Tracking student activity in Moodle using Edwiser Reports
Several students and teachers had to abruptly switch to online learning platforms because of the whole pandemic scenario.
Many have settled for Moodle, I’m sure you have too!. Because it’s one of the most popular choices for its open-source code, flexibility and global community support that puts up with all kinds of LMS-related questions – basic to intermediate to advanced.
BUT once on Moodle, you’re faced with a new set of challenges – one of them being tracking student activity!
I know, you are juggling a lot of things; from trying to keep up with online learning to creating courses to struggling to get the reporting and analytics right for better insights.
This stands true for all moodlers irrespective of their level of expertise. Because value-based reporting in Moodle is limited and that makes analytics in Moodle the most dreaded part.
Like if I were a full-time Moodler I wouldn’t want to venture into something so restricted yet complex to do. I’d definitely look for better and convenient options
Moving on!
For starters, let’s quickly go over the activity tracking options in Moodle.
Student Activity Tracking within Moodle
Most moodlers would first look for reporting options within Moodle.
Yes, I agree it’s the most logical thing to do! But I also feel that although good, it’s just not enough. PLUS the onus of managing the site, determining which reporting plugins you’d need, what default reports in Moodle to use, and how to set up and use them is on you.
For those who want to stick to Moodle for their student tracking needs, here’s what to look for:
- You can set up Activity completion within your Moodle courses
- You can also mark an activity complete on behalf of a student from the activity completion report using the override activity completion, which is enabled by default
- You can get activity reports for each resource so that you can see which students have viewed individual activities and resources using the Participation Report
- Logs include course and site-level reports/logs generate a filtered report showing information about a particular activity or student
These alternatives are good. But all this eventually could be a lot to deal with. And mastering this can take some time as it has a steeper learning curve.
Remember, you’re also going to be responsible for creating a regular stream of good course content for your students. And that’s not easy!
So, let’s make it a slight bit easier for you.
Student Activity Tracking in Moodle with Edwiser Reports
To be able to monitor your learners easily and get down to work, we recommend a well-rounded reporting plugin for Moodle – something like Edwiser Reports which is a great tool that gets the reporting job done for you for FREE.
Yes, you heard me! It’s absolutely free.
Now you’d say – Free things can’t be good enough! But here’s the thing, all good things don’t have to blow your budget. Although free, it’s loaded with great reporting features.
Now here’s how you can use Edwiser Reports for tracking student activity in Moodle.
How to Improve Student Activity Tracking in Moodle
Edwiser Reports is equipped with a holistic customizable dashboard that lets you quickly glance over the learner data that matters the most. You can decide the view of information that you would like to see, right off the bat.
Different blocks serve different purposes and let you easily monitor student activity without any coding or super-technical settings.
#1 Gauge how well students are moving forward in the course
Edwiser Reports provides accurate course reports indicating course progress and course engagement for every individual course on your Moodle site.
You can get the number of students enrolled and the number of students who have completed the course. It also tells you the number of students at different completion stages of learning. This way you know how your students are making their way through the course.
#2 Monitor learner engagement levels
Using the course engagement option under course reports, you can quickly check the total number of course enrolments, visits to the course, number of students completing 50% of the course, and the total number of students finishing the course.
You can also know if your learners have started with at least one course activity.
The course completion rates give you an idea of how many students are successfully completing your courses.
If a lot of students seem to fall behind, you can make necessary modifications to your course content. This can really help you see a considerable spike in learner engagement.
#3 Understand learning patterns and improve engagement
Another bankable way to increase engagement on your Moodle site is to have a correct analysis of your existing learning trends. Extracting this information is possible if you’re able to observe your active or real-time students.
Edwiser Reports lets you keep an eye out for the daily/weekly/monthly learning patterns of your learners. With this, you can get insights into how they have been accessing your site for any given period of time or at any instant of time.
Details about the active users could be useful in not only checking on the general traffic on your e-learning site but also as a first step to assessing whether your courses are truly delivering value to your learners.
Another great way of using this information is to map out all your learning activities or tasks including fixing technical glitches on your site by putting your site under maintenance.
#4 Improve learner retention and rekindle engagement
Better collaboration leads to better engagement and ultimately helps you with generating a better response to your courses. This applies to your inactive learners too.
Your inactive students were probably active once upon a time. They might have quit due to multiple reasons.
It could be the friction while navigating or interacting with your e-learning site, it could be your course structure, it could be your course content that they might find unsatisfactory or perhaps they were not happy about your feedback or testing system, the reasons could be many.
So, address their learning issues or problem areas, and retain your learners for as long as you can with this handy list.
The list of inactive students can be very helpful in retargeting current learners. You can reach out and try to win back their interest with specific re-engagement tactics based on why they slowed down interaction in the first place.
Conclusion
And that’s how you track student activity in Moodle like a PRO.
Hope this article makes the task of student activity tracking less daunting for you.
By the way, Edwiser Reports can coexist with all your default reporting settings in Moodle. And it’s great to extend the reporting capabilities of your e-Learning site. So, go and explore the plugin today!
Happy reading and happy tracking 🙂
