Our research shows that the following questions are the most important to you when it comes to how users engage with Brightspace:
-
When was the last time someone accessed the platform?
-
How does that access trend over time?
-
How long does the access last?
If you're trying to report on engagement in your organization, there are several data sets available in Data Hub to choose from. This topic outlines the different engagement metrics and what they capture, so you can decide which is best suited to your reporting needs.
Engagement Metrics
System Access (System Access Log BDS):
-
Ends when the user logs out, after 30 minutes of inactivity, or the session is force ended by an administrator.
-
Includes activity from Brightspace, Pulse, and Brightspace Parent & Guardian app.
Session (Session History BDS):
-
Begins when the user logs in to Brightspace.
-
Ends when the session times out (determined by the d2l.SessionTimeout config variable), the user logs out, or the session is force ended by an administrator.
-
Includes activity from Brightspace only.
Login (User Logins BDS):
-
Begins when the user logs in to Brightspace or enters their credentials in the app.
-
Ends: not captured.
-
Includes activity from Brightspace, Pulse, and Brightspace Parent & Guardian app.
Note: When a user logs in to one of our apps for the first time, a persistent authorization token is generated which allows them to open the app without logging in. This makes logins an unreliable metric for tracking engagement with our apps.
Course Access (Course Access BDS):
Course Access Log (Course Access Log BDS):
-
Begins when the user visits a course in Pulse for the first time that day and creates additional rows for every 30 minutes that the user spends in the course, or returns after 30 minutes of inactivity.
-
Ends: not captured.
-
Includes activity from Pulse only.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. If I have Brightspace open in multiple windows or multiple browsers, are they counted as independent system accesses?
If you have two instances of Brightspace open in different windows or tabs of the same browser, that counts as one system access.
If you have two instances of Brightspace open in two different browsers (for example: Firefox and Safari), that counts as two separate system accesses.
2. What kind of activity keeps my system access from timing out?
Navigating to different pages, clicking something that auto-saves, and typing in a Written Response text box are a few examples of actions you can take to keep your system access active. Even if you sit and do nothing for 30 minutes, a popup that reads “ARE YOU STILL THERE?” appears, and you can click anywhere or press any key to renew your session. Moving the cursor or clicking randomly isn’t enough to keep your system access from timing out.
3. What does it mean when a row in System Access Log for the start of a system access has no corresponding row for the end of the system access?
It means the system access timed out and the user took no action before the backend cleanup task deleted the session. This commonly happens when a user closes the tab or browser without logging out, or leaves the browser unattended for several hours.
4. What does it mean when a row in the Session History data has the exact same date and time in the DateStarted and LastAccessed columns?
It means the user logged in to Brightspace, didn’t take any actions to keep the session active, and the session timed out.