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.
Please note: Unizin’s Engage eReader is now powered by RedShelf. This recent change has temporarily disrupted the data stream that flows into LEAD. Thus, eText user data will not be included in LEAD for the summer sessions and fall 2022 term.
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.
Please note: beginning in Fall 2022, all semesters of LEAD can be accessed from this link. You now can select which term you would like to view, from any of the visualization pages.
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 Heat Map. It is similar to a table or spreadsheet, but instead of numbers, it shows colors based on associated date values.
- The visualization's X axis is similar to columns in a spreadsheet, and is organized by the day of the week.
- The Y axis is similar to rows in a spreadsheet, and is organized by the times of the day, in one-hour blocks.
- A single cell in the heat map shows the cumulative number of Page Views during the day/time, for the selected activities, and for the selected students, during the selected time period.
- Hovering your cursor over a single cell reveals the Page View value for that day/time.
Colors in the Heat Map
Each cell in the heat map is colored based on the number of Page Views for the associated day/time combination.
- In the range of colors, gray is fewer counts of access, and the reds are more counts.
- The darker the red, the higher the counts of page views. In effect, the darker the red, the more students are accessing the materials in the course.
- White appears when there are no counts of access during the day/time.
Seeing student access data organized by day of week and time of day could help offer insights into patterns of when students are most active in your course.

The default view is to show the Page View data for all students in a course, 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.)
- Note that the visualization shows an aggregate of the counts for all the Mondays, Tuesdays, etc., across all the weeks included in the date range.
- This may be good to see general patterns over multiple weeks. For example, if you wanted to offer synchronous review sessions before an exam, so students could ask questions, you might look to see what days and times had a lot of course access. This could indicate a pattern of when students are generally available.
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 and heat map colors will adjust according to the selected date. This may be useful for reviewing access trends by time.

Filtering by activity type and specific activity
You can filter by
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 and access day/times will adjust according to what you've selected. This may be useful to review for access trends to a Main Activity Type. (Are students accessing videos? When do they generally participate in discussions?)
- 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.)
- The Page View counts and access day/times will adjust according to the specific activity selected. This may be useful to review for access trends to a specific activity. In this example, there was no student access to the selected video on a Tuesday or Wednesday during the time period. Since there was no Page View data for these days, the heat map does not show Tuesday or Wednesday.

Filtering by student
If you want to check on a student of interest, use 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.