Unit at a Glance reports while Analytics is said to be "broken"
Could someone please let me know whether the data I've drawn from Bb - unit at a glance reports for "minutes", "interactions" and "accesses" data - is likely to be accurate, if my institution is being told by Bb our Analytics is broken, please? (Bb hosts our Bb). The first reports I tried to run were empty and there are discrepancies between school averages depending on the day I ran the reports, but no one can tell me whether the data I eventually managed to get can be relied on as accurate. My IT service desk has told me repeatedly they've asked Bb the question, but after 10 weeks I still don't have an answer. I would really appreciate your assistance with this.
Just noting for the sake of closing the loop on this that John Porter has responded to this question in a different group here >> Analytics reports when Analytics isn't working? Thanks to Ian Holder and Toni Pennacchia for their helpful guidance here!
Fiona Thurn - Welcome to the Blackboard Analytics Community! I look forward to hearing you share how you are successfully using Analytics for Learn to support your faculty and students.
Hello to Sydney from Albury.
What does it mean that you've been told by Bb that your analytics are broken? If Bb are telling you this, I'd be following up with your SDM -- and not trusting the data. We had an issue where our reports were blank one day; some technology issue which was fixed and all went back to normal. If I were you I'd be tempted not to rely on the data you got, check with your SDM where things are at, and once you are told it is fixed get the data again.
I do know there was an issue with minutes, with long lasting sessions containing gaps between activity: Hotfix #146 solves this issue for new data and Bb can apply it on old data if you notice a problem (in our case we had ridiculously high numbers...too high for anyone...students would've needed to be online 20 hours a day for 7 weeks).
Thanks for responding. Our local IT service desk told me our Analytics is broken. I've been a bit hamstrung not being able to deal directly with Bb, as I've had that sort of access in the past at other institutions. I don't trust the data I have now. It's generally a bit suss; things like reports from the current session being absurdly close in numbers to reports from a previous session with too many changed variables for that to be even a remote possibility. Problem is I need to write a report. Can't write the report without data I trust. That's why I'm banging around here hoping for things to move along.
I'm not sure about our installation - I'm in a school away from LMS admin. I know we don't run anything like the current release in order to make sure people have found most of the bugs and fixed them before they update. Good to know there's a hot fix though. I haven't had reports with your sort of inflated numbers though. So maybe they've already sorted that one out.
I know the feeling of going from all access to no access: it is frustrating! I hope those who can talk to Bb take up your case asap. I know what it's like trying to get another department to act on your behalf too. My manager gave in to my cries for Behind the Blackboard access and took up the case; if you haven't tried that it may be one way to go -- especially if you are working on analytics which is all I do. But perhaps institution roles/rules will take precedence.
1 question: do you have access to Pyramid, or only your A4L reports? I ask as you could look up some of the total figures in Pyramid to see what is coming through, unfiltered by report logic, and that may either give you confidence, or prove to you something is going wrong. When we were testing our integrated A4L reports I used Pyramid as a comparison point to make sure the report logic was sound.
My best wishes for a speedy resolution. Good news you have no students on 80,000 minutes of access!