction. 

mxg1334
Community Novice

I agree with this topic as most do, but I am coming at it from a different direction.  I wonder if it would be easier (or possible) to add analytic data to show when students download files from a page.  I assign weekly supplemental readings and post audio lectures often, but am unable to see who has actually downloaded these files.  I understand how complicated tracking certain activities is, but tracking students' downloading activity from a Page seems like it shouldn't be that complicated.  I know other LMS have this capability. 

degensp28
Community Participant

Please expand this to all items including individual discussion posts, assignments, pages, files, etc.

Duration of view is also important.

michelle_powell
Community Participant

This is how we would want to use a feature like this:

We create Canvas courses for students, faculty and staff to use as resources: tutoring, career resources, technology resources, etc. Our Student Success Coaches have requested a report to pull page view numbers for specific modules or assignments(Page views within the course) to see which resources the students are viewing most so we can better build these courses so they are most productive to everyone. We can see page views per day in the Course Analytics page but not specific to particular pages. This would be a helpful tool if you can make it happen. Thank you for your consideration.

e_fisher
Community Novice

This was a feature in the LMS systems we used YEARS ago.  It is fundamental to the daily work of faculty and I just can't believe it's not a feature.  In schools where we have ONE person administering and working with Canvas, faculty are not able to quickly see if a student's claim of having opened something on a certain day is true until that one person is available--which is often not the case for days.  This is particularly problematic at end of term when grades are due. It also adds work to the administrator that is unnecessary. 

trr10
Community Novice

Completely agree--this is particularly problematic in huge classes where an instructional designer is handling a lot of the tech support cases. It makes it more difficult to assist students with learning now, too. A student drops by my office and says they are struggling but "do a lot of studying and read over the information." With any other CMS, I can say, "Well, you didn't even open these files, I think that you might benefit from..." With Canvas, I just have to take their word for it. 

This entire process is ridiculous because this is a simple and intuitive fix whether it is in the "top 10% of ideas."  The voting base here is not the user base--it's a vocal minority of Canvas users. Fixing obvious bugs should not require some vote--it's just something you do. This is an obvious example. 

kimberly_smith1
Community Participant

The voting system for this request appears to be frozen? I don't seem to be able to vote this up. Is anyone else experiencing this?

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @kimberly_smith1 ‌, we're not experiencing any issues with the voting system. The two most likely reasons that a person cannot vote for an idea are (1) they're not logged in or (2) they've already voted on the idea.

325133_upvote.png

kimberly_smith1
Community Participant

Thank you stefaniesanders ,

I must have voted this up some time ago - which makes sense, since voting would have started in 2015. Should this come up in the future, I will be sure to check more carefully.

mcdowela
Community Novice

I can't believe that in four years, this still hasn't been added, regardless of "votes" or how many times it has been raised. Any faculty member knows that this feature is a critical aspect of pedagogy -- to be able to know exactly who has looked at a specific file or reading, etc. prior to class would assist us in preparation. Are any of those on the Canvas staff who work on this technology either current or past university instructors? It's hard to believe that the archaic Angel LMS had this feature, but Canvas still claims it's either too challenging or not desired enough to integrate. How hard can it actually be? If this were put to a vote again in a manner that actually reached faculty members on a broad scale (sadly, too many faculty members don't come to the community boards and engage in discussion about the LMS), it would definitely be a highly demanded feature. When will this be added, and does it just have to be based on votes?

If the purpose of Canvas is to serve as an effective pedagogical tool, then the developers need to listen to faculty members who are requesting this important feature, and not have it simply be a popularity issue. PLEASE add this feature! It's been four years since it was initially put up for a vote, and nothing has been done about it.

jennifer_wood
Community Novice

Yes, I agree!

jholte
Community Novice

Yes!!!!

Just because faculty do not have time to log in to comment boards does not mean they don't need the features.  This is my first post here in over a year because it doesn't seem to accomplish anything, and just annoys me that I keep getting updates about nothing happening!!

Yes, we need to be able to copying quizzes, rubrics, etc..  We need to be able to link solutions that are only available after assignment due dates.  We need to be able to get statistics on who has viewed pages, assignments, etc. We need to be able to assign group quizzes. 

Sometimes I see suggestions for features I want but the voting period is expired.  What's the point? Why does the voting period ever need to end? If 10,000 people want a feature, do they all need to say so within a 3 month window?

hesspe
Community Champion

I don't think this has been commented on explicitly before, but my apologies if this comment is redundant.  I find the participations metric to be of very limited use (or even counterproductive) because the category is so broad.  A discussion post is not comparable to an assignment submission which is not comparable to joining a webconference which is not comparable to creating a wiki page.  And starting and submitting a quiz are each counted separately as participations?  I think instructors who have not looked into this are very likely to misconstrue what participations means.  I would actually rather not have a participations metric at all then have such a messy one.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Comments from Instructure

With the release of New Analytics, instructors can access views for course resources. Please refer to the View Resources Tab section of How do I view weekly online activity analytics in a data table in New Analytics? 

Note: 

  • The Resource tab will show you views for an assignment/file/quiz/etc. but the numbers are not clickable.
  • if you choose a week from the Weekly Online Activity graph, you can see analytics on a resource and can see the list of students if you click on the number next to Viewed, Didn’t View, Participated, Didn’t Participate. Switching to the Data Table view also reveals clickable Page Views and Participation fields.
Beth_Young
Community Contributor

I was hopeful when I got this message but still these new analytics are not very useful, unfortunately.

Now I can see that the course page "First Germanic Sound Shift" was viewed by 28 students during week 2, and that it had 67 views. OK, but I still don't know WHICH students looked at it (and which didn't), or when. Days before the associated assignment was due? Ten minutes before it was due? After it was due? I mean, at least I know the page is being looked at, but I would very much like to access the information I listed in my original idea 5 years ago.

The information was available from our previous LMS, so it must be possible to provide . . . and I definitely notice the lack. Thanks to Canvas for taking a small step in the right direction, though.