Student engagement

In eReserve, Insights refers to real-time statistics, summarising students' reading list engagement and helping teaching staff identify:

• disengaged (and thus at-risk) students
• most- and least-used readings.

Insights are viewable within reading lists, and provide two levels of data:

• at the reading list level
• at the reading (i.e. within a specific reading list) level.

Insights: reading list

Reading list Insights are found in the top left-hand corner of the screen, just below the reading list name.

There are four Insights (from left to right):

• Total active students
• Student access
• Resources
• Engagement analytics.

Total active students

This element indicates how many students enrolled in the reading list's course offering have accessed at least one reading, via either the reading list or a reading embedded on a course page.

In the above screensnip, Insights indicates that 20 students have accessed at least one reading on this reading list.

This Insight can be useful in highlighting what proportion of enrolled students have accessed at least one reading. In the present example, if you have 100 students enrolled in this course offering, and only 20 have accessed a reading, and you're a third of the way through the study period, you may be concerned about the rate of engagement.

Student access

This element shows—at a glance—the total number of times readings on the list have been accessed.

If you select the 'at a glance' number, Insights breaks down this number by importance and kind: that is, to show how many of these access instances have been of required, recommended, file-based and link-based readings.

In this screensnip, Insights indicates that readings on this list have been accessed in 519 unique instances.

Furthermore, this screensnip indicates (for example):

• that 505 of these 519 accesses have been to link-based readings
• that students have accessed required readings on this list 496 times
• that in 482 of those 496 instances, the reading was a link-based reading.

Resources

This element shows—at a glance—the total number of readings on the reading list.

If you select the 'at a glance' number, Insights breaks down this number by importance: that is, to show how many of these readings you've classified as required or recommended.

In this screensnip, Insights indicates that there are 48 readings on this list.

Furthermore, this screensnip indicates that:

• 45 of the readings have been classified as required
• 3 of the readings have been classified as recommended.

This Insight can be useful in reminding you how many readings you're requiring your students to read: is it too many (or too few)?

Engagement analytics

Selecting this element gives a general idea of how engaged students are with how many readings on the list.

This engagement can be filtered by the readings' importance (i.e. readings classified as required or recommended).

In the following screensnip, the green, vertical bars indicate that (beginning at the left of the graph):

• one unique student has accessed only 1 of the 48 readings on this list
• two unique students have each accessed only 2 of the 48 readings
• one unique student has accessed only 4 of the 48 readings
• [...and so on, until we reach the last three green, vertical bars...]
• one unique student has accessed 16 of the 48 readings
• one unique student has accessed 24 of the 48 readings
• two unique students have each accessed 26 of the 48 readings.

Insights: readings

Reading Insights are found at the extreme right of each reading, adjacent to the reading's download or view button:

There are two Insights (from left to right):

• Unique student access
• Total number of accesses for the reading.

Unique student access

This element shows—at a glance—how many unique students enrolled in this course offering have accessed this reading at least once.

If you select the 'at a glance' number, a list will be displayed, showing all the students enrolled in this course offering who have accessed at least one reading on the list at least once. For each reading, it will display them in order of: number of accesses of that reading, from highest to lowest; and then alphabetically by surname.

In this screensnip:

• 13 students have accessed this reading at least once
• one of these 13 students has accessed the reading three times
• three of them have each accessed the reading twice
• nine have each accessed the reading once.

This Insight can be useful in helping you to identify patterns wherein certain students tend to have high or low engagement with their readings.

Sometimes the list of students will end with one or more student names shown as having 0 accesses; such students haven't accessed this reading, but have accessed other readings on the list.

You may also notice that one or more of your students don't appear in any Unique student access lists; this means that they haven't accessed any readings via either the reading list or readings embedded on the course site. However, please note that these (and other) students may have accessed one or more of their readings via other pathways (e.g. by using reading citations to search for and access readings via the Library Collection or Google Scholar).

Total number of accesses for the reading

This element shows how many times a reading has been accessed by students enrolled in this course offering.

The screensnip shown in the previous section indicates that this reading has been accessed 18 times altogether—which matches the totals noted when breaking down the Unique student access Insight: (1 x 3) + (3 x 2) + (9 x 1) = 18.

Reviewing this count in relation to the same count for other readings on the list can be a useful way for you to note, at a glance, which readings are most heavily accessed.

For example, in this screensnip:

• the first reading has been accessed 120 times
• the second has been accessed 69 times
• the third 12 times
• the fourth 10.

You can also access reading-related analytics via myUniSA > Teaching > my Courses; select the relevant course offering to open the Teaching Dashboard. Analytics can be found on the Students and Analytics (Classic) pages:

As with Academic Insights, this data helpfully summarises students' reading list engagement, helping teaching staff identify:

• disengaged (and thus at-risk) students
• most- and least-used readings.

Students

On the Students page, students enrolled in this course offering will be listed in order of Student Id, but you can reorder the table via any of the column headings; refer to the Total eReading Views column to see each student's overall readings engagement.

When viewing the various Students reports, keep an eye out for the Download button, located near the top right-hand corner of the display:

You can use this button to download the displayed data as a .csv file; this file can be opened in Excel for more granular data analysis beyond what's possible via the 'at a glance' data presented within the Teaching Dashboard (and described below).

In the following screensnip, you can see—at a glance—that the student represented by the first row has accessed readings a total of 33 times:

If you would like to see a breakdown of these 33 views, select the pop-out icon in that cell:

This will open an Individual eReading Views report, showing views by that student for each reading on the course list. In the following screensnip, the report shows that this student:

• has accessed the reading in the first row (pp. 1–12 of On Becoming a Counsellor) once
• has not accessed the reading in the fourth row (pp. 26–31 of Acceptance and Commitment Training in the Workplace)
• has accessed the reading in the seventh row (pp. 1–23 of Trauma-Informed Care and Health Among LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence Survivors) twice.

You might find it useful to sort this report alphabetically by eReading Item or in descending order by Views.

(Note: Sorting alphabetically by eReading Item sometimes displays multiple results for each reading, whether in the Individual eReading Views report (above) or by using the eReading Item drop-down menu in the Course eReading Views report (below). Upon request, Learning and Teaching Systems staff can apply a fix to remove these duplicates; please submit such requests via the learnOnline Help Desk.)

You can also use the pop-out icon next to the column header...

...to open the Course eReading Views report:

By default, this shows the total number of times (Total Views) each student has accessed readings on the course reading list; the table is sorted alphabetically by surname. In the screensnip above, the report shows that:

• the first student hasn't accessed any readings
• the second student has accessed one or more readings a total of four times
• the fourth student has accessed one or more readings a total of 34 times.

You can also use the eReading Item drop-down menu to select and report upon each student's access count for specific readings:

Analytics (Classic)

On the Analytics (Classic) page, under the Reading List Reports heading, the Select Report drop-down menu allows you to select from three options:

• eReading Item Views
• Student eReading Views (Chart)
• Student eReading Views (Tabular)

eReading Item Views

This report lists, in alphabetical order, each reading (eReading Item) on the reading list for the course offering. For each reading, the Total Views shows—at a glance—how many times your students have accessed the reading, either via the reading list or the reading embedded on a course page. You can select these two column headings to sort the order in which the report presents its data—as in the following screensnip, where the report has been sorted by Total Views, in descending order:

This screensnip shows—at a glance—that the first reading ('Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy') has been accessed 109 times by one or more students in the course.

(Note: Sorting alphabetically by eReading Item sometimes displays multiple results for each reading. Upon request, Learning and Teaching Systems staff can apply a fix to remove these duplicates; please submit such requests via the learnOnline Help Desk.)

You can see how exactly these 109 accesses are broken down by student, by selecting either Chart or Tabular in the View Detail column.

Here is the Chart representation of the access data for this reading:

By default, the y axis orders the students alphabetically (by first name); but you can use the Sort drop-down menu to also order the data by Highest Views and Lowest Views. In this screensnip:

• the first student hasn't accessed the reading at all
• the second student has accessed the reading six times
• the third has accessed the reading four times
• and so on, down to the last student, who has accessed the reading once.

Here is part of the Tabular representation of the same data for the same reading, presented in the same order:

Student eReading Views (Chart and Tabular)

This report represents data in the same way as the eReading Item Views (above), but for all readings on the reading list, rather than for a single reading.

Here is the Chart representation of this data:

By default, the y axis orders the students alphabetically (by first name); but you can use the Sort drop-down menu to also order the data by Highest Views and Lowest Views. In this screensnip:

• the first student hasn't accessed any readings at all
• the second student has accessed one or more readings a total of 42 times
• the third has accessed one or more readings a total of five times
• and so on, down to the last student, who has accessed one or more readings a total of eleven times.

Here is part of the Tabular representation of the same data for the same reading list, presented in the same order:

To see how your reading list appears to students, use the Student View menu button:

Return to the teacher view with the List Management menu button:

What counts as an access?

An access is counted any time a student selects a reading to view or download its full-text—whether that opens the link associated with the reading or prompts a download of the file associated with the reading.

Keep in mind, therefore:

• An access is counted even if the link is broken (i.e. if it leads to somewhere other than the intended reading).
• An access of a reading doesn't indicate that a student has actually read, watched or listened to the reading.

Are there instructions for students on how to view and engage with their readings?

Instructions for students are available on Ask the Library: Where can I find my course readings?

Can students copy the reading citation and use it in their assignment?

Yes. However, students should check that the style is correct and contains all the required citation data.

If students export the reading list, will the notes on each reading be included?

No. Exported reading lists only contain the citation data.

Can students view their own analytics related to their reading engagement?

No. They can, however, filter their reading lists to show which readings they have or haven't opened: