Content completion and statistics in D2L Brightspace

Overview

Completion tracking enables instructors to set the method of completion for an activity and provides progress indicators for students as they complete course activities.  You may choose from Automatic Completion, Manual Completion, and Not Required.

When a topic completion is being tracked (automatic or manual), you may review a student's statistics, a topic's statistics, or overall statistics from Content. Content statistics may include the total number of users, the number of users who visited course content, and the average time users spent viewing content.

Change the completion tracking method for a topic

1. Navigate to the Content tool.
2. Click the module that contains the topic you want to modify.
3. Click Edit Properties In-place from the menu of a topic.  
4. Select one of the following from the topic's completion tracking menu:
   •  Required: Automatic
   •  Required: Manual
   •  Not Required

About Content statistics

You can view content topic statistics from the Class Progress tool, and from the Content tool. From the View Reports page in Content, you can access a student's statistics, overall content statistics, or a topic's statistics. Content statistics may include the total number of users, the number of users who visited course content, and the average time users spent viewing content.

Review a student’s statistics for content

1. In Content, click on the Table of Contents page.
2. From the Related Tools menu, select View Reports.
3. Click the User tab.
4. Click on the student's name in the list.
5. On the Summary page, you can review the student's statistics for all content topics.
6. When you are finished viewing the topic's statistics, click Go Back.

Review overall statistics for a topic

1. In Content, click on the Table of Contents page.
2. From the Related Tools menu, select View Reports.
3. On the Statistics page, view the Content tab for individual content topic statistics.
4. Click the number in the Users Visited column for a topic.
5. On the Statistics page, you can view the content topic statistics for all students.
6. When you are finished viewing the topic's statistics, click Go Back. 

Content Statistics and User Progress Limitations

Within every D2L site, a timeout limit is set for a user's session.  In general, that timeout is set to 180 minutes, but campuses have the option to restrict that further to 'x' number of minutes.  The setting is global for a school's site; it would affect all students.  It is not recommended that the timeout extend beyond 180 minutes, and the timeout cannot be turned off.  Ultimately, it is up to each school to determine the right setting.

While D2L has some tracking capabilities in the Content tool, those times can be impacted by many factors.  If tracking course hours is imperative, we recommend a check in/out process, where a student informs the instructor how much time was spent on an activity.  This could be useful in tools such as:

• A 1:1 discussions area where the student posts her/her start and end time
• A un-graded quiz that contains the content/assignment and one question at the end to signify completion (the quiz event log would record the time taken to complete the quiz)
• A text submission assignment stating the amount of time spent creating the submission

Regarding system log out vs. Internet connection timeout:

• The system log out is after 180 minutes; this only occurs if the user has not navigated in the system (moved the mouse in the browser window).  More likely is if the user could time out of their Internet session, which is dependent on their Internet provider (typically 60 minutes).
• If a student's Internet session times out, their statistics for Content could be affected.  Unfortunately, the Content User Progress tool needs to be taken with a very large grain of salt.  While in most cases, visits are tracked and time is recorded, there tends to be discrepancies.  When a user follows a standard progression of the content topics, the statistics work fairly well as D2L is able to record an entrance point and exit.
• However, if the individual comes closes the window, or lets the session times out, the statistic is skewed and the time is not recorded.  Additionally, if the individual views content that's an external link, they may have navigated directly to the website instead of going through the content topic.  A similar situation would be a content topic pointing to a different tool (quiz, discussion, etc.), and the student going to that tool directly. Essentially, the navigation is not through the content tool. This is also complicated by alternative methods, e.g. as downloading/printing the content.  We recommend using the content user progress as a base guideline, and if something does not look quite right, to use it as a starting point for a conversation with the student.