The Inventory Dashboard enables organizations to discover the breadth of edtech solutions their students and teachers access and begin building a stronger evidence-based ecosystem. It provides high-level, directional data intended to help administrators ask informed questions and identify where they need to dig deeper in regards to their edtech.
| What it is Intended for | What it is NOT Intended for |
|---|---|
| Understand the breadth of solutions being accessed by students and teachers |
Source of rapid-cycle evaluation (RCE) data |
| Identify where to dig deeper on individual solutions use and inform critical questions to ask of provider data |
Definitive source of edtech solution usage data at the individual student level |
| Identify educators who are power users of specific solutions |
Sole source of data to understand implementation fidelity and efficacy |
| Identify unknown/unvetted solutions being accessed |
Teacher and student edtech use surveillance |
TIP: For questions related to effectiveness of tools, or fidelity of use to standards, well-controlled studies through RCE with IMPACT are recommended.
Accessing and Understanding Inventory Dashboard Data
The Inventory Dashboard is accessed via the Analysis > Inventory tab. The data is collected via the LearnPlatform by Instructure browser extension, iOS extension, or JAMF extension. Please reach out via lp-support@instructure.com for help with identifying which extension(s) will work best for your organization and to get them set-up. Once an extension is deployed, your usage data will be aggregated and displayed in the dashboard.
First, let's take a look at your Data Source.
Use the Data Source to select the usage data you would like to review. The dashboard displays the following information depending on which data source you select:
- Browser (populated by the Browser extension)
- products that are being accessed
- number of students and educators accessing those products
- data trends around those products (events and total minutes)
- iOS (populated by the iOS extension)
- products that are being accessed
- number of student and educator devices accessing those products
- data trends around those products (events)
- Jamf (populated by the Jamf extension)
- products that have been installed on devices
- number of devices a product has been installed on
What is an Event?
In general, we have 4 different types of “usage” events that we collect:
- Load Events - when a user loads a page or the url of the page changes
- Minutes on System (MOS) Events - tracks the number of seconds that a user spends using a particular product (which could span multiple url changes)
- iOS App Events - any network request initiated by an app, which is roughly equivalent to usage (in theory - apps don’t always request new data when users interact with the app)
- iOS Web Events - any network request initiated by mobile safari. This is analogous to Load Events.
Load and MOS events are collected only via the Browser extension; iOS App and Web events are collected by the iOS extension.
What Constitutes a Usage Event?
Browser Extension
The browser extension listens for 3 types of actions from the user:
- A tab is “activated” - this happens when a user switches tabs
- A tab’s url is updated - i.e. the user navigates to a different page or in some cases (like a single-page-app (SPA)) the user performs an action on the page which updates the url
- The current window changes - if the user has multiple Chrome/Edge windows open and switches between them (or switches away from Chrome/Edge)
When any of these actions occurs, we attempt to lookup the url and match it against our list of tracking domains. We take the best match and then do 2 things:
- For Load Events, we increment a counter for the product. i.e. one url change is a single load event.
- For Minutes on System (MOS) Events, we start or resume an “active” session for that product. This allows us to track “how long” by accumulating the time that a session is active.
Every 60 seconds we take all the usage data that we’ve collected and then send them to LearnPlatform. Each time we send we clear all the existing usage information from the chrome extension so that it does not accumulate and cause performance problems.
iOS Extension
In the iOS app we use the Web Content Filter - this essentially sends us ALL network traffic. For each network request, we inspect the url and the bundle id to determine if it’s an iOS App or iOS Web Usage Event. We then match that url or bundle id against our list of products and track usage based on that.
Bear in mind that we’re using network traffic as an approximation of “usage”. Not every app will send a network request when the user interacts with the app and not every network request is initiated by the user (e.g. an app might refresh data in the background). This is a “best guess” given the limitations in Apple’s ecosystem, but gives us a way to gauge usage in broad terms.
Products
Depending on the approval status of your products the inventory dashboard breaks down usage data by Approved (products) in Use and Not Approved (products) in Use.
Active Users/Devices
Next to the Data Source drop down, you can find the report period. The report period indicates the period of time that the dashboard is pulling data from. For Chrome/Edge extension as a Data Source, in the right hand side, you can see the Active Users section which displays how many educators and students are actively using products during that period of time. For the iOS extension, this area shows the number of active student vs educator devices.
Product Usage by Educator / Products Used by Devices
The Product Usage by Educators for the Browser extension and Products Used by Devices for the iOS extension is displayed in a graph.
This graph depicts the number of products being accessed by educators in the time frame for the Browser extension, and the number of apps being accessed on educator devices for the iOS extension. This can help give you a sense of the breadth of products used by your educators.
Usage Details
The Usage Details table provides you with a more detailed view of incoming usage. You can view the products in use ranked by their total number of users for the time frame, approval status, privacy status, and the number of educators and students that have accessed each product (Browser/iOS) or the number of devices that app is installed on (Jamf). You can also review the total number of new users that began using a product during the selected time frame. In addition, using the 3-dot menu you can also review what tracking domains are attached to a product, and quickly navigate to other areas of the platform to 1) view how a product is displayed in your organization library and 2) to quickly access a product’s settings via your Management > Products table. The Usage Details table also allows you to directly add products to your organization library, modify approval and privacy statuses for products, and export your usage data list.
Learn more about Adding Product From Your Inventory Dashboard.
Product Trends and Usage by Educators
Once you click into a product, you can view product trends for specific products, both over time and for individual schools within your district (Browser/iOS extensions only).
If you have provided LearnPlatform with an educator roster list you will have access to which teachers are using particular products and to what degree as in the image below. To provide LearnPlatform with a teacher roster, please contact us at support-lp@instructure.com.
Requesting Feedback from the LearnPlatform Inventory Dashboard
You have the option of sending educators a request for feedback for a particular product directly via the inventory dashboard (Browser/iOS extensions only). Once you select an educator(s), click Request Feedback, which will trigger an email inviting them to grade the product within the platform.
If you expect to see a product that is not visible, or the data appears incorrect, contact customer support at support-lp@instructure.com.
