Set up the Course Overview widget
Note: The Course Overview widget is available to Brightspace Performance+ clients. To learn more about Brightspace Performance+, contact your D2L Client Sales Executive.
- Ensure that the Brightspace platform and Brightspace Insights are enabled.
- Grant Course Overview permissions to instructors.
- From a course home page in Brightspace, click Edit this homepage in the bottom-right corner of the homepage.
- In the Widgets section, click Add Widgets. Each panel has a corresponding Add Widgets button.
- Select the check box beside the Course Overview widget and then click Add.
- Click Save and Close.
Course Overview report types
Course Overview includes the following report types:
- Course Access - use this report to better understand user engagement in a course.
- Tool Access - use this report to better understand user engagement with course tools.
- Total Logins - use this report to better understand activity in Brightspace.
Easily access analytics about learners and your course
To provide easier access to analytics about learners and courses, instructors can add the Course Overview widget to a course home page. The widget displays high-level aggregate information about the course and links to course-specific Brightspace Insights reports. For example, the widget can display a visualization of weekly course access (the Course Access report as a bar chart) and how many learners submitted quizzes today. In addition, the widget includes links to the Class Engagement tool, and Course Access and Tool Access reports.
Note: By default, the Course Overview widget does not appear in course home pages. The widget is also dependent on other D2L products and role permissions.
Brightspace Insights in the Course Overview widget
After you run a report, each report visualization type includes additional information and filters to help you understand and display the report data that is meaningful to you. You can also export the report data for further analysis in third party tools.
- Title:
- The report title displays the report type, for example, Total logins per day.
- If role filtering is enabled, a subtitle displays the roles included in the report, for example, Roles included: Admin (co), Administrator, AllSection, AllGroup and 15 more. Roles that appear on the report indicate that there is at least one user with that role in the org unit of the report you are viewing. You cannot filter out any of the roles that appear in the org unit.
- Tooltips:
- Pausing on a chart element displays detailed information in a tooltip, for example, the date and number of login events. In a pie chart, the corresponding name in the summary table is also highlighted. Pausing on a name in the summary table for a pie chart displays a tooltip on the corresponding chart element.
- Pie graphs contain tooltips. For example, as you point to pie segments in the Total Logins report, a tooltip displays details about the segment such as the number of logins and date range.
- Sparkline:
- For a bar chart, the sparkline displayed below the chart provides context for the bar chart, for example, the number of logins for a longer date range than the bar chart displays.
- By clicking and dragging either edge of the display window of a sparkline, you can modify the date range for the report. This has the same effect as manually modifying the date range in the report control panel. By clicking and dragging the window, the display window can be shifted to earlier or later along the sparkline while maintaining the selected range of dates.
- Summary:
- For a bar chart, a summary appears below the sparkline that displays the current date range and events, for example, the total number of logins the occurred in the last 7 days
- For a pie chart, tabular data appears below the chart for data transparency and accessibility. For example, the Tool Access report displays each tool, interactions as percentages, and the number of interactions. Clicking on a cell highlights the cell and column.
- For the Tool Access report, only the 10 most frequently used tools appear by name in the pie chart and summary. The remaining tools are grouped under Other. For the Tool Access report, any page that is configured in the software to generate a UserInteractionEvent counts as a page view. When a user browses from page to page within a tool, such as Discussions, Quizzes, or Content, each page counts as an additional event.
- The specified date range appears in the report title.
- Filters:
- You can dynamically filter a report by date and role.
- For a pie chart, you can filter the report by Time span. For example, you can filter the Tool Access report by the last 7 days, 30 days, or 12 months. By default, the Tool Access report displays the last 7 days.
- For a bar chart, you can filter a report by Date range and Granularity. For example, you can filter the Total Logins report by the last 7 days, 12 months, or a custom date range. You can specify the granularity Per day or Per month.
- The Role filter allows you to filter report data by a specific role, multiple roles, or all roles. For example, you can see how many learners log in to Brightspace during a specific date range and what tools they interact with.
- By default, all roles display when you run a report.
- In the Rolefilter, roles are sorted alphabetically and are provided based on the roles list in the Roles and Permissions tool in Brightspace. You cannot customize which roles display in the Rolefilter.
- Export options:
- Export to XLSX - Saves the report as an XLSX file to open in Microsoft® Excel®. In the XLSX file, the Dataset sheet displays the data used to generate the report and the Report sheet displays the report visualization.
- Export to CSV - Saves the report as a CSV (comma separated values) file so that it can be read by any text editor. You can also import the file to other tools or open it in Excel.
- When you export a report, the dataset only includes data that matches the current filters.
Troubleshooting Brightspace Insights within the Course
Filtering a report by date is designed to report on a specified date range; however, if the last 7 days in the date range do not contain data, the report displays data based on the earliest day containing data. For example, if you run a report on June 1, 2019 and the earliest date containing data is May 7, 2019, Brightspace Insights displays data from May 1, 2019 to May 7, 2019.