Campus tools such as Canvas, Kaltura MediaSpace (video/audio/images), and Unizin Engage eText are connected to student roster information. This allows student data to be connected with a record of their course access and interaction, such as:
- Course pages or videos they’ve clicked on
- Grades stored in the Canvas gradebook
- Participation with activities such as assignment submissions, or discussion posting
- Times of access
More information about LEAD is provided in the Learner Engagement Analytics Dashboard Overview KB doc, including more details about the data and the official data definitions.
LEAD is currently available for instructors teaching for-credit courses who are enrolled in Canvas as a principal instructor, auxiliary instructor, or supervisory instructor.
Instructors can access LEAD at go.wisc.edu/lead. Follow the instructions on the screen to log in.
Once inside LEAD you will have access to a home page and three visualization pages.
- Page Views by Date and Hour
- Grades by Page Views
- Page Views by Activity Type
For easy access to other learning analytics resources, add the Learning Analytics for Instructors Widget to your MyUW page.
This visualization format is a
Scatter Plot.
- It plots two different measures for each student -- their Grade and their number of Page Views, representing each student with a dot.
- The dot’s placement on the X (horizontal) axis is based on the number of Page Views, the placement on the Y (vertical) axis is based on their current numerical grade.
Values for individual students
Hovering your cursor over a dot reveals data about the individual student's
Grade and
Page Views.
Trend line
The visualization also draws a trend line for your whole course comparing
Grades to
Page Views. This line is a representation of the relationship between those two variables.
- A line that slopes upwards toward the right implies a strong relationship between Page Views and Grades, implying that when one increases, the other increases.
- A horizontal line implies little relationship.
- A line that slopes downward implies a negative relationship.
There are two factors to keep in mind when interpreting the trend line:
- While there is usually a general, course-wide relationship between Grades and Page Views, it does not prove that one causes the other.
- When considering results, you may find that individual students do not follow the trend. As with any comparison, the relationship between Grades and Page Views should not be viewed as determinative for any individual student.
Hovering your cursor over the trend line shows values of the statistical relationship between the two variables.
The default view is to show the data for all students in a course, with their Canvas Gradebook Percentage Score, and all Page Views counted from course activities from the start of the semester to within 5 days of the current time. (LEAD data is aggregated from multiple sources that are updated at various frequencies, depending on the tool.)
This may be good to see general trends of grade distribution and levels of access to the course materials.
If you want to see the data for a particular week, for a category of activity types, for a specific document, or for selected students, you can use the filtering functions available on the left. If you're teaching more than one course this semester, you'll also be able to filter by course name.
- Changes you make using any of the filters on one tab, will persist as you navigate to the other tabs.
Filtering by date range
You can filter the data to a date range by choosing a start date, end date, or both.
- Click on the start and end dates to launch the calendars; it's easier to select dates from the calendars than using the scrollbar.
- The Page View counts will adjust according to the selected date, and the Grade displayed will remain as the current grade. This may be useful for reviewing access trends by time.
- Note: Student grades will always display the overall grade for the entire semester. If you use the date filter and narrow down to an earlier or shorter period of time in the semester, the Page View counts will be limited to the selected dates, however the grades will always be the current (or final) grade in the course.
Filtering by activity type and specific activity
You can filter using the Main Activity Type. The list in the drop-down will vary depending on how you have your course set up. For example, if you don't use Engage eText or Kaltura Videos, those options will not appear in the Main Activity Type drop-down.
- The default is All --> Uncheck All and then select one or more Main Activity Type --> Choose Apply. (You may have to click away/off the visualization after you apply the filter.)
- The Page View counts will adjust according to what you've selected; you can choose one or several activity types.
- The Grade displayed will remain as the current grade.
- This may be useful to review for access trends to a Main Activity Type, and for changes in the Trend Line showing the relationship between Grades and Page Views of the selected Main Activity Type. (Does the scatter plot look different for Kaltura Videos than it does for Canvas Assignments?)
- Filtering first by Main Activity Type will also help you more quickly locate a specific activity using the next filter for the Name of Activity. (For example, you won't have to scroll through a list of all your course Announcements, Assignments, Quizzes and Discussions if you're just looking for access data about a specific Kaltura Video).
You can drill down to a specific activity using the Name of Activity filter.
- In this example, the Main Activity Type that was selected is Kaltura Videos so only video titles will be listed in the Name of Activity drop-down.
- The list of items in the drop-down will reflect how you have named files, pages, assignments etc. in your Canvas course. Use consistent naming conventions and logical file names to help you locate a specific item; for example Mod-2 Video or Discussion Week 2.
- The default is All --> Uncheck All and then select one or more Name of Activity --> Choose Apply. (You may have to click away/off the visualization after you apply the filter.)
- All of the Kaltura Videos in this example appear in the Name of Activity drop-down; however only one specific video is selected, below.
- Notice how the scatter plot visualization has changed.
Filtering by student
If you want to check on a student of interest, you can select them from the
Student Name filter.
- The default is All --> Uncheck All and then select a Student Name --> Choose Apply. (You may have to click away/off the visualization after you apply the filter.)
- You can select more than one student.
Consider what student engagement looks like in your course, and what indicators you look for in addition to online access. For example, you may consider quality of work, interactions with classmates, types of questions and comments made.
- You could take a ‘wait and see’ approach, and check back on the situation in the future
- You could consider reaching out to individual students
- If you see broad patterns among several students, you may consider taking whole-class actions, such as reminders of participation expectation, or revisiting challenging content
- This data may be useful to you between semesters as part of considering course redesign
Wise, Alyssa Friend, and Yeonji Jung. "Teaching with analytics: Towards a situated model of instructional decision-making." Journal of Learning Analytics 6.2 (2019): 53-69.
