The Student Overview provides a single place to access relevant student information and personalize messages to improve participation and engagement in Learn Ultra. With Analytics, you can view and message students based on course activity and take advantage of question analysis statistics to evaluate assessment quality, individual questions, and overall performance.
🏴This information applies only to Blackboard Learn Ultra.
Student Overview allows you to track student activity including progress, notes, grades, accommodations, and message students to personalize your interactions.
Analytics allows you to track course activity, receive alerts when overall grades fall below your specification and message students who are falling behind.
Student Overview
You can access the Student Overview from five locations in Learn Ultra:
- Gradebook on the Students tab
- Roster
- Messages
- Discussions
- Table view of the Course Activity report
At any access point, select a student's name to bring up the Student Overview.
The Student Overview header includes important information about your student:
- Date a student last accessed your course
- Overall grade, if enabled
- Accommodations, if added
The Student Overview also has additional information, if a student has provided any:
- Additional name
- Phonetic pronunciation
- Recorded pronunciation
Three additional features can be accessed from the Student Overview:
- Student Activity: Overview of how a student is interacting with your course, observe how participation and engagement change from week-to-week.
- Accommodations: Provide due date and time limit accommodations for specific students.
- Send Message: Contact your students about their grades or progress in your course.
Grades
There are five columns in the Grades tab: Item Name, Due Date, Status, Grade, and Feedback. Each column can be sorted in ascending or descending order. Select the ellipsis icon to exempt any item from being graded for that specific student.
Select anywhere in the row to bring up a student's submission or participation for each item. You can grade or review the item from this panel. Different items will have different options.
Progress
The Progress tab displays item names and statuses. By default, the tab only displays content visible to students. You can change the filter to show all content by using the Content availability menu at the top of the tab and selecting All.
There are four statuses:
- Unopened
- Started
- Completed
- Marked complete
Notes
The Notes feature allows you to log notes for yourself and other instructors in the course about your students. Notes have many uses for informing your teaching and interaction with students:
- Track the evolution of a student over time and leave useful notes on their progress
- Write down agreements with a student, such as an extension on an assignment or a meeting
- Note students with behavioral issues or a history of academic dishonesty
- Record considerations for grading, such as a student having difficulties at home or who's taken medical leave
From the Notes tab, you can review older notes or add a new note. The most recent notes appear at the top of the list. Select within the Add a note field to create a note.
The text editor has several options for formatting. For instance, you can bold or italicize text, change colors, apply styles, and adjust font size.
Select the Save button to save your note. Each note has the author of the note and a timestamp with its creation date. You can return to older notes to edit or delete them by selecting the ellipsis icon. Other instructors can’t edit your notes. If a note is edited, there is a separate timestamp for the latest edition.
Student Activity
You can view a student’s hours in course and changes in overall grade from week to week. The report makes it easy to see when a student’s hours in course drops or if a student begins to earn lower grades. You can use the report to guide and inform your instruction in many ways.
- Identify struggling students, students who are improving over time, or students whose grades start trending downwards
- Message students who are falling behind with encouragement and advice
- Congratulate students performing well in your course and ask them to be mentors
- Set up an appointment with all students in the course to follow-up on strategies to improve student performance and activity
- Download the report's table view as a CSV (comma-separated values) file to analyze the data with other tools
- Download the report's line chart as a PDF or image to share information with other instructors or mentors of the course
Select the Student Activity icon in the Student Overview.
The table view of the Student Activity Details report has four columns: Date, Average hours in course, Range of average hours, and Activity hours. Data is presented in rows organized by week.
- Average hours in course are the average hours in a course spent by all students per week.
- Range of average hours are the average hours in a course spent by all students per week, plus or minus the standard deviation.
- Activity hours are the hours in a course accumulated by a student per week. Hours in course are counted from the time students select something within the course to when students select something outside the course. If a student is logged out from their course session for inactivity, only the time before their last action within the course is counted.
- Select the Download button to download the table as a CSV (comma-separated values) file.
The line chart provides you with a graphical representation of a student’s hours in course per week in comparison to other students in the course.
- The selected student’s activity displays in purple and average course activity is in gray. Select a dot to see exact dates and hours in course for a student or the course average.
- Activity per week are the hours in a course accumulated by a student per week. Hours in course are counted from the time students select something within the course to when students select something outside the course. If a student is logged out from their course session for inactivity, only the time before their last action within the course is counted.
- Zoom in or out by selecting the + and – icons at the top right.
- Select the Download button to download the line chart as an image or PDF file.
Overall Grade
The table view has four columns: Date, Average grade in course, Range of average grade, and Overall Grade. Data is presented in rows organized by week.
- Average grade in course is the average overall grade for all students in a course per week.
- Range of average grade is the average overall grade for all students in a course per week, plus or minus the standard deviation.
- Overall Grade is the overall grade of a student in the course per week.
- Select the Download button to download the table as a CSV (comma-separated values) file.
The line chart provides you with a graphical representation of a student’s overall grade over time in comparison to other students in the course.
- The student’s overall grade displays in purple, and the course average overall grade is in gray.
- Select a dot to see exact dates and overall grades for a student or the course average.
- Zoom in or out by selecting the + and – icons at the top right.
- Select the Download button to download the line chart as an image or PDF file.
Coming Soon:
- Time Spent: Detail about frequency of access and duration of engagement
- Transcript: View interactions and communication with each student
Analytics
Standard analytics include course activity, alert settings, and question analysis.
Course Activity
Select Course Activity in the course's Analytics tab.
You can also access the report in the Grades section of the base navigation. Click the pie chart icon next to a course.
After students have interacted with the course and the report has data to display, you can use the table view.
You might see the table differently depending on settings, student activity in the course, and the data gathered in the course. The table has four columns:
- Student: Student's first and last name. Additional student information is shown if available: accommodations, additional name, name pronunciation recording, pronunciation description, pronouns, and Student ID.
- Overall Grade: A student's overall grade in the course. If the overall grade column is not turned on or if there is no graded material, this column won't display information. This column is updated every 24 hours in the early morning, so the overall grade in the report might not match what is currently in the Gradebook.
- Hours in Course: Number of hours a student has been active in your course. Hours in course are counted from the time students select something within the course to when students select something outside the course. If a student is logged out from their course session, only the time before their last action within the course is counted. This column is updated every 24 hours in the early morning.
- Days of Inactivity: Counts the days since a student last accessed a course. Each time a student accesses the course, the count of days of inactivity changes to 0.
Table Options
- You can choose students and send them messages by selecting the Send message icon. When you send a message to multiple students, each student will receive an individual message and will not know which other students were included.
- Select the Download button to download the table as a CSV. The exported file contains the following columns:
- Last Name
- First Name
- Username
- Student ID
- Overall Grade
- Hours in Course
- Days of Inactivity
- Last Access Date
- Select a student on the table to bring up the Student Overview to check the student’s additional information, grades, progress, and more. Visit the "Student Overview" topic for more information.
Scatter Plot
The scatter plot's Y Axis represents the students' overall grades and the X Axis represents the students' number of hours in the course. You have a broad view of your students' performance in relation to each other and their activity levels. The data shown is updated every 24 hours in the early morning.
Each dot represents a student. Students who spend more hours in the course tend to have higher grades. You can:
- Zoom in or out by selecting the + and – icons at the top right. To focus on a specific region, select somewhere on the chart and drag to zoom in.
- Identify visually odd trends, such as students with low grades who are spending a lot of time in the course or high performing students.
- Select a dot to display the student's name, overall grade, hours in course, and days of inactivity. Hours in course are counted from the time students select something within the course to when students select something outside the course. If a student is logged out from their course session, only the time before their last action within the course is counted.
- Select View Details to bring up the student's activity details report to check the student's progress on a weekly basis. Visit the "Student Activity Details Report" topic for more information.
- Select the Download button to download the scatter plot as a PDF or image file. The scatter plot can be shared with other instructors, academic staff, or mentors of the class.
Alert Settings
You can customize your alerts to fit your teaching style on the Course Activity report:
- Go to Alert Settings on the Course Activity report. Open this panel by selecting the Alert Settings icon at the top of the report.
- Adjust alerts in the Student Performance section of the Gradebook settings. Open the settings panel by selecting the gear icon at the top of the Gradebook.
You'll receive activity stream notifications based on your settings:
- If a student hasn't accessed the course in a certain number of days
- When a student's Overall Grade drops below a certain percentage
Alerts are set to 5 days of student inactivity by default, but you can adjust alerts for each course. There is no default setting for grade percentage.
Select the notification on the activity stream to highlight the students with alerts in the scatter plot on the Course Activity report.
Students with alerts are highlighted in purple in the scatter plot.
You can turn other kinds of notifications off or on in your activity stream settings. Check or uncheck the boxes under Performance alerts to adjust the alerts related the course activity report. The checkbox to the left of Performance alerts applies your settings to all notifications. Open this panel by selecting the gear icon at the top of the activity stream page.
Performance alerts include:
- If activity data is available, identify those who are participating or may need help
- If grade data is available, compare grades with activity levels
- Number falling behind
- Number falling behind and absent
- Number falling behind and failing
- Number falling behind, absent, and failing
Question Analysis
Question analysis provides statistics on overall performance, assessment quality, and individual questions. This data helps you recognize questions that might be poor discriminators of student performance. Question analysis is for assessments with questions. You can run a report before all submissions are in if you want to check the quality of your questions and make changes.
You can run and access a previous question analysis report from these course areas:
- Course Content page > assessment's menu
- Course Analytics page > Question Analysis tab—if your institution has enabled analytics
- Gradebook, list or grid view
On the Course Content page, access an assessment's menu and select Question Analysis. You can also select the Analytics icon on the navigation bar.
You can also run a question analysis report from the gradebook in grid or list view. Access an assessment's menu and select Question Analysis.
The Question Analysis page is only accessible from the navigation bar > Analytics > Course Analytics page > Question Analysis tab.
You can run a report on an assessment with submissions and no questions, but you'll receive a report with no usable information.
You'll receive a message that the question analysis report is in process and an email when the report is complete. You can leave the page to work in other areas of your course and return later to see if the report is ready.
Each assessment in your course appears with one of these statuses:
- Report in progress
- Completed on {date}
- Data no longer up to date: Assessment now has more submissions to analyze.
- Not enough data: No submissions exist. Run Report is disabled.
- No questions in the assessment: Assessment has no questions or submissions. Run Report is disabled.
- No status listed: Assessment has questions and submissions, but you've run no report. Run Report is enabled.
- Error: Run
View the question analysis assessment summary
After you run a report, you can view overall summary information and details about each question. Select the assessment on the Question Analysis page to view the summary.
Only submitted attempts are used in calculations. When attempts are in progress, those attempts are ignored until they're submitted and you run the analysis report again. Automatic zeros assigned for late work aren't included in calculations.
- Summary of statistics for the individual assessment:
- Average score: The score shown is the average score reported for the assessment in the gradebook. The average score can change if more attempts are submitted and graded.
- Possible questions: The total number of questions in the assessment.
- Completed attempts: The number of submitted assessments.
- Average time spent: The average completion time for all submitted attempts.
- Rerun a report or edit the assessment to make a change to questions.
- Use the graphs to filter the table of questions. Make selections in both graphs to refine your search. If you make no selections, all the questions appear in the table at the bottom of the page.
- Discrimination: Indicates how well questions differentiate between students who know the subject matter and those who don’t.
- Shows the number of questions that fall into these categories:
- Good (greater than 0.3)
- Fair (between 0.1 and 0.3)
- Poor (less than 0.1) categories
- Can't calculate: A question's difficulty is 100% or all students received the same score on a question.
- Questions with discrimination values in the Good and Fair categories differentiate between students with higher and lower levels of knowledge.
- Questions in the Poor category are recommended for review.
- Difficulty: Percentage of students who answered the questions correctly
- Shows the number of questions that fall into these categories:
- Easy (greater than 80%)
- Medium (between 30% and 80%)
- Hard (less than 30%)
- Questions in the Easy or Hard categories are recommended for review.
- Select a heading to sort the questions. For example, sort the Review column so questions that need review appear first.
- Clear Filters: Clear the filters you selected in the graphs and display all questions in the table.
- Download the question analysis report
About the questions section in the assessment summary
The questions table provides analysis statistics for each question in the assessment. After you use the graphs to filter the questions table, you can view and sort the results.
In general, good questions fall in these categories:
- Medium (30% to 80%) difficulty
- Good or Fair (greater than 0.1) discrimination values
In general, questions recommended for review fall in these categories. They may be of low quality or scored incorrectly.
- Easy ( > 80%) or Hard ( < 30%) difficulty
- Poor ( < 0.1) discrimination values
To investigate a specific question, select the title and review the question details.
Information for each question appears in the table:
- Needs review: Triggered when discrimination values are less than 0.1. Also, when difficulty values are either greater than 80% (the question was too easy) or less than 30% (the question was too hard). Review the question to determine if it needs revision.
- Question Modified: Displays Yes if you run a report, then change part of a question, and rerun the report. Yes also appears if you copied the question from another assessment when you created the assessment.
- Discrimination: Indicates how well a question differentiates between students who know the subject matter and those who don't. A question is a good discriminator when students who answer the question correctly also do well on the assessment. Values can range from -1.0 to +1.0. A question is flagged for review if its discrimination value is less than 0.1 or negative. Discrimination values can't be calculated when the question's difficulty score is 100% or when all students receive the same score on a question.
If Yes appears in the Question Modified column for a question, the Yes doesn't carry over when you archive and restore the course.
Discrimination values are calculated with the Pearson correlation coefficient. X represents the scores of each student on a question and Y represents the scores of each student on the assessment.
These variables are the standard score, sample mean, and sample standard deviation, respectively:
- Difficulty: The percentage of students who answered the question correctly. The difficulty percentage is listed along with its category: Easy (greater than 80%), Medium (30% to 80%), and Hard (less than 30%). Difficulty values can range from 0% to 100%. A high percentage indicates the question was easy. Questions in the easy or hard categories are flagged for review.
- Graded Attempts: Number of question attempts where grading is complete. Higher numbers of graded attempt produce more reliable calculated statistics.
- Average Score: The score that appears is the average score reported for the assessment in the gradebook. The average score might change after all attempts are graded.
Difficulty levels that are slightly higher than midway between chance and perfect scores do a better job differentiating students who know the tested material from those who don't. High difficulty values don't assure high levels of discrimination.
View details for a single question
You can investigate questions flagged for your review and view student performance. From the Question Analysis questions table, select a linked question title to access the question's summary.
- After you access a question, use the question title's menu to access any question in the assessment. You can navigate to other questions sequentially on either side of the page.
- The summary table displays statistics for the question.
- Select Edit Assessment to access the assessment and make changes.
- The question text and answer choices appear. You can see how many students chose each answer choice or the percentage answered correctly. For example, for a Matching question, you see what percentage of students matched the pairs correctly. Only the question text appears for Essay questions.
About multiple attempts, question overrides, and question edits
The analysis handles some common scenarios in these ways:
- When students take an assessment multiple times, the last submitted attempt is used as the input for the analysis. As soon as a student submits another attempt, subsequent analyses will include that newest attempt.
- Gradebook overrides don't impact the analysis data because the analysis generates statistical data for questions based on completed student attempts.
- When you make changes to a question or manually grade questions, you must run the analysis again to see if the changes affect the data.
Examples
Question analysis can help you improve questions for future assessment administrations. You can also fix misleading or ambiguous questions in a current assessment.
- In a Multiple Choice question, an equal number of students chose A, B, and C. Examine the answer choices to determine if they're ambiguous, if the question is too difficult, or if the material wasn't covered.
- A question is recommended for review because it falls into the hard difficulty category. You determine the question is hard, but you keep it to adequately evaluate your course objectives.
- A Multiple Choice question is flagged for your review. More Top 25% students chose answer B, but A is the correct answer. You realize you didn't choose the correct answer when you created the question. You edit the assessment question and it's automatically regraded.
Analytics for Learn reports
Analytics for Learn extracts data from Blackboard Learn, transforms it, and brings it into an analytics framework where it's combined with data from the student information system.
- Course at-a-Glance: Interactions, submissions, and time in course compared to similar courses in your department.
- Activity and Grade Scatter Plot: A scatter plot of your course activity and your grades in the course.
- Activity Matrix: This report compares each student's number of submissions to the average across all students in that course. The report includes a graph of submission trends over the entire term, number of submissions, the average number of submissions in the course, days since the student's last submission, and last submission type.
- Course Submission Summary Report: Submission information for each student including assignments, tests, surveys, and graded discussions, blogs, journals, and wikis.
- Activity Compared to Others (student only): Students can select this option to view their activity compared to others in their course. Information includes the number of submissions and time spent in course in Learn.
