Canvas Course Interaction Summaries

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Overview

Note:
To use this tool, you must have a current Acceptable Use Agreement on file.

In Canvas at Indiana University, instructors can access Course Interaction Summaries as an external tool. This set of dashboards offers an integrated, summarized view of the activity currently happening in your course, centered on a picture of communication to students, submission timing and scores, and grading and feedback comments.

Important:
Many courses rely on external tools (for example, Quick Check or Turnitin). External tool submission times and grading times have not been fully integrated into Canvas. Because of this, many of the time-dependent measures have been excluded for external tools. In the future, this functionality may become available for the most popular external tools.

Course Interaction Summaries appears within the Reports and Dashboards tool, which is displayed in the course navigation menu by default. You can also add Course Interaction Summaries directly to your course navigation menu. For more, see How do I manage Course Navigation links?.

Only those enrolled as instructors or co-instructors in the course will see the charts described below in this tool; for all other roles, the dashboards will appear blank.

To switch between any of the three available dashboards (below), use the tabs at the top of the page.

By default, the tool shows information for the course you're in. You can select another course from the past year for which you had an instructor role with the Course Canvas Id drop-down list in the upper right of the Instructor Web Interactions tab; this course selection will apply to all three dashboards.

The Course ID is an internal number set by Canvas for every course. In the URL for a course, the ID is the seven-digit number that appears after /courses/. For example, 1848625 is the course ID in the following URL:

https://iu.instructure.com/courses/1848625

The "Course Name" on each dashboard will show what course you've selected.

Instructor Web Interactions tab

Dashboards

Instructor Web Interactions

The Instructor Web Interactions dashboard shows the total number of times you sent a message to students (including announcements, discussion topics and entries, Canvas Inbox messages, and submission comments), as well as a timeline showing the same information organized by day. This includes all interactions for anyone who has an Instructor or TA role in your course.

This board can be used to track when you are interacting with your students and help you note what avenues of interaction you are using more or less frequently. After a semester, you can use this to plan interactions when updating your course.

Displays in this dashboard include:

  • The total number of messages sent to students for each of the four types of interactions (announcements, discussion topics, messages, and submission comments)
  • A timeline of each of the four types of interactions, with circles sized to indicate the number of interactions on each day. Hover over a circle to display the number of interactions represented.
Canvas Instructor Web Interactions dashboard
Note:

Be aware of these constraints:

  • The message total only includes messages sent via the Inbox tool within Canvas, and only those that were created by first selecting a course in the tool. If you sent a message by typing in a student's username rather than selecting a course first, it will not appear in these totals or the timeline. For messages sent with more than one recipient, such as to an entire course, only one message is registered for this dashboard.
  • Submission comments only include comments on the entire submission, and do not include item-specific comments. For instance, if you left a comment on a quiz submission, and additional comments on two of the items within the quiz submission, only one comment would be recorded, the one for the entire quiz submission. The item-specific data is not recorded in Canvas.

Student Performance

The Student Performance dashboard gives course-level aggregated statistics showing when assignments were submitted and what scores students achieved on assignments. This includes submission timing broken down by week, score vs. submission time relative to due date, and submission timing and score data at the assignment level.

This helps you identify trends and issues in content and highlights issues with student performance as they occur. It also provides summary data on particular content, items, or artifacts for you to consider when updating and changing your course materials.

By default, all assignments in your course will appear in the Student Performance dashboard displays. You can use the search box under "Search For Assignments" to restrict results to certain assignments.

Displays in this dashboard include:

  • Submission Timing by Week: This sheet shows, for each week, the percentage of submissions that were submitted on time (green), submitted late (orange), submission time not recorded (gray), missing (red), or submitted via an external tool (blue).
    The Submission Timing by Week display in the Student Performance dashboard
    Note:
    Some assignments may not appear in this chart because not all external tools have standardized submission data within Canvas.
  • Score vs. Submission Timing: This chart shows an aggregation of scores on submissions and the number of days submitted before the due date. Each dot represents one day and a score range of 2%. The size of the dot represents the number of submissions fitting those criteria. Hovering over a dot will show the number of records represented.
    The Score vs. Submission Timing display in the Student Performance dashboard
  • Average Submission Timing and Score per assignment: This chart lists all of the assignments in a course organized by the submission types available for that assignment (Discussion, On Paper, Online Quiz, etc.) For each assignment, the chart shows the number of submissions and two horizontal bars. The left-hand bar represents the average submission time in days relative to the due date For example, -1.1 means the average submission time was 1.1 days before the due date. The right-hand bar shows the average score on that assignment.
    Average Submission Timing and Score per assignment display in the Student Performance dashboard
    Note:
    Some assignments will not have a bar showing the average time submitted before the due date. This is either because no due date was set in Canvas, or no submission time was recorded (often the case for assignments submitted on paper).

Assignment Feedback

This dashboard summarizes the time taken to grade submissions as well as the frequency of submission feedback you have provided on students' submissions, both at the course and assignment level. You can use this to identify patterns in grading among particular types of assignments.

By default, all assignments in your course will appear in these displays. You can use the wildcard search box under "Search For Assignments" to restrict results to certain assignments.

Displays in this dashboard include:

  • Number of Days to Grade: This chart shows a histogram of the number of days it took to grade each student submission in the course.
    The Number of Days to Grade display in the Assignment Feedback dashboard
  • Submission Feedback Overview: This chart shows the number of submissions with and without feedback, broken down by the assignment submission type.
    The Submission Feedback Overview display in the Assignment Feedback dashboard
  • Grading Time and Feedback per Assignment: This chart shows each assignment grouped by the submission type. For each assignment, the purple bar shows the average grading time (in days) for each assignment, and the blue bar shows the percentage of submissions with comments.
    The Grading Time and Feedback per Assignment display in the Assignment Feedback dashboard
    Note:
    Some assignments may not appear in this chart because not all external tools have standardized submission data within Canvas.

Troubleshoot

Dashboard is blank

The dashboard may be blank for one of the following reasons:

  • You are not enrolled in the Canvas course as an instructor or co-instructor.
  • The course does not have any instructor interactions.
  • The course term is before winter 2017. For performance reasons, the dashboard is limited to courses in that term or later terms.

A course you taught is not available in the Canvas Course ID selector

The course term is before winter 2017. For performance reasons, the dashboard is limited to courses in that term or later terms.

The data appears out of date

Canvas data has a latency of one to two days, so these dashboards will not reflect new activity for two days.

This is document auuq in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2023-07-14 09:11:06.