Content Progress Tracking and Time Spent in Lessons

Audrey.H.354

I'm hoping to better understand how Brightspace tracks time spent on Content pages.

I understand that time on a page does not necessarily mean a student is actively reading or working, and I'm not looking for a perfect measure of engagement. My question is different: why does Brightspace sometimes report in Class Progress - Content Progress, that a student spent only a few seconds on a page when they were actually on that page much longer?

For example, a student may spend several minutes on a lesson page, but the Content Progress report shows only a few seconds. It may show that they have visited the page more than once, and yet, still shows 0 minutes, 0 seconds. How does Brightspace calculate time spent on a Content page, and what causes the reported time to be significantly lower than the actual time the page was open?

Is there a way to obtain a more accurate measure of how long a student remained on a specific Content page, even if that doesn't necessarily indicate active engagement?

Thank you for any clarification.

Chris.S.534

Hi Audrey.H.354,

The community resource linked below has a good explanation of how time tracking in the content tool is calculated and highlights some events that impact what does/doesn't get recorded. See https://community.d2l.com/brightspace/kb/articles/3552-track-course-progress-with-the-class-progress-tool#track-the-time-spent-viewing-content

A common reason a learner can appear to spend “only a few seconds” on a page is that Brightspace usually needs an event or action initiated by the user to stop a time calculation. For example, time may be captured when the learner navigates to another content topic, clicks elsewhere in Brightspace, completes/updates the topic, or triggers a Brightspace event. If the learner leaves the tab open, switches tabs, closes the browser, loses network connectivity, browser times out, or spends time in embedded/external content that is not reporting back to Brightspace, the overall elapsed time may not be recorded as time in Content.

Regarding a more accurate measure, it's probably best answered by using the 'time in content' as one indicator of active engagement. The Class & Content Progress provide an easily accessible summary through the UI. Creating content related reports that incorporate other datasets like Session History, System Access, and Course Access may help to build a clearer picture of learner engagement.

Noting these still do not improve the calculation of time spent on a specific content page but may provide additional indicators for you to evaluate.

Hope that helps!