[ARCHIVED] Getting Analytics for Inactive Students

[erik_gustafson]

I am curious if anyone has come across this. When students drop a course before the end of a term, they are removed from our Canvas courses. So, any analytics on the student in those particular courses is no longer accessible. This doesn't seem like it would be a huge deal, but then later if we need to go back and get analytic data, we cannot because the data is gone. 

I had the idea of marking the students' enrollment as "inactive", which does about half of what I need it to do. We need a way to keep students in the Canvas courses to keep all the analytic data, participation data, submission data, etc, and keep them from being visible to students and faculty. Only admins should be able to see these students. 

Does anyone have a suggestion on what we could do? It become cumbersome during a Financial Aid audit to have to re-enroll the students, but then New Analytics won't have anything on them because they were deleted. 

[Steven_S]

From the instructor's perspective, any inactive and concluded students that are still listed in the course do not impact me significantly.  The difference for the students is that concluded students can still see the course without being able to submit anything, inactive students do not have even access to view the course. 

Either way, they are labeled appropriately, and by default, hidden from the gradebook.  If I choose to display concluded students in the gradebook, those students cannot receive additional grades.  In the new gradebook, instructors have to REALLY want to find the option.  (It requires switching to individual view of the gradebook, turning it on there, and then returning to the main gradebook with it turned on.) For most instructors the student will simply seem to have disappeared.  The instructors might still find records of concluded students in analytics, but again, this does not interfere with anything the instructor needs to do.  Depending on your reason for wanting to hide this content from instructors, the filters and labels in the course might suffice. 

Having access to the records of students whose enrollment changes due to drop/add or financial audits provide a substantial benefit for instruction when students are later re-enrolled in the same course or a similar section.  During drop add for example, a student might switch sections expecting to be able to keep their progress.  If they were inactivated instead of deleted, I could transfer their progress to the new course with the new section.  If you inactivate the students first, and wait until about a week after all drop/add and financial audits are completed, you could still delete those student records that did not need to be reactivated.  That delay with access for instructors would be beneficial to our ability to respond to "new" enrollments during that period. 

With that said, I believe admins can include deleted students in reports generated from account settings. Instructions are included here:https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-view-reports-for-an-account/ta-p/109

[erik_gustafson]

Hi @Steven_S ,

Thank you for your reply. It is good to know that faculty really have to dig in order to see any data for inactive or concluded enrollments.

We really need to retain analytic data for students that drop/withdraw from a course for financial aid purposes and other course participation audit reasons. As more of our programs and courses are included in online, we need stronger analytic data.

For the financial aid piece of it, I have to manually re-add the student's enrollment, but New Analytics doesn't generate any new reports at that time (at least for concluded courses. I have not tried to inactivate a student in a course that is current).

Unless something has changed, I understand that analytic data is lost for students that are inactive. We don't want to use concluded because then students can still see a course they dropped. 

[Steven_S]

I'm using old analytics, so I have limited details about new analytics.  I turned it on briefly, but saw a very long wait before information would be available, and I need real-time info too often in my course for such a wait. I don't have any inactive students I can look up at the moment, but in old analytics concluded students are included in the list of students. You might check your inactive students in old analytics to see if the data you need is included.

I understand that new analytics will only store the most recent 27 days, and so you will miss data older than that if you only use new analytics to access data.  Apparently, the data is available but the reports do not include it.  Admins are supposed to have access through Canvas Data, and so your inactive student data may be available there as well.  I am not an admin, but there are instructions here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/What-is-Canvas-Data-Services/ta-p/142 Your data is likely stored there. This 27 day limit will be a problem, if all instructors have to ask admins for access to Canvas Data reports in order to report the last day of participation for failing students, and so I am hopeful that something will change before new analytics is the only option.

Also, I would expect the same account report that includes deleted objects (and users) to also include the inactive students: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Admin-Guide/How-do-I-view-reports-for-an-account/ta-p/109 

Neither reporting paths is in New Analytics, or Old Analytics, of the individual course.  They are admin tools that instructors do not have access to.