[ARCHIVED] Tracking student's reading

[katherine_newto]

Hi everyone, I'm developing a course that needs to track whether students have read certain articles.  Apart from putting up the PDF and asking them to do it, is there any way we can track that they have actually read it?  Thanks very much.

[James · Accepted solution]

 @katherine_newto  

There are ways to track that a student accessed the document. There is not a way to make sure they actually read it when they accessed it other than to quiz them over the material (and even that isn't a guarantee).

Probably the easiest way is to put them inside modules and then add them as requirements for the module. You can use "View the Item" or "Marked as Done". See this lesson in the Canvas Instructor Guide for more information: How do I add requirements to a module? 

If you don't use modules, you can use the Access Report to track which students have accessed content within Canvas. This includes the including the number of times they viewed the content and the last time they viewed it. The first time they viewed it is available, but not from the Access Report. The Access Report needs to be done one student at a time, although I wrote a script that will get the Access Report for the entire class and it includes the first access time as well as the last.

• How do I view the course access report for an individual user? 
• Obtaining and using Access Report data for an entire course 

If your content is a link to an external site, then you need to make it an external URL module item. If you just put a link in a content page, then it is not tracked on Canvas' end. See this lesson for more information: https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-10301-415270926