Using D2L Brightspace Data

Overview

D2L Brightspace provides instructors insight into how students are performing through a variety of tools within Brightspace.  These include Class Progress as well as statistics and reports within content, discussions, and quizzing.  However, if your campus needs data that spans multiple courses, the best option is Brightspace Data Sets.

Video

For a video presentation of Brightspace data, review Brightspace Data Overview.  This presentation was given on February 23, 2024 to Brightspace Administrators, discussing Brightspace data.  Topics covered include course-level data, institution data, data privacy, data access, and a data example.

Brightspace Data Format

Brightspace data comes in a few flavors:

• Brightspace Data Sets (BDS) – raw database extracts, created weekly or with daily differentials
• Advanced Data Sets (ADS) – ad hoc reports that apply filters and aggregate data
• Brightspace Data Platform (BDP) – aggregate statistics, only available via json.  Lack of documentation.
• Brightspace API – use to pull data formats above, or direct pull from course activities

The table below highlights differences between the options:

Access to Data

Access to data should be granted through a campus governance process.  Upon approval, a Brightspace admin can then create a dedicated account to grant access to the sensitive data within Brightspace.  Access to Brightspace data will provide access across all courses and include all historical data.  As a result, great care should be taken to ensure data privacy.

Brightspace Terminology

• Organizational Unit – shortened to ‘Org Unit’ or OU, refers to a single object in the institution hierarchy.  Examples: Semester, Department, Course Offering, Course Section.
• Organization – The top ‘org unit’, generally referring to a school.  Example: “North Hennepin Community College”
• User – A person’s account, containing person information and attached to ‘org units’ via enrollments.
• Enrollments – The relationship between a user account and an org unit.  Examples: Jane is enrolled as an instructor in the Organization, but enrolled as a student in a course section
• Course Offering – A single instance of a semester course.  Can have one or more child sections.  The majority of activity occurs within the Course Offering.
• Course Section – The direct child of a course offering.  The course section holds the enrollments.  This maintains a 1:1 relationship between an ISRS COU_ID.  Example: 20253 000123.
• Assignment – The equivalent of handing in a paper or essay.
• Quiz – The equivalent of a written test or exam.
• Classlist – The roster of a given course offering or course section
• Content – The equivalent of a table of contents, laying out the structure of the course and linking to files or activities

Data Alignment and Joining

While the Advanced Data Sets (ADS) are pre-aggregated to include a fully functioning report, Brightspace Data Sets (BDS) will need to be joined to allow for reporting.  D2L’s Community has Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD’s) available for groupings of data.  For example: Users or Grades.  However, having an overview of Brightspace terminology and common data sets may be helpful for getting started.

Example: Courses

• Use Case: Understand the course offerings and sections present within Brightspace under a specific semester.
• Required datasets:
  • Organizational Units
  • Organizational Unit Descendants

You may want to duplicate the table, with different filters to retrieve the Semester, Course, Section hierarchy successfully:

Example: User Enrollments

• Use Case(s):
  • Determine which user accounts have a specific role, and to which orgUnit that enrollment belongs.
  • Determine the number of enrollments in a given course or semester
• Required datasets:
  • Organizational Units
  • Role Details
  • Users
  • User Enrollments

Example: Grade Data

• Use Case(s):
  • View the grades assigned within a particular course.
• Required datasets:
  • Organizational Units
  • Grade Objects
  • Grade Results
  • Users

Brightspace Data Set Versions

Brightspace Data Sets have a version number.  Each month when Brightspace is updated, the version number is increased to account for changes to the data sets.  Large, breaking changes generally have a lead time of 3-6 months.  For more information, review Brightspace Data Sets Change Management Policy.  To view all changes made each month, review Keeping on top of Brightspace Data Sets updates.