The Learner Engagement Analytics Dashboard (LEAD) is a course-level dashboard that provides visualizations of student access to materials in Canvas courses.
Note: This document describes a learning analytics approach to help support student success.
Campus tools such as Canvas, Kaltura MediaSpace (video), and Unizin Engage eText are connected to roster information. This provides potential for connecting student identity data with a record of their course access and interaction, such as:
To access LEAD, you must be a Principal Instructor in your Canvas Course. Navigate to https://go.wisc.edu/LEAD. You will be able to log in by following the instructions on the screen.
Once inside LEAD you will have access to a home page and three visualization pages.
Please review the Official Data Definitions for the Learner Engagement Analytics Dashboard at the end of this document that provides an overview of LEAD. Those definitions explain what LEAD is and describe and define what data you can see in the visualizations.
Using the Grades by Page Views tab, the scatter plot visualization plots two different measures for each student -- their grade and their number of Page Views, representing each student with a dot. The dot’s placement on the X (horizontal) axis is based on the number of Page Views, students with fewer page views will be plotted toward the left. The placement on the Y (vertical) axis is based on their grade in the Canvas gradebook, students with lower grades will be plotted toward the bottom.
You can use LEAD's Grades by Page Views tab for quick visual analyses to look at general patterns of students' grade ranges.
In this example, the threshold of interest is a grade of 70 or below. The visualization shows approximately eleven students with grades in this range.
Hovering your cursor over the dot will reveal a window with the student name, and values of Page Views and grade.
Consider what student engagement looks like in your course, and what indicators you look for in addition to online access. For example, you may consider quality of work, interactions with classmates, types of questions and comments made.
Wise, Alyssa Friend, and Yeonji Jung. "Teaching with analytics: Towards a situated model of instructional decision-making." Journal of Learning Analytics 6.2 (2019): 53-69.
Data may report that a student has logged in, and accessed a course item, but cannot indicate how a student intellectually engaged with the course.