What does 'Total Activity' actually mean?

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h_dalton
Community Novice

What does the analytic about 'Total Activity' (hr:min:sec) for each student actually mean?

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kblack
Community Champion

Hi h.dalton Welcome to the worldwide Canvas Community. I see you've been a member since early 2016, but this appears to be your first post in the Community...so welcome!  The topic of just how much time a student has spent in a course site in Canvas has been discussed quite a bit in the Community, and others may remember some specific conversations here.  But to address your question directly, the official explanation is from this page in the Instructor's Guide:  How do I use the People page as an instructor?  specifically, the following statement:

  • Total Activity [7]—allows you to see how long students interact within a course and counts page navigation only. Total activity time is displayed in hours:minutes:seconds. If a user has not yet reached an hour of activity, total activity time is displayed as minutes:seconds. Total Activity records any time spent viewing course content that exceeds two minutes. If the time between a new activity and the last completed activity is under ten minutes, all time between these two events will also be included. Total Activity does not include group activity or page views for videos that do not include intermediate page requests, such as a half-hour recorded lecture. To view specific page views for a student, view the student's course access report.

One of the leading Community members, resident genius  @James ‌, has produced a program that breaks down the information for a class all at once that is available here, if you are interested:  Obtaining and using Access Report data for an entire course .  Hope this helps a bit.

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