D2L: Accessing Logs & Reports

Introduction

NOTE: any names/grades seen on this page are from faux students; the grades are not real.

In D2L, you can access reports on modules and content, which can tell you roughly how many times students have accessed a particular topic or assignment and give a rough estimate for how long students accessed the topic. You can also get access log information for quizzes, both general and detailed, which can include information like when a quiz was started, when questions were auto-saved after being answered, and when a quiz was finished. Finally, you can create detailed reports based on specific quizzes, which can help you see score distribution for a quiz and answers to questions. This type of information can be helpful to see if a question (or answer) should be re-worded or if certain topics need to be covered in greater depth.

Reports for Modules & Content

The reports you get from the Modules and Content can be useful if you are concerned that a student or students are not fully interacting with your course. These types of reports can show you specifics, like how many students have interacted with a module or content within a module. It can even be broken down so you can view specific students. Please note however that when D2L suggests a student or students spent time viewing or interacting with a topic, it is at best a very rough estimate. There are a myriad of things that can happen to prevent an accurate reading, including putting a computer/laptop to sleep, not signing out properly, students accessed outside content from D2L (like an external website or YouTube video), amongst other things. D2L will not properly report how much a student watched a video, or how much time they may have spent at a website you have linked in D2L.

1	Go to the Content Tab in D2L
2	Go to the Table of Contents, found in the upper left of this area.
3	Click on the gray button titled Related Tools
4	Click on View Reports
5	The Reports page defaults to showing you statistics for Content. Here, you can see how many users visited each content item in your modules and a rough estimate of the average time spent on these items. Here, Users Visited is probably more important than Average Time. The former is based on D2L user data, and so will accurately tell you how many students visited the topic at least once. But Average Time may be inaccurately long, if some students closed their browser or laptop lid without logging out. If it's very short, that may indicate a problem, although if the topic is a link to a Google Doc, or outside website, that may be appropriate.
6	You can click on the number in the column titled Users Visited to see a list of the students who have accessed content in your course and when they last accessed the item. Once you are done viewing this list, you can click on the Go Back button in the lower-left corner.
7	You can change the statistics you see from Content to Users to see a list of individual students. By clicking on their name, you will be sent to a page similar to the Content Statistics page from earlier. NOTE: if you see a question mark to the right of a time here, this usually means that D2L was unable to log the total amount of time spent on an item properly due to a system timeout (i.e., D2L signed them out or was unable to connect to the D2L server for some reason).

General Quiz Attempt Logs

Quiz attempt logs are useful to help determine when a student or students have accessed and/or submitted a quiz. These general attempt logs also give general information about what has happened in various attempts for a specific quiz.

1

Go to the Quizzes tab in your course.

2

Click on the drop-down arrow to the right of the quiz for which you are interested in seeing the attempts. Then choose Attempt Logs, which is usually the last item in the menu.

3

This will send you to a page with a list of the following categories:Quiz Entry
Quiz Completion
Quiz Attempt Deleted
Quiz Attempt Restored

4

Each one of these titles is also a link that will narrow down the list so that you are viewing the individual categories, rather than everything that happened.

Quiz Entry tells you when a Student started a quiz	Quiz Attempt Restored tells you when a quiz attempt was restored
Quiz Attempt Deleted tells you when a quiz was deleted and gives you the option to restore it.	Quiz Completion tells you when a student has submitted a quiz

Detailed Quiz Attempt Logs

These types of attempt logs can be useful to help diagnose when and if an issue has occurred when an individual student is taking a quiz. They can also offer some basic clues on how that student completed the quiz. For example: In which order did they answer questions? How much of the available time did they spend completing the quiz?

1	Go to the Quizzes tab in D2L.
2	Click on the dropdown arrow to the right of the quiz that you are interested in and choose Grade from the dropdown menu.
3	You will be taken to the Grade Quiz Page. Here, you can see an overview of the number of attempts a student made, access those attempts to grade them, see when an attempt was completed and published/graded, and the score of the attempt. You can also see the highest attempt if there is more than one attempt. This is broken up by individual students.
4	By clicking on the Attempts tab, you will see a list of attempts organized by the students' first names. This will give you similar information from the previous page but in more of a condensed way.
5	You can see the attempt, the student's name, the completion of the attempt, their score (in points), their grade, and the status of the attempt (i.e., whether or not the attempt is published).
6a	If for some reason you need to reset an attempt, you can do this by selecting the checkbox to the left of the attempt and clicking on the blue trashcan with the title Reset. If you want to delete all attempts, you can do this by selecting the checkbox to the left of Attempt in the title area of the table and then selecting the trashcan.
6b	Back in the user's section, you can also delete attempts based on a user. Simply find the user you want to delete the attempts of and either select the checkbox to the left of their name to delete all of their attempts or simply select the attempt that you want to delete underneath their name. Then click on the blue trashcan with the title Reset in the upper left corner.
7	If you are interested in looking at more detailed information than the above gives you (i.e., Exact quiz entry, when the student accessed the Submission Confirmation screen, and the Quiz Completion, and more), first click on the attempt you want to view. The name of the attempt is actually a hyperlink.
8	When you click on it, you will be sent to the Grade Attempt page. Here, you can write feedback and/or grade the attempt.
9	What we are interested in though is the Quizzes Event log.
10	When we click on that, we can see: the student's name the name of the quiz How much time the student spent in the quiz. Unlike elsewhere in D2L, this duration is probably more useful. If a student submitted the quiz (clicked the final submit button), D2L can positively identify a closing time, and thus accurately record how long a student spent within the quiz. And the Event log, which includes: When the student started a quiz When a response to a question was saved When the student reached the submission screen When the quiz was completed When a quiz attempt was deleted And, if a quiz attempt was restored, when that took place as well.
11	To get back to the main page, simply close out of the event log.
12	Then, hit Back in the upper-left-hand corner of the page.
13	If you want, you can also export this information as a CSV or Excel Spreadsheet. You can also access the more general attempt logs (detailed more in the Access General Quiz Attempt Logs section) by clicking on the grey Attempt Logs button.

Creating Quiz Reports

This is the step-by-step process for setting up a Report for quizzes in D2L. Reports can be used to show the distribution of scores over various questions in a quiz as well as the class average, amongst other potentially useful information.

1	To create a Quiz Report, go to the Quizzes tab of D2L.
2	Click on the quiz for which you want a report.
3	Click on Reports Setup, far-right in the tabs that appear.
4	Click on the grey Add Reports button under the Reports title.
5	In the window that appears, you need to give your report a name first.
6	Further down, there are several report types to choose from and various options for each type. Shown here is the first report type, Question Statistics, and I have chosen to show all options available. There are also: Question Details, which can help you determine written responses and how similar written responses are User Statistics, including class average, score distribution, and so on Attempt Details for how long a student took on an attempt User attempts show how many attempts a user did on a quiz.
7	Scrolling a bit, you can also choose when to release a report; Immediately says to release as soon as a report is available. Or you can specify a date.
8	Finally, this is probably the most important step-- for some reason, D2L will not automatically release the report to you, as the instructor. You need to select the checkbox to the left of Instructor to ensure that you have access to the report. Optionally, you could make a report available to students in a class, too, if you have pedagogical reasons for students to see these statistics.
9	Hit the blue Save button in the lower-left corner of the window to save the report.
10	When you do, you will be sent to this screen. You can then add a new report or click on the name of the report to edit it. Or, if you choose, you can select the checkbox to the left of the report and click on the trashcan icon in the upper left, underneath Add Report.

Accessing Quiz Reports

The following steps for Accessing Quiz Reports assumes that you have already created a quiz report following the steps outlined in Creating Quiz Reports.

Quiz Reports can be exported as a CSV or Excel file. However, if you want a quick overview of various graphs and other data provided by your report, you can use the HTML feature to see various graphical representations of the data gathered by your report. You can also print this HTML view.

1	Go to the Quizzes section in your course.
2	To the right of the Quiz you want to get the report of, there is a dropdown arrow. Click on that and then select Reports from the menu that appears.
3	You will be sent to a window with an overview of the available reports. The title of the report is a hyperlink that you can click on to be taken to the report.
4	When you click on the title, you will be asked how you want to view the report. You can choose from CSV, Excel, or an HTML view. You can also choose which attempts to include in the report. We will generate an HTML view for now.
5	The report will give you a graphical analysis of the statistics you chose in the Creating Quiz Reports section. Once you are done viewing, you can choose in the upper-right to Export to CSV, Excel, or print it.

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