Hard Learned e-Enterprise Course Pointers

Course statistics

E-Enterprise courses enable you to review learner access within the course, both as a group and individually. The ability to access individual learner use of an area, such as the discussion board, is helpful if you are trying to assign grades based not only on what the learner wrote on the discussion board but also how much time they spent in the online course site. While the time spent on the site may not necessarily mean the learner was actively involved, it can prove helpful in some cases as part of the data you use to make decisions. You can identify a student with very little time on the course site and minimal contributions on the discussion board and encouraged him or her to be more actively involved. Thus the statistics can help you identify learners who need to spend more time on the course. A key to making the statistics useful is to clear course statistics after each course offering. Otherwise the report is voluminous, and difficult to access and interpret.

To access course statistics in Blackboard, first go to the control panel and click on Course Statistics under Assessment. Be patient since this information can take 5 minutes or more to load. Figure 4 shows the initial course statistics screen that provides multiple options including an overall course summary, content areas report, or reports for communications, group, or learner areas.

Figure 4 The course statistics screen in Blackboard.

Figure 5 shows the selected areas for reporting and the option to refresh the data. Refreshing the data provides the latest statistics on the course rather than the statistics retrieved when last accessed. Figure 6 shows a pie chart that Blackboard creates when you request an overall course summary reflecting learner use of the various areas.

Figure 5 The Select Users and Options screen.

Figure 6 A pie chart showing the overall course summary.

Scrolling down the report shows individual learner use of each area followed by the bar chart report on access by time of day shown in Figure 7. The bars on the far left indicate early morning access beginning at midnight, and overall the bars and hit information show the most common access time is 4550 hits at 2100, or 9 pm. Scrolling down beyond the bar chart shows individual learner access by time of day so you can see who the early morning users are and who accesses at other times. The total number of individual learner hits is also reported.

Figure 7 Bar charts show learner access by time of day.

Figure 8 shows the hits by day of the week in a bar chart. Monday is the day when most of the accesses take place, followed by Sunday, and then Tuesday through Saturday in order. Right after this information you can view individual learner use by weekday by scrolling down further. Then Blackboard summarizes hits by learner. You can see who had the most hits within the class and who had the least as well as all other hit percentages. Figure 9 shows this information (with real learner names deleted). This useful information enables you to judge learner use of the e-Enterprise course site.

Figure 8 Blackboard provides a bar chart to show hits by day of the week.

Figure 9 You can generate a report in Blackboard to identify how learners used the course site.

Using course statistics

The course statistics in these figures provide you with some interesting insights into the group of learners. Figure 6 shows that the site that students accessed the most was the group area, which includes the discussion board. The next highest usage was the content areas which include course documents like the syllabus, schedule, study guides, and posted PowerPoint presentations. The communication area includes a place to send emails to individuals enrolled in the course, and to the instructor as well as the digital drop box. The student area is where students access course tools to check their grades and also includes resources like a dictionary and thesaurus. Figure 7 provides additional insights into use patterns.

Course statistics provide valuable course site use information on the entire class as well as individual learners. These statistics can be useful in planning course activities, like a synchronous online chat or live guest speaker in the virtual classroom, at a time when most learners are available. The statistics include access by day of the week and hour of the day. Our course users, a group of 22 employed registered nurses enrolled in a baccalaureate program, accessed the course site a total of 51,970 times within one semester, most often on Mondays with 13,126 hits.

Beyond simply highlighting that 9 pm is the time of greatest access, further examination shows that 56.96% of the course access occurs during normal work hours — 8 am to 5 pm, and 35% of the course access occurred between 6 pm and 11 pm. The time of greatest course use was 9 pm when 8.75% of course accesses occurred. The second most common time of access was 4 pm (7.70%), the third most common was 3 pm (7.42%), and the fourth most common was 8 pm (6.66%).

Combining this information with the accesses per day of week, Figure 8, provides further information indicating the three days in rank order of most access are Monday, Sunday, and Tuesday. This data is useful in planning online office hours, synchronous chats, and other activities that you want to occur at times when most learners typically access the course. While a quick survey of students might also serve to gather availability information useful in planning course activities based upon learner access, the course use statistics are helpful in gathering data and course planning when surveys are not feasible, such as in advance of enrollments for the next course session.

Summary

More than half of all institutions of higher education in the U.S. offer distance education. Movement from classroom instruction to distance methodologies is often associated with on-the-job, trial-and-error training. It is helpful to keep in mind the principles of good teaching practice which involve good communication between you and your learners.

Our experiences using the e-Enterprise Blackboard format have helped us learn to manage the varied components of online teaching while maintaining good communication with our learners and managing our time wisely. Emails can be useful for communication in a variety of ways. However, we recommend reducing email volume by using online course announcements and discussion board forums.

Routinely entering the online course site and viewing the site from the student vantage, before clicking on the control panel access, helps you see the course as students see it. Then you can recognize situations in which some items are not visible to students and correct these before you receive a deluge of emails about them.

The grade book provides learners with prompt access to their grades so they can see where they are as the course progresses. At the same time, for instructors, the course statistics feature is a helpful source of data on the group and on individual students. The statistics can help you recognize the days and times of most frequent student access and you can use this information in planning your office hours, and other activities, that you want to occur at a time when most students are generally available.

The course statistics can also help you see individual student online access to the course site, and you can applaud or counsel based upon the information.

References

Chickering, A.W. & Gamson Z.F. (1991). Applying the seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. New Directions in Teaching and Learning. Number 47, Fall, San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Chickering, A. & Ehrmann, S. (1996). Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever. AAHE Bulletin, 3-6.

Egan, M.W., Sebastian, J., & Welch, M. (1991, March). Effective television teaching: Perceptions of those who count most — distance learners. Proceedings of the Rural Education Symposium, Nashville, TN. (ED 342 579) retrieved September 13, 2004 at http://www.uidaho.edu/eo/dist9.html

Hendricks, J. (2005). The little red cyber schoolhouse. Current Issues in Education, 8(1), Retrieved August 3, 2005 at: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number1/

Sloan Consortium. (2002). The Pillar Reference Quick Guide. Retrieved July 30, 2005 at http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/freedownloads.asp.

Terrell, S. R. (2005). Supporting different learning styles in an online learning environment: Does it really matter in the long run? Online Journal of Distance Learning Administrators, 8 (2). Retrieved August 3, 2005 at: http://www.westga.edu/%7Edistance/ojdla/summer82/terrell82.htm

U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education. Granting Postsecondary Institutions: 2000-2001, NCES 2003, Project Officer: Bernard Greene. Washington, DC: 2003.

Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications. (1997). Principles of Good Practice for Electronically Offered Academic Degree and Certificate Programs. Pub. 2A299. Available at http://www.wcet.info/projects/balancing/principles.asp (Editor's Note: As of January 25, 2010, this article appears to have been removed from the Web.)

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