Written By: Ellie Fox, Learning Administration Manager
A common challenge for administrators and instructors is finding efficient ways of accessing additional data points for reporting without spending the time to analyse Brightspace Data Sets. This article addresses the need for instructors who often require quick course level summary reports from within the user interface without having to generate full reports to filter for their courses. This article will outline tools that can be leveraged to accomplish this by accessing course level data.
Using this data, you can optimize the use of native Brightspace tools to track learner progress and analyse the success of your content and assessment tools. There is useful statistical information in course tools: it’s just a case of knowing where to look and how to use it.
Content Reports
The Reports page provides an overview of each unit, lesson, and content topic alongside the user data. This gives instructors a view of learner progress and allows them to track engagement in content topics.
Find Content Reports
- Navigate to Content.
- Click on Course Options (gear icon) > View Reports.
Figure: Click Course Options and then click View Reports.
In the Content tab, you are given the total number of users the content is available to against the number of users who have visited content items. You can also see the average time spent in content by the visitors. The collapsible panels allow you to drill down into the data by clicking on the statistics to see which users accessed the module or content topic. For each one, the table indicates the last visited date, number of visits, total time spent, and average time spent per user. Expand Search Options to refine your search and to allow for more precise results.
Figure: Review the data on the Reports page to see the amount of interaction with content.
By analysing the data in the Users tab, you can choose a learner and access the stats for every visit, average time spent, and last visited date to understand the learner’s progress.
Tracking learner engagement in this way can be helpful to assess course content and compare the success of learning activities in a course based on the time spent (or not spent) in a topic. It can also help to engage your learners; for example, you can email your learners directly by clicking the mail icon. Content Reports can often be missed by instructors but are an excellent resource of real-time data for users without accessing Data Hub.
Quiz Statistics
Statistics are available in the Quizzes tool.
Find Quiz Statistics
In the Quizzes tool, navigate to the Statistics tab and choose your quiz; or, in Manage Quizzes, click the context menu of the quiz and choose Statistics.
Figure: Click the Statistics tab to access quiz statistics.
The three tabs are User Stats, Question Stats, and Question Details. The first two present the grades achieved by user and by question with a graph to show grade distribution.
The User Stats tab lists all users with a graded attempt and their quiz percentage grade.
The Class Average bar beneath the graph is a helpful indicator of the overall success of your learners in the quiz.
Question Stats is a calculation of the average scores for each question based on users’ first attempts. For an explanation of the statistics, click on the What do the statistics on this page mean? link. There is also an option to preview the question, which helps instructors see how the question appears when analysing the level of difficulty of the quiz and prevents them from going back to the quiz and previewing it as a learner.
Question Details provides information on the questions themselves. Every question in the quiz is listed and the page gives an analysis of the available answers, how many users chose each possible answer, the total number of responses, and the average score.
User Stats, Question Stats, and Question Details can all be exported as a CSV/Excel file for data analysis outside of Brightspace. The statistics are exported from the tab you are viewing.
Survey Statistics
Survey Statistics cannot be exported as a CSV/Excel file. The interface gives you a concise summary of survey responses by user or by attempt.
Find Survey Statistics
In the Surveys tool, click the context menu of your survey and choose Statistics.
Figure: Click the context menu and then click Statistics.
The Users tab and the Attempts tab have search filters available so that they return data to meet your precise analysis needs. To search by user, restrict the view to all users, users who have not taken an attempt, users who have completed an attempt, or users with attempts in progress. Attempts can be viewed based on completion status (completed or in progress) and within a given timeframe.
Quiz Reports
Quiz Reports can be generated from the user interface, and you can download them to your computer as a CSV/Excel file or open them in your browser as an HTML file. Reports are different from results as they gather different types of information and must be set up manually before you can view them.
Set up a Quiz Report
Navigate to the quiz context menu and choose Setup Reports.
Figure: Click the Setup Reports option in the quiz's context menu.
The available report types are:
- Question Statistics
- Question Details
- User Statistics
- Attempt Details
- User Attempts
There can only be one report type per report. You can choose a release date and which roles to release the report to.
Quiz reports have the elements of quiz statistics, but this tool allows you to create your own unique report and you can exclude sections of a report that are not required or necessary for your analysis. For example, in a Question Details report you may choose to remove the difficulty for each question if you are releasing the report to teaching assistants.
Survey Reports
Set up a Survey Report
- In the Surveys tool, choose your survey and edit it.
- Click the Reports Setup tab.
- Click Add Report.
- Existing reports can be accessed by clicking the survey context menu and then clicking Reports.
Figure: Click Add Report in the Reports Setup tab.
There are two types of reports: a Summary Report and an Individual Attempts report. Both reports are generated as a CSV/Excel or HTML file. Summary reports are based on the survey questions and indicate the number of users anonymously that gave each possible answer. Individual Attempts reports list every user who took an attempt and the response they gave to each question.
Figure: Select your desired report type and then select the data you want included in the report.
These course level options allow instructors to generate different types of reports while providing access to data points and statistics that help to track learner progress and engagement with content and learning activities.
