The ability to understand how students are engaging with their courses is a critical aspect of teaching, and the shift to virtual learning during the pandemic only amplified that challenge. What began as a request for more information in a large-enrollment course has grown into a new platform for instructors.   

“Around 1.2 million teaching and learning data flow in every day to the University of Iowa, offering valuable snapshots of student engagement and performance,” explains Jane Russell, director of Office of Teaching, Learning, and Technology (OTLT) Research and Analytics. “Despite this robust data, its potential to enhance teaching and learning has largely remained untapped. Course Activity Insights is designed to unlock and return these insights to our instructors.” 

Course Activity Insights, or CAI, is an analytics platform designed to help instructors make data-informed decisions about their teaching. By pulling data from technology tools used in a course (e.g., ICON, Zoom, Panopto, and online homework platforms), it provides instructors with a more comprehensive understanding of their students’ engagement across materials and tools. 

“We focused on engagement because that’s the unique aspect of this platform,” says Salim George, OTLT learning analytics specialist. “There are other ways instructors can learn more about students’ academic or demographic information.” 

Initially, Anna Smith, OTLT senior learning analytics specialist, developed each CAI manually on a course-by-course basis. But as word spread and more instructors requested it, the hours and resources required to develop them limited the growth. 

To create a platform that was more sustainable and readily available, OTLT connected with Dawn Moore, data scientist for the Administrative Information Systems (AIS) Data Analytics and Insights team, and Ross Miller, lead software developer for AIS.   

“I was building each one based on that instructor’s questions, interests, and ICON structure and had a script that ran every day to pull CSV files,” recalls Smith. “You can create five with this method but not 100. The collaboration with AIS was essential to making CAI available to campus.”  

AIS substantially enhanced the platform’s scalability by creating a comprehensive database capable of capturing information from multiple systems and technologies in near real time and developing mechanisms to process data, run complex scripts, and create a scheduling process. 

Developing a tool with instructor feedback 

As the team began piloting CAI, instructors expressed interest but indicated that remembering to visit a separate site was often a deterrent to consistent access. In response, AIS developed a learning tool integration, which allows users to access external applications inside ICON, so instructors could view CAI from their ICON course site, integrating it seamlessly into their workflow.   

 “This is one of the first integrations of this kind with PowerBI on campus, so seeing the solution we built appear as an integrated part of ICON is great,” says Moore.  

Another aspect to scaling CAI was moving toward a standardized set of metrics by diving into instructors’ questions to find commonalities. 

“I’m excited for instructors to see data in way that wasn’t developed by an entity who assumed what instructors wanted to know,” says Miller. “This platform is developed based on ideas and questions UI instructors actually had.” 

In its current iteration, CAI offers six main components:  

“We care that data is meaningful, and our goal is to create analytics tools that provide a deeper understanding of engagement, learners, and learning outcomes so instructors can make informed decisions about their teaching,” says Smith.  

Rebecca Laird, associate professor of instruction in chemistry, uses CAI in Organic Chemistry 1 to quickly understand her students, viewing top 10 majors, courses they’ve already taken, and course they’re co-enrolled in.   

“I use this information to find examples that can better match their contexts and demonstrate the connection between what students are learning in my course and their goals,” says Laird.  

She also uses CAI to gauge student engagement with ICON materials, especially prior to exams. If students are not accessing the necessary materials to prepare, she showcases them during class. Outside broadly understanding students’ engagement and adjusting her teaching in response, she can easily and quickly hone in on vital information when individual students ask for assistance.  

“I can provide tailored feedback and offer suggestions based on how that student is interacting with course materials, homework, and more,” explains Laird. “For example, if I can see that a student is accessing all the necessary course materials, I can have a conversation with them about how they learn and study.”  

CAI is being piloted by 14 instructors who teach courses in chemistry, public health, psychology, engineering mathematics, health and human psychology, and business, impacting 4,792 students.   

“Instructors invest time and effort into designing course resources, like study materials, and may wonder if those resources effected students’ learning or if students accessed them,” says George, the OTLT learning analytics specialist. “At Iowa, an instructor can know, and that’s not common.”

The team will continue to refine the CAI using feedback from instructors and working to ensure it becomes a robust, sustainable tool available for many courses.