ARCHIVED: Access Canvas data using the Unizin Data Warehouse

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About the Unizin Data Warehouse

The Unizin Data Warehouse gives faculty direct access to Canvas data for their courses, including information on assignment submissions, discussion updates, quiz submissions, and user logins. The data can help you improve a course or identify students who may need assistance to be successful in the course.

Most Canvas data is already available to instructors within course sites. For example, in the People tool, instructors can see the most recent login and total duration of activity for each user; in SpeedGrader, instructors can see the timestamp of student assignment submissions; and in Quizzes, instructors can see the duration and progress logs of each student's quiz attempts. The Unizin Data Warehouse presents these same data in a more raw tabular format, which may support ways of analyzing and reflecting on these data that would be difficult by browsing within the LMS.

Some Canvas data is also available in aggregated form, ready for analysis, within the Course Interaction Summaries and Student Profile Report tools.

In the Unizin Data Warehouse, you can view data in aggregate or for individual students. The following is an example of a dashboard view created using a course's data in Tableau:

Get access

Note:
The following process ensures that each instructor only has access to data in Canvas courses in which their role is Teacher.

To access the Unizin Data Warehouse:

  1. You'll need to complete three data access compliance requirements:

    To check your current compliance status, use Enterprise Application Compliance. Note that if you have very recently completed one of these requirements, the Enterprise Application Compliance tool does not update immediately; the refresh times are at the bottom of the page.

  2. Once you complete all the data access compliance requirements, complete the Next.IU contact form, selecting the Unizin Data Warehouse for the pilot; or you can note in the form that you're interested in UDW/UDP.

    Alternatively, rather than completing the form, you can send mail to eLearning Design and Services.

After Enterprise Decision Support Services (EDSS) and Application Security and Quality Assurance (ASQA) verify your compliance items, you will be granted access to data for all Canvas courses in which you have the Teacher role.

View raw data

Instructor-view tables include assignments, discussions, enrollments, groups, quizzes, wiki pages, and logins. For a list of available tables and data items, see:

  • Instructor Views Table List: A list of currently constructed tables that includes links to the Denodo RESTful instances of each table for quick lookups. RESTful instances require IU Login authentication, and access needs to be granted (see above).
  • Canvas data dictionary: A complete list of available items in the Canvas data flat files.

If you are interested in any data listed in the Canvas data dictionary that isn't currently in the Instructor Views Table List, set up a data consultation with eLearning Design & Services.

Connect to the Denodo system

Once you have access, you can connect to the Denodo system. See instructions for your preferred platforms in Get started with Denodo at IU.

To connect, use the following information:

  • Server: ebidvt.uits.iu.edu
  • Database: canvas_warehouse
  • Username and password: Your personal IU username and passphrase

This is document aqow in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2023-08-22 15:55:39.