Canvas offers instructors lots of data on student activity in a course. It also allows read-only access to all courses in the department, including student activity and grades, for Advisors and Department Heads. Each Advisor from Student Support Services and each Department Head have been set up with access to their respective departments’ courses.
Canvas Course Analytics (built-in)
Canvas offers features that can help faculty and advisors monitor student progress and identify students that may need help.
#1) Under (on the course home page)
A View of all students in the course and some current performance measures. Under Assignments, the RED bar represents missing assignments. The GREEN represents on-time assignments, and YELLOW are assignments handed-in late. Note that these late/on-time values are only reflective of assignments/activities turned in using Canvas, and which had Due Dates assigned in Canvas when the instructor set up the course.
2) By clicking a student name on the previous screen, for that student, all their interactions with the course:
3) By clicking the student’s name within the above screen, or from the course “People” page,the student’s access record and grades in the course:
4) Third-party Product Evaluation – Dropout Detective (online and OT courses only)
AspirEDU product Dropout Detective (DD) offers the ability to review student performance across courses, or to proactively raise a flag for students who are struggling. It analyzes all student activity and provides something akin to a “credit score” that may indicate a student who needs help.
At the course level, for instructors it shows up in the left-hand navigational menu in every Course, and provides a quick look at the overall performance of students in that individual course. At the Advisor level, it appears as a left-hand menu item on the NEIT Admin page, and compiles data from all courses, and provides a customized dashboard for each advisor.
Because DD relies on a student’s activity in Canvas to determine a students’ status, DD works best with courses that heavily use Canvas’ features for course activities, use Canvas to collect student assignments and other work, and that have Canvas Due Dates assigned to all activities.
For the Summer 2014, we are running a limited pilot of Dropout Detective with all online courses, and all courses in the MSOT and OTA programs. More information is on the following pages.
(i)introduction to DROPOUT DETECTIVE™
what is dropout detective?
Dropout Detective is a student retention and success solution that integrates directly with Canvas to provide a “risk index” of how likely it is that each online student will drop out of or fail their online course(s). The program analyzes past and current behavior to predict future performance. This program pulls together the different reasons a student is at risk and makes it easy to quickly go through and look at what might be happening with a student and determine an appropriate intervention strategy.
accessing dropout detective
To access Dropout Detective, log into Canvas and access one of your courses. Click on the “Dropout Detective” link on the left navigational toolbar. This link is only viewable by faculty and administrators. The link is not viewable by students.
understanding the ‘risk index’ page
When you access the Dropout Detective link, you will see a list of all the students in your course ranked from those most at risk of dropping out and/or failing to those least at risk.
• Risk Index Color – Red is most at risk, yellow is medium risk, and green is low risk.
• Risk Index Number – the number indicates (out of 100 – highest risk) how at risk the student is of failing or withdrawing.
• Latest submission – this is the timestamp of the student’s most recent submission in the course.
Student-specific information
For more information on why a student is at risk, click on their name.
• Last Login – this is the timestamp of the student’s last login to Canvas.
• Login ID – this is the student’s Canvas Login ID.
• Email – this is the student’s primary email address.
• Communication Channels – To the right of the last login and login ID, any additional communication channels that the student has recorded in Canvas will be displayed (cell phone number, alternative email addresses, Facebook, Twitter).
• Grade – this is the student’s current grade in the course.
• Missing Assignments – this is the number of assignments the student is missing based on the assignment due dates in the course. Keep in mind that once an instructor posts a grade for an assignment, it is not counted in the missing assignments. This is intentional. This takes into consideration the assumption that once a grade is entered, that assignment is in the past and will not be accepted. The risk score will be adjusted by the resulting decrease in grade so that the student’s level of risk is still properly reflected.
• Last Access – this is a timestamp of the student’s last access to the course. If this is blank, then the student has never accessed the course.
• Latest Submission – this is the timestamp of the student’s most recent submission in the course.
call notes
Documenting your communications with students can be an integral part of your outreach efforts.Documenting your outreach to students in Call Notes is a convenient way to review your own recent contact with a student and it substantially contributes to the school’s student success initiatives (see History section below).
It is important to know that anything entered into the Call Notes area can be viewed by administrators. Depending on the settings requested by your institution, you may or may not have access to see Call Notes entered by advisors as well as by other instructors. Documenting outreach to students is important, but careful attention should be given to the information documented. Do not include any information that may violate FERPA. Please contact your administrator if you have questions about what may or may not be documented in Call Notes.
Dropout Detective offers several options to assist the institution in their outreach efforts. These options include notifications to students through automated text messages, emails, and voice recordings. If your school has requested these options, you may see these outreach methods documented in the Call Notes.
history
The history tab is an excellent source of information as to a student’s performance in your course over time. The history displays the student’s risk level for the past 30 days. In addition to seeing whether the student’s performance is improving or declining, the history may provide you with insight as to a student’s activity patterns.
The history tab can also be a powerful way to determine the effectiveness of your outreach to students. When a Call Note is entered, an indicator will appear on the history tab for that date. Any time that you see the indicator, it means that you or another user (advisor, administrator, etc.) has performed outreach to that student on that date. This allows you to know if someone has had recent contact with the student and you can review their comments in the Call Notes area. For the school, the combined tallying of outreach efforts provides critical data as to the frequency of outreach and the effectiveness of that outreach and has tremendous long-term potential in helping the school to identify best practices. Documenting your outreach to students in Call Notes is a convenient way to review your own recent contact with a student, but also substantially contributes to student success initiatives.
internet browsers
Internet Explorer does not support LTI integrations. Please use Firefox or Chrome when accessing Dropout Detective.
using dropout detective
Use Dropout Detective as part of your normal Canvas routine. The more frequently you check Dropout Detective, the quicker you will be able to spot students who might be at risk and intervene.
You’ll want to reach out to students who appear to be having trouble as soon as possible, before their troubles become insurmountable. Include the student’s student advisor as well…they are here to help you and to help students be successful.
who do i contact if i have questions?
Contact Tom Thibodeau or Larry Bouthillier for more information about this pilot. We’ll be making a decision to continue the service for Fall 2014.