Releases Q&A: 2021-08-21 New Analytics Attendance

[erinhmcmillan]

Looking to discuss this feature from the 2021-08-21 Release Notes? Post a reply and start a conversation!

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This topic is for specific feature discussion only—please share use cases, best practices, etc. regarding this feature announcement.

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[leward]

Hi @erinhmcmillan !  Sorry to be dense, but I can't seem to find the New Analytics configuration menu on beta.  Is it supposed appear in the options menu for New Analytics on Apps > View App Configurations?

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi @leward 

New Analytics features are not supported in the beta environment. Features will be available in the production environment on August 21.

Thanks!

Erin

[leward]

Perfect.  Thank you!

[degensp28]

The University of Wisconsin release notes teams has a lot of feedback about this. I am going to place it all in this one comment to try to consolidate. 

1. New Analytics features being unavailable in Beta is a thorn in our side. Working to make New Analytics available in Beta would be nice for testing.
2. This feature is significantly less useful than it could be if the criteria could be set on a course-by-course level. Different instructors will have different metrics they will be looking for. Having the metrics determined at the University level would already remove the usefulness for instructors, and here at the University of Wisconsin System, we would need to decide for the entire state due to our shared instance.
3. Changing which criteria are checked needs to update the data presented to the instructor. Since this is unavailable for testing, it may already do this. If not it is important that adjusting criteria impacts the data presented, rather than showing static information that relates to now unused criteria.
4. We recommend a rebranding for this tool. Attendance is already used with the Role Call tool, along with other 3rd party tools. We predict confusion for instructors when there is a Grade item created by Role Call named attendance, and also an Attendance tool in New Analytics (which has no impact on the Grade item). Even something as simple as “Digital Attendance” or “Student Digital Attendance” provides a bit more differentiation.
5. The criteria item “Course Access” needs clarification. It says “views a page”, but it is unclear if that means “views a webpage of the course” or “views a Page tool item”. The name implies the first, but the description leans towards the second, while still being ambiguous.
6. The criteria item “Conferences” needs clarification. It says “Student joins a web conference”, but it seems unlikely to us that this tool is prepared to integrate with all of the available 3rd party conferencing tools. The tool should explicitly mention which conferencing tool(s) it is able to track.
7. It seems likely that there will be feedback asking that these metrics can be pushed to the Grades area. We ask that if this if that is ever the case that this does not create a Grade item automatically, and instead need to be manually turned on by the instructor on a course-by-course basis.

[leward]

We especially agree with item #2 above.  The criteria will be different in each class depending on the nature of the class and the types of activities students are asked to engage in.  Has any consideration been given to allow the instructor to toggle the criteria on and off instead of giving them a read only view.

[carlycurran]

@degensp28, thank you very much for your detailed and constructive feedback. I really appreciate it, and one important item to note is that we have modified the name of this tool to Online Attendance. 

I've published an FAQ with answers to many of these questions, as I imagine others will have similar questions. 

[rkahn]

I think this tool has promise but calling it Attendance will confuse a lot of faculty.  I urge renaming it to Participation Report.

[dominiquel]

I quite like this new feature, especially being able to adjust the attendance settings. This way we can track if students are making use of Conferences to catch up with their teacher one-on-one.

I wish though that these analytical reports could be downloaded as a jpeg or pdf instead of csv. 

[wherring]

Where is the csv option?

[debbie_ellis]

Erin,

It appears this new feature meets a need we have for meeting Title IV compliance. There is a report called "User Course Access Log" that met this need until we switched to New Quizzes. Now it doesn't work for us because the New Quizzes aren't included in the report. Anyway, this New Analytics Attendance does have a check box for submitting a quiz, so this helps us.

We also have a third-party attendance tool we use because it works with our fob attendance and it covers Zoom attendance so our on-campus classes don't need another attendance tool. But our Online group needs a report that keys off of a student taking a "Date of Attendance" test. Is there a way that an administrator can run a report that covers all of the courses in a sub-account?

[hesspe]

I believe — even in this era of hybrid learning —  there is a common understanding of course attendance as presence. Posting in a discussion, submitting an assignment or taking a quiz is participation - not attendance.  Participating in a conference - ok that could be construed as attendance — but since that will only work for Big Blue Button conferences, it leaves us, and I suspect many others, out in the cold.    It takes only a moment's thought to see that counting participations while ignoring the quality of the participation is absurd.  It's why I so dislike the star Participation and Page Views ratings in the Student Context Card, but fortunately our Canvas users seem to give those the attention they deserve which is none.    Many good suggestions have been made for improving the Roll Call attendance LTI and I would much sooner see that application be gettin' some love than this effort, which I believe at our institution will garner very little interest, except perhaps as an example of the McDonaldization of pedagogy.

[llettie]

Hi Debbie

What is the name of the tool that you use?

thank you 

[debbie_ellis]

I apologize for my late response. We use aPlus+ Attendance.

[katesprague04]

Is there a chance that this new Attendance feature would have triggered the New Analytics to be forced on for my university in the production environment? My team and I specifically looked at the tool last week and agreed that we weren't ready for it but I am now seeing the New Analytics button in our Fall classes.

[carlycurran]

Hi, @katesprague04. As of Friday, August 20th at 9:00 a.m. CT, Online Attendance  has not been deployed or released to Beta or production, so that wouldn't be the cause of New Analytics being enabled for your university. 

[chriscas]

When I try to configure the attendance settings for our account from the apps tab (as shown in the guides), I receive a 400 error when trying to save the settings.  Is this happening for anyone else or just us?  I did create a support ticket about the behavior too, but I'd like to confirm how widespread the problem might be.

-Chris

[snugent]

I did get the error the first time I tried to apply the settings. When I tried the second time it just stayed on the page so I just close the settings. However, it did take as I can now see the tab in analytics. 

[kiporter]

Chris - Were you in PROD or TEST instance?  I am able to configure and save online attendance in PROD, but in TEST I receive "Request failed with status code 400".  Is it supposed to work in TEST?

[chriscas]

I was getting the error in Prod.  I will admit I haven't tried it in Test, but I *think* it should work there too.  Seems like the trick is to just keep doing it quickly until you don't get an error...  Hopefully they figure out what's going on and make the configuration reliably save in the near future.

-Chris

[mary_speight]

I was able to set it in beta but I've gotten the error repeatedly in production on 3 different browsers. I just submitted a ticket. We'll see if they just provide instructions on how to set it rather than troubleshoot the issue. That's been my experience with support lately....

[carlycurran]

Thanks, @snugent. We are working on the save confirmation. 

@chriscas, is the 400 error still happening for you?

[chriscas]

Hi @carlycurran ,

So yesterday, I got a 400 error, then after support told me to try with a different browser, i got a message that "course data is being processed, come back in 24 hours".  Today, I went back with my original browser and again got an error the first time I tried.  This time, I took the suggestion posted by @snugent and went back in to the settings right away after the error.  When I was in the second time, I was able to get things configured.  So I'm at least good for now, but hopefully you can track down what's causing the initial error.

In addition to fixing whatever is causing the initial error, a save confirmation would definitely be a nice addition!

-Chris

[carlycurran]

Thanks so much, @chriscas -- I really appreciate the details! We'll look into it. 

[candice_mcphers]

Are there any plans for the Observer or other specified roles to be able to see this data in addition to the teacher? It would be great for K-12 if parents and other administrators had the ability to view attendance in a class.

[DorothyLH]

I'm still not seeing the Attedance tab in New Analytics in our production environment. I've looked in Feature Previews in both the account and course settings. Am I missing something?

[erinhmcmillan]

Hi @DorothyLH 

The tool needs to be configured as part of the Apps page at the account level. Please see https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/New-Analytics-Users/Canvas-Release-New-Analytics-Online-Attendanc...

Thanks,

Erin

[DorothyLH]

Thanks, Erin. I had missed that part.

[mary_speight]

Configuring the tool seems to lock the attendance criteria at the course level. I can see where some instructors would like to alter these settings on their own for their specific needs. Also, how often is the criteria reported into this tool? Is it immediate or does it take a while?

[palmarinich]

We configured the available Attendance criteria, and noticed that the disabled criteria are locked but still visible to faculty.  It would be helpful if either the disabled criteria were hidden (or labeled better), or add the option for faculty to configure the criteria at the course level.  As it is now, it's a bit confusing.

[carlycurran]

@mary_speight we are planning to allow admins to delegate permissions to instructors, so that instructors can set their own attendance criteria. I don't have a timeframe on that yet, but we know that's important. 

The attendance data is processed and reported daily, so you should see {yesterday's} data in the morning {today}. On occasion, that data processing takes a while, and we don't show a day's data unless it is complete, so you might see {yesterday's} data a little later. We are also working on speeding up that processing time. 

[tracy_stuntz]

The report can be downloaded, right?

[wherring]

I'm not seeing the download option. What am I missing?

[carlycurran]

@tracy_stuntz and @wherring, this report cannot be downloaded right now, though we are working toward that

[ErinGoudge]

Hello!  Really love this new feature! We would really like to filter students alpha by last name and to be able to change the week view to show Monday- Sunday instead of Sunday - Saturday. Thanks!

[erik_gustafson]

Would it be possible to have a date picker for the report so we can select different timeframes, instead of week-by-week or by day? 

Also configuring the class days at the account level because our courses run all week not just Monday-Friday. 

Also being able to export the report would be a huge help. 

[IanBelanger]

Hi!

The New Analytics Attendance is outstanding.

We would like to like to suggest an enhancement.  Our district takes attendance for a Mon-Sun week, not Sun-Sat.  This means, as the tool currently works, we have to look at two Canvas weeks to get the data we need.  It would be great to be able to set a filter for the dates, or choose a type of calendar that we'd like to use--at the admin or user level.

[Steven_S]

Until faculty can set the attendance criteria for their own courses this attendance feature is not functional, and without the attendance feature new analytics does not meet our needs.  That is putting us back into old analytics

[arthur_maturo_2]

How do I get to the dashboard that your in? How do I get to the grid that your showing us? Can you please take there step by step? This is useless to me until I know how to get to the page where you start from. Moreover, how do change settings if the thing is locked?

[Jeff_F]

@arthur_maturo_2 

The Canvas admin is needed here.

1. In the root account, unlock or enable New Course and User Analytics. (As we are aware, enabling is a big change that impacts the entire account).
2. If unlocked, then enable the New Course and User Analytics feature option in the course
3. In the root account > go to Settings > Apps > New Analytics
4. Select Configure > Enable the desired settings
5. Wait 24 hours for the data to generate