Choosing the Right Moodle™ Reporting Tool: Configurable Reports vs.Edwiser Reports Pro
If you’re a non-tech moodler using the free reporting tools in Moodle™, you might see an urgent need to upgrade to more advanced tools; that are not just easier to work with, but also give you more actionable insights.
There are things you may need like deeper insights, more data-rich reports, and well-presented data.
Now Moodle™ definitely gives you several reporting options. But a dedicated plugin that takes the pain out of Moodle™ reporting is missing.
The Problems with Traditional Moodle™ Reporting Tools
Premium plugins can resolve the drawbacks associated with the Moodle™ free analytical tools.
Here are some top reasons you should upgrade your Moodle™ reporting tool:
- Lack of report export mechanism
- Unavailability of report scheduling features
- Poor data representation and visualization
- Limitations in providing deeper insights on course activities.
- Limited freedom at customizing data reporting without SQL knowledge
- Lack of report notification on new trends, updates
- No support for language variation, etc
Regardless of the drawbacks of using an Off-The-Shelf Moodle™ reporting tool, there are two notable plugins that you can use as a solution.
So, let’s see a detailed comparison between Edwiser Reports Pro, and the free, in-house Moodle™ plugin, Configurable Reports, the benefits they each offer, and their pros and cons.
By the end of the article, you’d be better informed to make a decision and pick the right tool for your reporting needs.
Configurable Reports vs Edwiser Reports Pro
#1 Ease of Use
With Configurable Reports: Report categorization support is available. They contain Moodle™ data about the performance of your courses and can be viewed on the screen, downloaded in excel file format, and also printable for future use.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: You can use pre-built report packages to extract important report features. This data could be about the most popular courses, how your students are progressing through your courses, and so on. Following that, you can download the reports in a variety of file formats, including XLS, CSV, and PDF.
#2 Ease of Customization
With Configurable Reports: You can tailor your reports to the timeline events on your e-Learning platform. You can also create reports such as user reports and SQL reports, as well as add calculations and plots to the data in the reports.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: You can personalize your dashboard to see the most important information upfront. Pick and choose relevant blocks and order them as per your preferences or needs. Also, it offers you the ability to create custom reports using the Edwiser Reports Custom report builder.
#3 Ability to Export Reports
With Configurable Reports: The ability to export reports files is included; however, exporting embedded reports is not supported because the reports contain references to other reports.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: You can improve your e-learning insights by selecting parameters or metrics to track. You can also export the records for use in data science or analytic projects. It’s so simple to use that anyone can create quick custom reports, export them to various formats, and even schedule them to deliver to your email.
#4 Report scheduling
With Configurable Reports: Extra configurations with cronjobs are required to query the database for reports and act as a scheduling mechanism. There is also the option of configuring random database queries to serve as ad-hoc reports.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: Reports will be delivered to you without the need for you to visit the dashboard regularly. The plugin allows you to easily automate reports so that you receive them on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This feature in turn adds to your time, enabling you to put it to better use elsewhere. It has a configuration block that manages the scheduling of your reports.
#5 Dependency on SQL Knowledge
With Configurable Reports: A lot of the features especially the advanced ones require that you have knowledge of SQL (structured query language) to benefit from them. For the simple things needed for reporting, you don’t. This aspect is best exploited by moodlers who are also developers.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: You will have a hands-free reporting and analytic experience. You do not need to know any programming language to create or manage reports. It is simple to create report blocks in an instant. Also, while Configurable reports have SQL query-based reporting Edwiser Reports Pro has a custom report builder which is used for building reports.
#6 Notification Support for Reports
With Configurable Reports: You can send email notifications to multiple recipients, you must use a cronjob or a database Ad-hoc queries plugin for this. Following that, you can email reports regularly which can be set per day, week, or monthly basis. A tech guy is really needed to set up the notification system for you.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: A non-tech moodler can easily set up notifications without programming knowledge. Using this plugin, you get a notification every time a Moodle™ report is created through email. At the peak of a sudden trend in any area, such as enrollment, course sales, course completion, course progress, and so on the notification block will send you an email. You have unbounded freedom to set up the notification block on a timely, daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
#7 Reports Access Control
With Configurable Reports: You can set a security layer on those that can access a report and those who are not permitted. This is normally specified and done at the time of report creation. This provision also enables you to extend reports access to a supervisor, a colleague, a student, or even a parent.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: You can give access to teachers, managers, and other user roles in Moodle™ using dashboard settings. The permissions block can be edited using the dashboard option. This controls who has access to your reports. You can add, delete, and change the blocks to suit your needs at any time.
#8 Tracking Daily Site Trends
With Configurable Reports: A little more study or professional help can assist you to set up a report block that automatically updates on trends or new happenings on your Moodle™ platform. On this update, new reports can be generated and a notification sent to your email.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: You can set up an event or trigger on your platform to inform you of the best time to perform certain tasks. These tasks could include putting your site in a maintenance mode. Also, it can notify you when your platform has the most active users when to hold course flash sales, and so on. And all of these reports will be delivered to your inbox for immediate action.
#9 Tracking Lack of Activity or Inactive Learners
With Configurable Reports: You can set up a report block to report current trends, you can also set up another report block to monitor areas that are less active on your Moodle™ LMS. Also, you can be notified with a generated report via email when a certain aspect of your system becomes inactive.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: You can learn why some users aren’t active on your platform and how to solve the problem. You can stimulate their interest by reaching out to them to learn more about their concerns. This handy block assists you with your platform’s list of inactive users and more.
#10 Reports Visualization
With Configurable Reports: You can represent reports properly via a basic user interface. They’re low on aesthetics. If limitations in the interface are not a problem for you or visual reports are not a priority for you. You could pick this option.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: You get a great user interface that allows you to experience a holistic graphical representation of total active learners, the number of students enrolled in the course, courses completed, and more.
#11 Ease of Generating Critical Statistics
With Configurable Reports: You are allowed to generate reports on various cases such as the total number of certificates given, assignments submitted, courses statistics, users statistics, and more. All these can be achieved by setting up database queries to retrieve these stats.
With Edwiser Reports Pro: You can create reports for relevant data such as your best-performing courses, the number of certificates issued for a specific course, the number of active users who are currently online, and more. Making this data available to prospective students can help you increase enrollments and course engagements. Based on this data, you can also improve your current courses or create new ones.
#12 Popularity and Support
Configurable Reports: This Moodle™ reporting plugin is a custom reports builder. It lets you create custom reports without the knowledge of SQL. It’s a tool suitable for admins or teachers. About 14271 sites on the web use this plugin and have recorded over 2,000 downloads with about 381 fans since it was released.
Edwiser Reports Pro: This Moodle™ plugin was developed by a team of Elite plugin developers and is supported by WisdmLabs and Edwiser. It’s a visual reporting plugin for Moodle™ that allows you to easily track your LMS, courses, and student engagement. The plugin has received over 4.8-star ratings and numerous positive reviews, and it is used by several professional moodlers around the world.
How do you Gain a Competitive Edge??
The Edwiser Reports Pro plugin has some additional features and benefits. Let’s see how they stack up against the ones available in Configurable Reports.
#1 Learner Report
Configurable Reports: It takes advanced database configurations to generate learners’ report.
Edwiser Reports Pro: It provides you with a dashboard for the learners to understand their progress in their enrolled courses and the ability to track time spent on the course.
#2 Student Engagement Report
Configurable Reports: You will need to have good technical skills in coding to generate student engagement reports.
Edwiser Reports Pro: It comes with a dashboard interface for Managers & teachers to understand engagement on their LMS, courses, and activities at a much deeper level.
#3 Time tracking on LMS
Configurable Reports: You will need to set up some configurable blocks to record time-tracking activities on your LMS.
Edwiser Reports Pro: The dashboard provides you with a detailed understanding of how much time is spent on LMS to calculate ROI. Important for the Manager and Head of the department to track this metric.
#4 Time Tracking on Course
Configurable Reports: You will need to programmatically set up database queries to retrieve time tracking details on your courses.
Edwiser Reports Pro: Provides you with an understanding of how much time is spent on every course to know which courses are working well among your students.
#5 Time Tracking on Activities
Configurable Reports: You will need the help of an expert to configure various time tracking trends which could incur more cost to you.
Edwiser Reports Pro: Your dashboard can easily help you to understand how much time is spent on every activity inside a course to understand which activities are time taking, where exactly are students facing issues with course completion.
#6 Number of visits on LMS
Configurable Reports: You will need extra help with tech support to set up a monitoring process for viewing the number of visitors on your LMS.
Edwiser Reports Pro: The dashboard helps you to understand total visits on LMS & sections of the LMS with the maximum number of visits in a day or week.
Final Takeaway
We are expecting to see you choose the best, so go ahead!!! Remember, LMS reporting and analytics are supercritical for optimizing your e-learning decisions.
For hassle-free Moodle™ reporting, we highly recommend the Edwiser Reports Pro plugin, an all-in-one solution because we want you to be crystal clear about what’s happening behind the scenes – All key stats and insights on your LMS!
Time to end this love-hate relationship with reporting in Moodle™!
