Desire2Learn > D2L Essentials > Monitoring Student Progress

Monitoring Student Progress

• Which questions from my latest quiz were the most difficult for my students?
• When was the last time Student X accessed my course?
• How frequently has Student X been accessing the course compared to other students?
• Which students have been most and least active on this week's discussion topic?

Best Practices

1. Go to Course Admin > Class Progress for an in-depth view of each student's participation and performance.

The Class Progress feature provides a centralized way to access detailed statistics for a variety of items including Quizzes, Discussions, Assignment folders, and Grades.

2. Use the Classlist to find the last time a student accessed the course.

Within the Classlist, you'll find a column titled "Last Accessed." This column shows the last time each student accessed your course (not just D2L in general). You can also click the Last Accessed header to sort the Classlist by the time and date when each student last checked the course. This can be very helpful at the start of the term for identifying and reaching out to students who haven't yet accessed the course. You should also consider checking student login statistics periodically throughout the term to identify students who might be falling behind.

3. Use the Statistics link near the top of the Quizzes and Discussions areas to view detailed statistics for those tools.

The Quiz statistics section includes color-coded charts for each quiz so you can see class averages and quickly identify questions that received the highest number of incorrect answers. The Discussions statistics section includes a snapshot of overall discussion participation as well as the number of original posts and replies completed by each student on a particular topic.

Guides and Tutorials

• Checking Class Progress in D2L - This guide explains how to access and navigate the detailed statistics available under Course Admin > Class Progress.
• Classlist Overview - This page covers several Classlist features, including how to email students, how to view the last login date, and how to view detailed class progress stats for a specific student.
• Viewing Quiz Statistics - This page explains how to access an overall view of class participation on a quiz as well as specific data related to grade distribution among both users and questions.
• Viewing Discussion Statistics - This guide covers how to view discussion board participation using a view of the whole class or specific student engagement in forums or topics.

Using Completion Tracking

One of D2L's most popular features is the ability for students to "check off" items in the Content area as they are completed. This feature is referred to as completion tracking. When you enable completion tracking, students will see a progress bar for each module in the course and know, at a glance, exactly how much they've finished and what remains to be done. In addition, when students check off all of the items in a module, a check-mark icon will appear next to that module in the Content area navigation. This makes it easier for students to remember which units they've completed and pick up where they last left off.

Best Practices

1. Set all items to "manual" completion tracking by default.

It's possible to set the completion tracking for all items at once using the settings link under Content > Table of Contents. (For more detailed instructions on this, see the guides and tutorials section.) The manual completion setting is an ideal default setting because it gives students control over when an item is marked as completed.

2. Avoid automatic tracking unless you're sure you need it.

There are typically only three situations when you might want to use automatic completion tracking:

1. to mark a Quiz as complete after a student has attempted it once,
2. to mark an Assignment folder as complete as soon as a student uploads a file, or
3. to mark a Discussion as complete as soon as a student completes his or her first post in that topic.

In these scenarios, you can expect D2L to reliably mark these items as complete when the students have completed these corresponding actions. However, keep in mind that many faculty prefer to set all items (including Quizzes, Discussions, and Assignments) to be manually checked off by students. This ensures items aren't marked as complete prematurely and avoids confusion.

3. Use the "not required" setting for optional content and assignments.

If you set all of your Content items to be tracked in some way, make sure to review each module and mark any optional items as not required. This will make it clearer to students which readings, videos, assignments, etc. are optional and allow an entire module to be marked as complete once all of its essential tasks are completed.