Home » Categories » Instructors » Support » D2L » D2L Tools

Insights Portal Dashboards

D2L is creating a number of dashboards that show aggregated data from across all courses in which a user is enrolled. As more dashboards become available, we will update this article

Engagement Dashboard

Last Course Access

The Last Course Access visualization shows how many users have never accessed a course or have accessed a course in the last 2 weeks, last 3 weeks, last 4 weeks, last 8 weeks, and the users who have not accessed a course in 12 or more weeks. Each user is counted once for each course and the visualization includes the role of each user.

When you drill into the content data:

  • Clicking on an access bucket returns the roles of users in that bucket.
  • Clicking on a role returns the courses in which the users with that role (selected in the parent bucket) are enrolled.
  • Clicking on a course returns the users in the course (selected in the parent bucket) of the previously selected role and last access bucket.

When the user drills into the final, most granular level of the visualization, the following information is available for each user.

  • Username
  • First and Last Name
  • Email address
  • Date when the course was last accessed

Status of Assignments with Due Date

The Status of Assignments with Due Date visualization dashboard identifies when individual learners and groups submit their completed assignments. From that information, instructors and administrators can glean which learners are at-risk and how successful learners are overall. The dashboard displays information for current active courses and assignments with an end date less than 6 months old or in the future, and does not include assignments that have the IsHidden flag set to true.

This visualization only includes assignments with due dates for users with the Can Submit permissions. The dashboard provides information for users with one or more not submitted where the due date is in the past (overdue), completed after the due date passed (completed, passed due), due within the next 7 days (not completed, due within 7 days), and completed before the due date (completed, before due). Each assignment completion behavior bucket is grouped by the completion criteria.

When you drill into the content data:

  • Clicking on an assignment bucket returns the course offerings in which the assignments belong.
  • Clicking on a course offering returns the users in the selected course who have assignments that meet the assignment completion behavior of the parent bucket.

When the user drills into the final, most granular, level of the visualization, the following information is available for each user:

  • user name
  • preferred first and last name
  • email
  • assignment id and name
  • assignment folder due date
  • submission date (if applicable)
  • assignment type
  • score (if applicable)

Time in Content Distribution

The Time in Content Distribution visualization displays the total time each user has spent in each course, rounded to the next full minute, in a histogram with 10 data buckets. This information can help identify learners who are struggling with the course content, and may be at risk of not successfully completing the course. The visualization distributes the total time each user has spent in each course (in minutes) in a histogram with 10 buckets. Each bucket counts the number of users whose time in the content falls in the range.

When you drill into the content data:

  • Clicking on a bucket in the histogram returns the roles of the users in that time range.
  • Clicking on a role from the previous results returns the course offerings of the users of the role in the selected time range.
  • Clicking on a course from the previous results returns the users in the selected course offering from the role and time selected in the previous drill down selections. For each user, their time in the content (in minutes) for the course is compared to the average time in the content for that course and their current final grade.
  • Clicking on a user from the previous results breaks down the content for the course by module and topic. You can further filter the modules and topics by clicking the items in the legend.

Time in Content effect on Grades

The Time in Content effect on Grades visualization displays the total time, rounded to the next full minute, each user spends on each course's content compared to their current final grade in each course. This information is displayed as a scatter plot. You can highlight a section of the visualization to zoom in, or click on an individual data point to drill into details.

When you drill into the content data:

  • Clicking on a user (represented as a dot in the scatter plot) returns all active courses in which the user is enrolled, that the viewer has permission to see. For each course, the total time spent in the content is displayed compared to the average time spent in the content by all users in the course. The current final grade is plotted on a secondary axis.
  • Clicking on a course breaks down the user's time in content for the course by module and topic. The module and topic can be filtered by clicking the items in the legend.

Adoption Dashboard

The Adoption Dashboard is the place where users can understand D2L usage, drive broader adoption of the platform and inform ROI discussions.  There are currently 5 visualizations: Login Trend, Course Access Counts, Tool Usage Trend, Tool Usage Comparison and Enrollment and Withdrawal Trends.

The target audience for this dashboard is high-level roles such as deans, chairs & department managers who are interested in answering institution, department or school level questions.

Login Trend

Data Access

Data in this visualization is updated at least once per hour.  Users will see all total login counts across the entire organization regardless of permissions or where they are enrolled.  The maximum timespan in the reporting period is 6 months.

Interaction 

Users can zoom in by clicking and dragging to select a timeframe of interest.  Compare the daily count to the minimum, average and maximum login count over the timeframe displayed.  Users can hover on a point to view the count. At this time there are no filters or drilling capabilities included.

Use cases

Viewers are able to see how users are logging in which could be of particular interest during events such as shutdown days or semester start.  Users are able to recognize trends to compare them to expectations or targets for a given time period.

Course Access Counts

Data Access

Data in this visualization is updated at least once per hour.  Organizational unit names are refreshed less frequently and may take up to 36 hours following a change.

Users will see the count of non-distinct users who have accessed one or many course offerings in the last 2 weeks under the org unit being viewed.  All non-impersonated course accesses except those for D2L Support and D2L Monitor are included.  Only active courses are included where an active course is defined as follows:

  • The start date is before or during the 2-week reporting period
  • And the end date is in the future or blank
  • Or if no dates are populated, the course is flagged as “IsActive”

Clicking on a bar drills into the next org unit in the structure to a max of 6 levels or until you get to the course offering level.  If a user is enrolled throughout Department 1 with cascading enrollments but not Department 2, they will be able to drill to course level course access data for Department 1 but only aggregated data for Department 2.  At each level, users can hover on a bar to view the counts. There are no filters currently included in this visualization.

Use Cases

Because targets and expectations of each course may differ, it is up to the viewer to decide how to best compare the org units to draw conclusions.  This visualization may be used to identify courses, or larger groups like programs, that have robust use of Brightspace.  This data complements the Login Trend by digging deeper to see where users are going once logged in.

Tool Usage Trends

Data Access

Each time a tool is accessed by a user in Brightspace, the tool usage count is incremented.  The count presented in this visualization is not a distinct count per day but rather a total count of all the times a user accessed a tool. Data for all users except D2LSupport and D2LMonitor is included for a maximum time span of 12 months.  Data in this visualization is updated at least once per hour.  Organizational unit names, role names and tool names are refreshed less frequently and may take up to 36 hours following a change.

Presented in biweekly sums, users of this visualization will see all aggregated data for the institution when they access this card on the dashboard.

However, as they drill into the trends, they will only be able to drill into organizational units that they are enrolled in  with the same role  that they are granted permission to the Adoption Dashboard.

The following tools are included today with plans to expand the list on an ongoing basis:

  • Announcements
  • Assignments
  • Calendar
  • Classlist
  • Content
  • Discussions
  • Grades
  • Quizzes
  • Survey
  • Checklist

Interaction

At the top level, this visualization presents tool usage data as a stacked area chart over time.  Users can zoom into a shorter timespan by clicking and highlighting the desired area.  Users can deselect a tool from the legend to filter it out of the visualization.  Clicking on a tool specific area in the visualization will drill into how the selected tool is used grouped by role.  Be mindful to click on a spot between dates unless you’d like to drill into a specific date.

Roles can also be filtered in and out by interacting with the legend.  Clicking on a role area will drill into which org units are using the previously selected tool with the selected role.  The org units returned are the highest-level org units which would be the departments in our previous example above.  At this level, the legend can once again be used to filter org units in and out of the stacked area chart.  At each level, users can hover on an area to view the counts.

Use Cases

Use this visualization to see how tool use changes overtime by role or org unit.  This is particularly helpful for those who have expectations of their users around certain time periods.  For example, some recommend instructors set up their content before the course starts and that all users engage using the discussion tool within the first week of their course.  This can also be used to measure success of adoption campaigns across your organization.

Tool Usage Comparison

Data Access

Data in this visualization follows the same data model as the tool usage trends visualization but the interaction pattern of the Course Access Counts visualization.  The counts reported for each org unit are the total tool usage in the last 30 days. 

Interaction

This visualization behaves the same as the Course Access Counts visualization where the user can drill through the org unit structure to see how org unit’s use of various tools compare to each other.  The legend can be used to filter tools in and out of the visualization.  Clicking on a section of a bar (tool) or the org unit in the axis drills into the next org unit in the structure to a max of 6 levels or until you get to the course offering level.  Permissions are handled the same way as in the Course Access Counts visualization where aggregated data can be viewed across higher level org units but only course level data can be seen where the user is enrolled.  At each level, users can hover on a section of a bar to view the counts.

Use Cases

Users can make use of this visualization to compare how various groups are using the tools available to them.  This is particularly helpful if a single group is piloting a new tool and you’d like to ensure the pilot is successful.  Also use this visualization to highlight groups that are not using Brightspace to its fullest by leveraging key tools to help users in their everyday activities.

Enrollment and Withdrawal Trends

Data Access

Data in this visualization is updated at least once an hour.  Data from the last 4 months are included to be able to give most organizations a snapshot of an entire semester where relevant.  Data is summarized in daily counts of the total number of users enrolled or withdrawn from any course offering in the organization.

Interaction

Users can zoom in by clicking and dragging to select a timeframe of interest.  At this time there are no filters or drilling capabilities included.  Users can deselect one of the items from the legend to view enrollments or withdrawals on its own.  Hover on a data point to see the value of that count.

Use Cases

This data can be used by those with in interest in how activity changes around key dates such as the last day to drop a course without a penalty when enrollments are immediately reflected in Brightspace.  This visualization is designed to work for those with set enrollment periods and those with rolling enrollments by providing the trend over a longer timeframe.

1 (1)
Article Rating (1 Votes)
Rate this article
  • Icon PDFExport to PDF
Attachments Attachments
There are no attachments for this article.
Related Articles RSS Feed
Editing the instructor profile widget
Viewed 1220 times since Tue, Aug 2, 2022
Course Overview widget
Viewed 4862 times since Mon, May 15, 2017
Quick Eval tool
Viewed 1106 times since Wed, May 22, 2019