Using the Enhanced Course at-a-Glance Report to generate insights

Overview

The Enhanced Course at-a-Glance report provides a detailed view of the student click data on all content items within a vUWS site. It enables instructors to gain an insight into what items students are accessing, when students are accessing the items and which students are accessing the items. This data can help give instructors an insight into student behaviour, identify patterns of student engagement and discover other interesting features within the data.

The purpose of the enhanced dashboard is to provide more granular data for instructors to explore and use to promote reflective practice in order to improve learning design or academic online presence.

This article will provide information on interpreting the data, identifying patterns or features in the data and using the data to improve your learning design or online teaching presence.

For more detailed instructions on accessing the report, running the report, navigating the report or information on the data available, head over to the Enhanced Course at-a-Glance (How-to) page.

Access the Enhanced Course at-a-Glance Report

The Enhanced Course at-a-Glance report is a modified version of the Course at-a-Glance report which has replaced the original. It now has the ability to view more granular data and drill down into the data on particular content items within your vUWS site.

To access this data, you will need to run the Course at-a-Glance report. Navigate to your vUWS site, scroll down to Subject Management , select Student Tracking to expand the menu, click on Course Analytics and then run the Course at-a-Glance report. Scroll down the page and locate the Student Click Data table.

Interpreting the Data and Identifying Patterns in Student Behaviour

The Student Click Data table on the Course at-a-Glance report provides a very high-level and broad overview of the click distribution patterns over the range of content types available on the vUWS site. The content types provide an entry into the student click data by categorising the content items on the vUWS site into these categories.

Use the interactive below to explore the data columns in the table:

Click on the desired Content Type in the table (blue links) to drill down into the data to see more granular data on the Content Items within the vUWS site.

The following interactive illustrates a list of content items of type Content Folder/Content Area on a vUWS site. In other words, all the folders on the vUWS site are displayed with the number of clicks and the ratio of students who have/have not accessed that folder.

Note: Only Content Items that are available for students will appear in the list. If the Content Item is unavailable (hidden from students), it will not appear in the list.

To best make sense of the data, it is useful to order the data using the sort button ( ) on the Content Item column to order the data by the item name. You can toggle the order of the data by ascending or descending order by clicking on the sort button again. This can drastically improve your ability to identify patterns or interesting features in the data.

Use the interactive below to explore some of the features within this subjects data:

It is possible to drill down into the data further to see more granular data for a particular content item. We can do this by clicking on the Content Item (blue link) we wish to view the data for.

This is the last drill down level and provides the most granular data based on a content item. Use the interactive below to explore the data:

Note: The data is paginated, for large cohorts there will be multiple pages of student names.

Using the Data for Reflective Practice

Now that we have explored the data and identified some patterns, the next step in using the learning analytics is to generate some insights for your own context. We will use the data above as an example.

What issues can we identify?

Example: From Module 4 onwards, student accesses in the module folders begins to decrease

This data suggests that there is a lack of student engagement with the learning material and it shows that it worsens as the semester progresses. Although this data is based on a single dimension (accesses), this data highlights a significant issue whereby we know that students are not even accessing the module learning material.

We will be running the same subject in the following semester, how can we use this data to inform our practice in the next offering?

What can we do to address the lack of engagement?

There are a number of reasons why this might be the case and may be specific to the subject context. However, some examples of general strategies could include:

Increasing instructor presence in the online learning environment: Increase the frequency of announcements across the whole semester, particularly re-iterating student expectations in week 3 or 4. For more information on instructor presence in the online learning environment, see the Community of Inquiry framework .
Increase the number of low-weight summative assessments across the semester.
Explicitly indicate the alignment of assessments to the course content . For example, for Assessment 2 students will need to review Modules 4-6 to be well-prepared.

Evaluate the effectiveness of changes

It is important to evaluate the effectiveness of the changes you made based on the data in this report. This will help you understand whether the changes improved student engagement, whether further changes need to be implemented and begin to understand how this impacts student learning outcomes.

Two examples of how you can use this data to evaluate the effectiveness of the changes are:

Compare the student click data from both semesters: Is there a noticeable or significant different in the data?
An opportunity to reflect: Use the data to provide a starting point in reflecting on the semester.

What can I do now?

Now that you have an understanding of the data and how this report might help inform your practice, now would be a perfect time to explore the data within your own vUWS site:

Access the Course at-a-Glance report and specifically explore the Student Click Data
Identify problem areas in student engagement using the enhanced course-at-a-glance dashboard
Reflect on your practice and attempt to address areas of student engagement with learning design strategies and instructor presence in the online learning environment
Consider learning analytics as part of your ongoing learning design practice