Monitoring student activity on Blackboard

Instructors have access to extra tools in Blackboard that provide data on how their students are engaging with their online course. These analytics can be used by instructors to improve the quality of their learning assessment materials as well as to identify students who may be having difficulties with their learning.

Analytics tab

Blackboard instructors have have an extra link in their Course toolbar for Analytics.

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The analytics tab contains data on how students are engaging with their online course. There are two main sections in the Analytics area: Course Activity analytics and Question Analysis analytics.

Course Activity

The Course Activity tab shows Overall Grade, Missed Due Dates, Hours in Course and Days since Last Access. This data allows instructors to understand how their students are performing and how much they are interacting with the module.

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Instructors can also view a graph plotting Overall Grade against Hours in Course.

Instructors also have the option to set an alert for students that fall below a certain performance level. For instance on this course, the instructor will be notified when a student hasn’t accessed their online course for more than 5 days.

A flag will also appear against their name:

This allows instructors to identify any students who are not engaging with materials and reach out and offer additional support if required.

Question Analysis

Question analysis is used for assessments with questions. It provides instructors with statistics on student performance, assessment quality, and individual questions. They will use this data to create questions that truly test their students' knowledge.

Student Activity tabs

Discussion boards, journals, SCORMS, tests and Blackboard assignment dropboxes have a Student Activity (or Participation) tab that allows instructors to track engagement with the activity. Instructors are able to see which students have participated in the activity and the length of that participation.

For instance instructors can monitor the number and length of posts per student in a discussion. It will also highlight students who haven’t participated and facilitate messaging of non-participants

Assignment student activity demonstrates how many students have submitted, how long it takes to submit and how long before they submit. Information like this can help an instructor identify whether communication about that assignment is effective and if the level of assessment is appropriate.

Useful Links

• More information on Blackboard Learn analytics

• Course Activity Report information page on blackboard.com