Video Analytics?

[jlillie]

Video Analytics

Question: I have posted a video for students to watch, and I'm inquiring whether there is a way to determine which students watched the video in canvas? whether they watch the entire video? or anything to that extent.

[James · Accepted solution]

 @jlillie ,

I see you liked another response with a similar question, but I'll go ahead and answer anyway.

If you are using Studio, then there are insights that will tell you which parts of a video a student has watched. It does not tell you how many times they watched it or if they actually watched it vs letting it play in the background while doing something else.

Some people add quizzes to their videos that pause and make students answer a question before they go on. Students may repeat the quiz as often as they like and there is no way to keep their original score. When you embed a video quiz, it needs added to a module if you want to make it count and those are way too tiny for the rest of the video to be useful. In short, I don't use the quizzes, but other faculty do.

If the video is in the file system or module item, then the access report will tell you whether or not they have opened the content, how many times, and when the first / last time was (only the last time is in the web version, but I wrote a script that will also report the first time), but it will not tell you how much, if any, of the content they actually sat through.

Some of that same information as the access report shows up in analytics, but it's more about submissions and participation than viewing. There are page views available by week, but you have to go to a students, click on a student, then click on weekly online activity, and click on a week page views or participations for that week (the data table view under chart options may be helpful here, especially if you want to go week by week. The analytics are also not up to date. I went to check a student today and it was last updated April 26 (it's April 30). Another part said it was updated April 29, but had a grade of 72% when the student really has a 64% (hint, it did not drop that much overnight or in the last week -- it's a misrepresentation on Canvas' part).

If you link out to external content, like on YouTube, then the best you will get out of Canvas is that the student opened the page that contained the link. They do not track whether a student actually clicked on the link that took them to an external site. The same is true if the external content is embedded on the page -- you can know that they opened the page, but not whether they watched the embedded videos on the page.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @jlillie ...

I have marked  @James ' response as "Correct" because he has given you excellent information on what is currently available.  I thought I would also provide you with a Guide on the Studio "insights" so you can see a couple screen shots of what that looks like: How do I view user insights and analytics for media in Canvas Studio?.  I hope this extra bit of information will be of help to you, James.  Stay safe, and be well.

[bhuddle]

Why, oh why or why can't we DOWNLOAD a nice list of students that shows who watched, and how much they watched or, a particular video? Also, if there's more than a few rows of students, you have to scroll down, click their picture, then scroll up again to see if they watched the video. Or am I missing something and we can do that, maybe under the general course participation reports?