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Canvas: Viewing Course Analytics and Course Access reports

With our new normal of remote teaching and learning, many instructors have questions about how to track learner participation in their courses. Participation can easily be tracked with the built-in Course Analytics Report and Course Access Report in Canvas.

How can I determine if a student has been active in my Canvas course?
See who has been active in your Canvas course through Course Analytics. Besides seeing summary course activity and submissions, you can also view each student’s activity. Scroll down to the Student table and sort by Participations or Page Views to get a quick glance. Click on the student’s name to view more details on that particular student. The small envelope icon next to their Current Total score launches a direct Canvas Inbox message to the student for a quick outreach opportunity. Once you are in a single student view, you can easily navigate to other students with the Student List picker in the upper right of the page.
How can I find out more details about an individual student?
To find more details about an individual student, view the Course Access Report for that student. The access report will show you:
  • The content that the student has viewed.
  • The number of times that the student viewed the content. A view is counted each time a student navigates to the URL where the content resides or downloads an attachment.
  • The number of times that the student participated (if applicable, such as posting to a discussion or submitting an assignment).
  • The last time that the student viewed the content.
Keep in mind, both the Course Analytics Report and the Course Access Report use Participations and Page Views as metrics.
  • Participations are defined as students taking action in the course, and the following student actions will generate analytics course participation:
    • Assignments: submits an assignment
    • Collaborations: loads a collaboration to view/edit a document
    • Conferences: joins a Canvas web conference (Zoom or other external conference tool activity is not tracked)
    • Discussions: posts a new comment to a discussion
    • Pages: creates a page
    • Quizzes: starts taking a quiz or submits a quiz
  • Page Views are defined as each time a student looks at content or downloads. When you look in the Access Report, it includes things like the index pages (People, Assignments, Discussions, Grades, etc.) as well as the actual content within single assignments, discussions, quizzes, content pages, or files. Mobile page view data is included.
K-State is currently using the original Analytics tool. A New Analytics tool is available, but K-State has decided to wait to enable the feature. During this unusual semester, it was decided that this would be an inappropriate time to make a change. Instead, we will continue to use the analytics tools that instructors are already familiar with and implement the New Analytics tool at a later date.

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