Course Reports

Under the Evaluation menu of the Blackboard Control Panel, instructors can select the Course Reports option to run various forms of reports that monitor student usage and activity within a course.  Different types of reports will allow instructors to tell how much time particular students have spent within a course, as well as which areas of the course they accessed (to some degree).  

Report Types

All descriptions below of report types were taken directly from the Blackboard Course Reports page with additional details taken from Blackboard Help's Course Reports page.

• All User Activity inside Content Areas:  displays a summary of all user activity inside Content Areas (any button on the course navigation menu that does not link only to a specific Blackboard tool) for the course

• Course Activity Overview:  displays overall activity within a single course, sorted by student and date; data includes the total and average time spent per user and the total amount of activity the user had in the course
  
  You can also run a report for Student Overview for Single Course by clicking on an individual student's name.  This report can help you determine which days of the week students are active in your course and see how much time overall students spend (taken from About Course Report Types).  

• Overall Summary of User Activity:  displays user activity for all areas of the course, as well as activity dates, times, and days of the week
  
  Use this report to view student access as well as how often course tools are used (taken from About Course Report Types).  

• Single Course User Participation Report:  displays detailed statistics on submissions (assignments, tests, discussions, blogs, journals) for all users in the course during a specified time frame; items need not be graded to be included in the report and are provided in an Excel spreadsheet (taken from About Course Report Types)

• Student Overview for Single Course:  displays an individual student's activity within a course, sorted by date; data includes total overall time the student spent in the course, as well as detailed information about the student's activity, such as which items and Content Areas the student accessed and the time spent on each
  
  Use this report to check a particular student's course activity (taken from About Course Report Types).  

• User Activity in Forums:  displays a summary of user activity in Discussion Board forums for the course; allows instructors to see which forums are used most

• User Activity in Groups:  displays a summary of user activity in Groups for the course; allows instructors to see how active students are in their groups

Generating a Report

1. From the Course Reports page, select the drop-down menu next to the type of report you wish to generate, and click Run.
2. Select report specifications on the Run Reports page.
• Format (PDF, HTML, Excel, Word)
• Start and End Dates
• Students/Users (to select multiple students/users, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on each name)
3. Click Submit.
• PDF and HTML formats will open in a new window
• Excel and Word formats prompt you to save the file first
4. Select one of the following tasks once the report has run:
• Download Report  (to save it to the Downloads folder on your computer)
• Run a New Report  (to enter different criteria or run a different report type)
5. Click OK.

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Contact the Teaching & Learning Center at any time with questions about Blackboard's Course Reports.

In the following posts this month, we'll cover the additional areas of the Evaluation menu: Performance Dashboard and Retention Center.