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Pinging the community on analytics

Discussion created by mike.sharkey@blackboard.com on Jan 20, 2016
Latest reply on Oct 6, 2016 by sheilmcn

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Hi folks...this is Mike Sharkey. I recently joined Blackboard as the VP of Analytics when my company, Blue Canary, was acquired in December 2015. I'm managing the team that sets out our analytics product strategy going forward. I have a quick question for you all:

Who's out there?

I've been in the higher ed data and analytics space since 2002, but this is my first time interacting with most of our Blackboard community. Given that, I wanted to know who is out there. When you get a minute, I'd love a response from those who have some interest in data, analytics, predictive models, and results (some of my favorite topics). Also, I'll be at the IPC conference in Austin on February 4th-5th (2016 Blackboard Institutional Performance Conference (IPC) - Event overview ). If you are planning on attending, let me know. I'd love to meet in person and say hi.

Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Mike

P.S. I enjoy blogging about things I encounter or believe in when it comes to analytics in higher ed. I just posted a new entry today entitled "What Analytics Aren't"...let me know what you think (What analytics aren’t - Blackboard Blog ).

Outcomes

46 Replies

kevin.joseph Jan 20, 2016 8:07 PM
Welcome aboard, Mike. We at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) were an early adapter (2006) of Blackboard Analytics from back when it was iStrategy. I look forward to meeting you at the IPC.

Kevin
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- mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ kevin.joseph on Jan 20, 2016 11:14 PM
  Thanks for the note, Kevin. I've known John Fritz at UMBC for quite a while and reached out to him right after the acquisition. Please find me in Austin so we can chat. Take care!
  
  Mike
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preggyr Jan 21, 2016 2:34 AM
Hi Mike

Marisa remembered my interest in Analytics when I attended the Washington D.C conference last year, and suggested I touch base with you. Glad to welcome you to BB. In case you are wondering, I have been keen to use Google Analytics to do some 'user tracking', I've been told already that this won't be possible.
What are your thoughts about this?

Preggy
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- mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ preggyr on Jan 21, 2016 12:47 PM
  Here are my thoughts about Google Analytics. It's a great way to get high-level information, but you need to think about what you're going to do with that information. When I look at the GA data for a website (like my former company), I know what pages are getting hit the most and what links are getting clicked the most. That allows me to understand the audience and adjust my site to drive towards a goal (for example, getting a visitor to contact me).
  
  Now let's take it to education. What's the goal? Yes, you can find out what percent of your users are on Mac's vs. PC's or Desktop vs. Mobile. If that's what you really need to know, then there might be other ways to find that out (as opposed to instrumenting the LMS).
  
  If the question is, "Can Blackboard be instrumented with Google Analytics", I don't have and answer. I think I saw some other conversations in the community about that, and I'll also ping my collegue Dan Rinzel to see if he has an answer. However, I'd want to ask the more fundamental questions of "what are you really trying to find out and what will you do with the information once you get it?"
  
  I hope this response is OK...I realize I may not have answered the question directly. Please let me know. Thanks,
  
  Mike
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  - dan2bit @ mike.sharkey@blackboard.com on Jan 28, 2016 9:44 AM
    Learn customers with a Google Analytics API key can configure a back-end snippet file with their key in order to enable the Google service to monitor activity of students and teachers within Learn. A few caveats apply:
    
    You should make sure this practice fits with privacy and academic activity policies at your campus, whether you have an existing business relationship with Google (i.e an apps for education license) or not
    You should be aware of the potential extra impact on page load times on your system - in most network configurations this tends to be negligible most of the time, but it can on occassion "block" browser page loads waiting for the response from the Google Analytics service
    A rolling restart of the Learn cluster or server is required to pick up the snippet file
    
    Customers who have Managed Hosting with Blackboard will need assistance from Support to make this change. Self-hosted customers can review this thread https://community.blackboard.com/message/2072
    
    It's also worth noting that if passing this activity data on to Google does NOT fit with privacy or academic activity policies at your school, there are schools that have been very successful configuring log analysis tools locally, such as Piwik and Kibana. Terry Patterson I'm looking your way...
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  - Terry Patterson @ mike.sharkey@blackboard.com on Jan 28, 2016 11:07 AM
    Mike,
    
    Welcome to the Blackboard Community. I have been doing lots of work with collecting web analytical data about our Blackboard Learn self hosted environment. Since about 2013 we have been using tools like Kibana, Logstash, and Piwik Analytics to better understand and investigate what our users are doing and how the application interacts with them and with other third party building blocks. We can see the basic data, but also additional items such as a heat map for a course or follow a user through their clicks in the application. I've done several presentations about this tool and many self and managed hosted clients will be rolling this out on their instances.
    
    Here are some links to review:
    
    Monitoring Blackboard Learn Users on a Shoestring | Blackboard Guru
    How Logstash and Kibana Empower Blackboard Learn Logs | Blackboard Guru
    Piwik and Blackboard Learn FAQs | Blackboard Guru
    
    Presentations:
    
    Hold the Winning Hand: Tools and Tips to Help Manage Blackboard Learn Environments | Blackboard Guru
    Leveraging Web Analytics in Blackboard Learn - DevCon 2015 | Blackboard Guru
    Tools & Tips To Make You A Winning Blackboard Admin | Blackboard Guru
    
    I also did a presentation for Bb Learn Office Hours...
    
    10/27/15 Session Recording
    Information from Piwik Discussion - Oct. 27th
    
    Hope that helps give you some information about what I've been doing in the community. I'm happy to answer any questions.
    
    Terry Patterson
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    - mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ Terry Patterson on Jan 28, 2016 3:12 PM
      Thanks so much for the reply, Terry. I paged through the Piwik deck -- very good and thorough. I'm intimately familiar with Google Analytics and relatively familiar with Piwik. It's great to see you sharing your approach. There's a lot of value in the User Agent String data and I'd like to incorporate it into some larger analytics work in the future.
      
      Take care,
      
      Mike
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sheilmcn Jan 21, 2016 4:25 AM
Hi Mike

Hello from Glasgow, Scotland. Great blog post btw. I've been trying to get some analytics work underway here for the past couple of years and have had many conversations with your UK colleagues. At the end of last year, we participated in the Discovery Phase of the Jisc Effective Analytics Programme (https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/effective-learning-analytics ) and your colleagues at Bb here were our consultancy team, You can read the full report here LA Jisc Glasgow Caledonian Report - edShare@GCU

We're currently overhauling our whole data infrastructure in the Uni, which is great, but I'm still looking for a bit a quick, low cost win and way to easily get a bit more data out of Bb so we can see if we have some high level use patterns. I seem to be loop (sometimes of hope, sometimes dispair) when I speak to my IT colleagues.

Can't make conferences in the States very often but look forward to getting updates from the conference in Austin.

Sheila
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- mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ sheilmcn on Jan 21, 2016 5:41 PM
  Thanks for reaching out, Shelia. I've interacted with the Jisc folks over the years -- they've doing good work. I'm also involved with the Learning Analytics & Knowledge conference (LAK 16 | LAK16 Conference – Edinburgh, Scotland ) which is in Edinburgh this year. I'm 50/50 on going...still working out plans.
  
  Please let me know if you want to connect and talk through some details. I'd love to hear more about what you're trying to do. As far as access to data goes, I'm a big believer in the fact that it's YOUR data, not ours. I might have to do some work to make sure data are available, and we may not be able to get clients EVERY field they want, but there should be enough to chew on. This is one of my near-term goals...to be clear with our customers about what data they can access (and how to do it).
  
  Mike
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  - sheilmcn @ mike.sharkey@blackboard.com on Jan 21, 2016 5:10 PM
    Hi Mike
    
    I used to wok for Jisc in one of their Innovation Support centres called Cetis - we did a lot of early work scoping Les ring analytics for the UK sector and I was involved in the early days of SoLAR. Hoping to get to LAK this year as Ihavent been for a coup,e of years. Would be great to talk through just what data we can get and the most effective way to get it.
    
    Thanks
    
    Sheila
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    - sheilmcn @ sheilmcn on Jan 29, 2016 7:17 AM
      Hi Mike
      
      We are managed hosted which works well for us until we want to dig deeper into our data. Do you have any suggestions on ways for us to get more data than is available through BIRT? We really want to pull out data from Bb and look at integrating with other data for example our attendance/swipe card data to start seeing if there is any correlation between on campus attendance and activity in Bb.
      
      Any suggestions welcome.
      
      Sheila
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      - tp36301 @ sheilmcn on Jan 29, 2016 10:01 AM
        Sheila,
        
        Do you have OpenDB setup or A4L as a product? Is the swipe data recorded in Learn anywhere or on your Student Information System?
        
        We have OpenDB and A4L and are Managed Hosted but I thought BIRT would work with OpenDB well (others with this setup feel free to chime in here).
        
        Cheers,
        
        Toni P.
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        sheilmcn @ tp36301 on Feb 1, 2016 4:14 AM
        Thanks Toni
        
        The swipe info isn't recorded in Learn, it's a separate product. We can get some data from BIRT but we would like access to all our data.
        
        Cheers
        
        Sheila
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      - dan2bit @ sheilmcn on Jan 29, 2016 10:07 AM
        Sheila - as Toni mentioned this is exactly the kind of problem that the Analytics for Learn warehouse was designed to solve. It extracts the data from your Learn system into a warehouse data model (so that you're not querying directly against your transactional database while it is also supporting users teaching & learning), and it preserves ("warehouses") your historical data for exactly this kind of use analysis. It comes with some pre-installed reports, as well as a Business Intelligence tool (Pyramid BI office) that lets you set up self-service reports and dashboards for stakeholders at your institution. Analytics for Learn is available for customers of Managed Hosting. It does also extract some useful metadata about students and courses from your Student Information System in order to look at department or program level overviews, or historical student performance, so there's a potential dependency on the brand + version of your SIS on campus.
        
        If you are able to be more self-service, and/or you need more comprehensive granular access to the transaction data in Learn, an additional option offered by Managed Hosting is OpenDB which provides a daily mirror of the Learn data that you can query directly with a DB client, as well as a comprehensive set of schema documentation describing the tables and columns. This option generally requires some technical database folks on your side, but it offers unlimited access to the Learn schema.
        
        Hope this helps,
        -DR
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        sheilmcn @ dan2bit on Feb 1, 2016 4:19 AM
        Hi Dan
        
        Yes, I know, trouble is I can't get any money for us to buy Analytics for Learn. But I'll speak to my technical guys about OpenDB - I'm not sure how they have accessed data. Thanks for the info and I may be back with some more questions.
        
        Best wishes
        
        Sheila
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        sheilmcn @ dan2bit on Feb 1, 2016 4:58 AM
        Hi Dan
        Sorry to be asking such basic questions but is there an additional cost to OpenDB or is there any support included in our hosting arrangements?
        
        Thanks
        
        Sheila
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        dan2bit @ sheilmcn on Feb 1, 2016 8:09 AM
        No problem! There is a cost for OpenDB, which covers the extra storage and database license for the daily mirror, as well as support costs. Depending on the hosting package Glasgow Caledonian has, this cost may already be included in your package. Please reach out to your account manager to review the details - if you need help making that contact, please message me.
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        sheilmcn @ dan2bit on Feb 1, 2016 8:35 AM
        Thanks again Dan, I'll do that.
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        sheilmcn @ dan2bit on Oct 6, 2016 5:43 AM
        Hi Dan, there has been a bit of a gap since our first conversation. After talking with our account manager we did get a data dump which we have started to look at. Still no extra money for Open DB I'm afraid. However it looks like lost of the foreign keys have been nullified, which is adding an additional challenge for us. Would be great if you could shed some light on this.
        
        Many thanks
        
        Sheila
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        rscherer @ sheilmcn on Oct 6, 2016 7:42 AM
        Hi Sheila, curious... do you have any insight into whether the data dump was a copy of your entire database, or whether it was restricted in some way (for example, by date range, or only certain tables, or only certain tools/actions in Learn to answer a specific question)? What version of Learn are you using today?
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        sheilmcn @ rscherer on Oct 6, 2016 8:31 AM
        Hi Rachel, AFAIK it was the entire database (we're managed hosted). We're using 9.1
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        rscherer @ sheilmcn on Oct 6, 2016 11:22 AM
        Hi Sheila, Dan may have provided this to your team already but wanted to share a couple of resources -- assuming you got a dump of the whole db or a similar schema to what is provided to OpenDb clients, Blackboard compiles some pretty decent documentation that may be a good starting point for your team. This documentation describes the relationships between the tables.
        
        One challenge I found when I was getting started with the Blackboard db is that sometimes foreign keys are not named in a standard way across tables - for a couple examples of this, the Primary Key for the COURSE_MAIN table is used as a Foreign Key in some other tables:
        
        Table Variation on FK Name
        ACTIVITY_ACCUMULATOR COURSE_PK1
        COURSE_CONTENTS CRSMAIN_PK1
        WIKI COURSE_MAIN_PK1
        
        Depending on what tool your team is using to manipulate the data, you might be finding NULL values or difficulty in joining tables if you are trying to return a FK field value on the basis of a field name that is different from what you're expecting... just a thought.
        
        Also, when you follow the link, you'll be able to "View Schema" or "View Changes" to the schema for whatever version of Learn you are on. It is helpful that they maintain documentation for each release - my institution uses 9.1, Oct 2014 Release at the moment, so when we need to look something up for current-state reporting we will "View Schema" for that release, but as we are preparing for a transition to 9.1 Q2 2016 Release my team is evaluating the changes that we should expect to see in the new release, so we can determine how our reporting and operational integration processes may be impacted.
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        sheilmcn @ rscherer on Oct 6, 2016 12:42 PM
        thanks so much Rachel. I'll let you know how we get on
        
        Sheila
        
        Sent from my iPad
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tp36301 Jan 21, 2016 10:09 AM
Mike,

Thanks much for reaching out to the community.

We are a Managed Host customer for Learn but self hosted for A4L and have begun using with our online campus.

We are curious as to what the future is for analytics for Blackboard and where Analytics for Learn is conjunction or separately will be used long term. Do you know if there is specifically a roadmap for Analytics for Learn?

In addition, if this is presented in the conference in Austin, will any of this be available virtually for those of us that cannot attend?

Cheers,

Toni P.
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- mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ tp36301 on Jan 21, 2016 1:01 PM
  Toni -- you're very welcome. Reaching out to the folks who pay our bills is kinda important in my book. ;-)
  
  I see that you've been active in the community and you may have seen what Dan Rinzel shared in an office hours session a few months ago. I've gotten this question a few time -- what's the roadmap for A4L. If you don't mind me answering your question with a question (because I know how annoying that is), I'd like to ask you this:
  
  what types of things would you expect/want to see in an A4L roadmap?
  
  The reason I ask is that for a self-hosted data warehouse, the only kinds of significant enhancements I see are additional facts/dimensions or additional charts/reports. Granted, I don't have the history that you do with it...that's why I'm asking.
  
  With the addition of the X-Ray analytics product and the Blue Canary offering (which both came to Blackboard through acquisition), there's a lot going on. However, that's separate from your use of A4L. It will really help me to hear from folks like you about what you think should be on a roadmap.
  
  As for Austin presentations, I'm happy to share whatever I end up sharing with the attendees. If I get asked in a few weeks, I'll post here.
  
  Mike
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  - tp36301 @ mike.sharkey@blackboard.com on Jan 21, 2016 4:12 PM
    Mike,
    
    Thanks much for your detailed feedback and willingness to share the presentations from the conference. It would be great see more on Analytics for Learn and other Analytics products at the Bb World 2016 conference as well.
    
    I guess I think the thought it what X-Ray and Blue Canary being part of Blackboard, will there be overlap in what might be built into the LMS versus in addition to what we have versus what is coming for what we currently purchased.
    
    I did attend the session from Dan Rinzel but there was nothing that specific regarding Analytics for Learn product updates with the exception of further connections to other Blackboard Analytics modules like the student that we actually have not purchased.
    
    We are actually using the SSRS reports more than the Pyramid Reports that we have at this time for our online campus for more operational planning and retention by academic advisors for example in our online campus.
    
    We are working through making sure the data in these SSRS reports for example accurately reflect the real time data in Learn.
    
    You mentioned reporting options going forward in the A4L roadmap. I think that it might be helpful to ask the Bb community using A4L which of these they find useful, which need improvement, and which they are less interested in using (both SSRS and Pyramid).
    
    Cheers,
    
    Toni P.
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    - mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ tp36301 on Jan 21, 2016 5:44 PM
      Toni....you said:
      
      "I guess I think the thought it what X-Ray and Blue Canary being part of Blackboard, will there be overlap in what might be built into the LMS versus in addition to what we have versus what is coming for what we currently purchased."
      
      This is my priority right now. I need to clearly and concisely communicate our offerings both internally and externally. I'll venture to say you'll hear more about it in the coming weeks.
      
      Mike
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      - tp36301 @ mike.sharkey@blackboard.com on Jan 22, 2016 10:29 AM
        Thanks Mike Sharkey. Keep us posted as you find more.
        
        I had mentioned to Marissa Dimino before you were on board a few months ago to see if down the line there could or should be an Bb Analytics users group here on the community site which might be helpful for existing customers.
        
        Cheers,
        
        Toni P.
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pgowen Jan 21, 2016 10:25 AM
Holy cow. Hello, Mike! I hadn't heard about the acquisition. That's great!

A little of my own background: I work for Faculty Development at Northern Illinois University. We're always interested in data-informed decision-making, analytics. We'd love to see a wider effort to use analytics across campus (and the pressure is building), but for us, at least, we get by just looking at overall Bb utilization and tool usage stats (# of all courses, trends over semesters), mostly basic descriptive stats to inform where we focus our support efforts.

Congratulations again!
Peter
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- mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ pgowen on Jan 21, 2016 1:06 PM
  Hey there, Peter! Good to see your face/avatar again!
  
  Not sure if we talked about this when we met, but I love having the conversation with schools about utilizing data/analytics. I look at it like this -- there's valuable information sitting out there in the data ether. LMS data, SIS data, etc....these things can be used to assist at-risk students, promote better class engagement, inform course/program design, or address other institutional issues. There are three big factors in play here:
  
  How easy is it to get the data?
  How easy is it to understand the data (turn raw data into valuable information)?
  Are people like faculty members or advisors committed to taking action on that information?
  
  If you want to talk in more detail, please reach out and we can put a call on the calendar. I'd love to chat. Take care,
  
  Mike
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rscherer Jan 21, 2016 2:59 PM
Welcome, Mike! Our institution has been involved with some extensive and creative use of exposed Bb data to inform everything from massive point-in-time student outreach efforts to staffing decisions for our organization, not to mention the more standard content- and student-performance types of questions. We've dabbled in most of the data, analytics, and data-management products y'all have to offer, and built some reporting and warehousing of our own. We can provide a lot of feedback w/r to what has worked for us, what has not, and why - and we are looking forward to the upcoming IPC Conference to learn more about the standalone analytics offering, trends and practices in employing analytics to drive action, as well as the ways in which analytics more broadly might be integrated with and driving user experience interactions with our students and staff in the new SaaS/Ultra offering.

Best,
Rachel
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- mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ rscherer on Jan 21, 2016 5:47 PM
  Rachel -- thanks for letting me know what you all are up to, and I'd love to hear the gory details (I LOVE the gory details of data, statistics, and modeling). If you want to try and connect in Austin, come up and say hi at my session or email me in advance and we can schedule some time to chat (mike.sharkey@blackboard.com).
  
  See you in two weeks.
  
  Mike
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dr38472 Jan 22, 2016 12:00 PM
Welcome aboard Mike!

My questions for you are more about what options campuses have to enhance metrics, data and reporting within 9.1 without A4L? While some campuses have been able to shift their data warehousing strategies to incorporate the legacy iStrategy model...othercampuses like Chico State have already invested heavily in other tools and are looking to simply add additional Blackboard information.

Currently Chico is developing a new data model from scratch that we can share with our peers....but would love to see/hear what other resources are available to help jump-start the initiative.

Thanks in advance for your time, and congratulations.

David Rowe
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- mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ dr38472 on Jan 22, 2016 1:35 PM
  Great point, David Rowe. I've had conversations with Dan Rinzel to make sure I understand customers' options for getting data out of Learn. Would you like to have a call with me & Dan to talk through some of this?
  
  FYI, for everyone else on this thread -- my goal is to have a clear, concise document that lets customers know how/if they can get data out of Learn. Due to different hosting options and software versions, there isn't one simple answer.
  
  Thanks,
  
  Mike
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  - dr38472 @ mike.sharkey@blackboard.com on Jan 22, 2016 2:42 PM
    Sure. When is a good time? Please feel to connect outside this form.
    
    DAVID J. ROWE, MSIT
    Manager, Distributed Learning Technologies
    California State University, Chico | 400 W. 1^ST Street ∙ Chico, CA 95929-0290
    Office: 530.898.6689 | Email: djrowe@csuchico.edu
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goodmanro Jan 27, 2016 6:36 PM
Hi Mike,

We've been working with BBA for about 2 years at Georgetown. Definitely looking for new ways to use it - AND further integrate it with our Workday Financials data model. Are you in the DC area? We're not going to make the IPC, but it would be good to connect with you.

Thanks for reaching out to the community - and congrats on the new role!

Robert B. Goodman, PMP
Director, Business Intelligence & Analytics
Georgetown University
University Information Services
Tel/Direct: 202.687.8848
Mobile: 202.716.0871
Web: www.georgetown.edu
Email: rbg47@georgetown.edu
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- mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ goodmanro on Jan 27, 2016 11:21 PM
  Robert,
  I appreciate the response. I'm writing this note from my hotel room in DC...as a Scottsdale resident and native of upstate New York, I felt I had to get my snow fix in for the year. ;-)
  
  I do get to DC once a month or so, but let me know of you'd like to set up some time to talk on the phone regardless. I'd love to hear what your plans are vis a vis the data integration plans. Thanks,
  
  Mike
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jc37651 Feb 4, 2016 12:54 PM
Hi Mike,

Thanks for starting this blog. My name is Jamie Cunningham and I work at Roosevelt University. We are managed hosted with Blackboard Learn. We also are using Blackboard Analytics, but in the early stages.

I have tried to make some customized dashboards in Pyramid, but am new to Pyramid and it is sometimes cumbersome. I wonder if your company, Blue Canary, if creating dashboards were easier and if so, do you think that will be part of Blackboard Analytics in the future? I'm not aware of Blue Canary, but I did see the news about the acquisition.

Thank you in advance and I look forward to meeting you one day. Our team will be at the Blackboard Analytics conference, but I won't be attending.

Take care,

Jamie Cunningham
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- dan2bit @ jc37651 on Feb 4, 2016 1:30 PM
  Jamie - thanks for this feedback!
  
  We certainly understand that Pyramid can be a cumbersome tool for some purposes, and would definitely like to support your report design goals in any way that we can. From a purely tactical perspective, please let me know who on the Roosevelt team is here at the conference, and I can connect them up with Pyramid directly - they are here as a conference sponsor. Perhaps there is a way to resolve your concerns through training or additional support, we should investigate that together.
  
  From a strategic perspective, Blue Canary is not a replacement or alternative to Pyramid. Pyramid is a data visualization and business intelligence tool, a powerful (and complicated) software package for exploring your data and customizing dashboards & reports, setting alerts and so forth. Blue Canary is a focused, model-driven tool for analyzing student demographics and behaviors, predicting risk, and enabling advisors or faculty to take action based on those predictions. There are data visualizations inside Blue Canary, to be sure, but they are purpose-built for the users who will take action with students, not an open-ended business intelligence or reporting toolkit.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  -DR
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bsearle Feb 8, 2016 12:30 AM
Hi Mike,

Welcome Mike. Grettings from Australia, well the Top End of Australia that is. Our institutition, Charles Darwin University has been engaged with A4L now over the last 3 years with support from the Bb Consulting team (APAC) to assit in our implmentation. We rolled out the Bb Learn integrated reports in 2014 and rolled out Pyramid Dashboards to all teaching academics, Heads of School and executive leadership in 2015. We have a highly customised implmenation of A4L reports and elected to swap out some reports and have them replaced by commissioned bespoke reports. In 2014 we commissioned the Student Snapshot report which combines student, course and unit attributes (in US speak student program and course) with Bb Learn attrubutes to present a snapshot of individual students and the class before the commencment of teaching. Particularly useful for us as over 70% of our student ernrolments are 100% online. Over the last 12 months we have been developing the Pyramid dashboards and provisioned one for each school, school heads and the excecutive. CDU has also been involved in leading a national analytics research project in Australia with several other universities the project outputs and resources can be found here:
http://www.letstalklearninganalytics.edu.au/ . CDU is a regular attendee at Bb World and I hpe that we may get a chance to connect in 2016.
PS - Hey Dan...
Bill Searle, Manager Learning Technologies CDU
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- mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ bsearle on Feb 8, 2016 12:40 AM
  Thanks so much for the note, Bill. I've been down under before, but never made it past Cairns...sorry I didn't get up your way!
  
  Glad to hear about the extensive usage of A4L and reporting. If we do connect at BB World, I'd love to hear more (if not sooner). I looked at the Lets Talk Learning Analytics site and it looks interesting. I know a couple of folks in Australia from my LAK dealings (Shane Dawson at U. South Australia and Simon Buckingham Shum at UTS). Shane and his team interviewed me last year for a study...not sure if it was related to Lets Talk Learning Analytics or not.
  
  I appreciate the post, and let me know if there's anything I can do to help.
  
  Mike
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vr38112 Feb 24, 2016 6:37 PM
Hi Mike,

I am from James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. We have worked extensively with A4L and Pyramid. We currently have a large user base at over 4 campuses, using the Integrated reports, Reporting Services Reports (we call Level 2), Dashboards and this year we have launched Push Reports to specific roles within the student support and curriculum development areas. I am a one man band and work directly with my users and have built the Dashboards and Push reports. I can confidently say I may have broken Pyramid at the moment, as we are experiencing difficulties that have been escalated to the Developers. I really enjoy working with Pyramid and building custom reports. The Integrated reports and Reporting Services Reports are working ok, but my biggest issue is that they are not going to a granular enough level for their users. Staff want to see exactly what items the cohorts are looking at, more so on a whole subject basis. As for Pyramid, the restrictions there do not allow me to drill any further than the actual item type, for example a great deal of information is placed in Content Folders and this is not easily accessed from a whole subject perspective. Yes, it can be done for an individual student, but who has time to browse through a couple of hundred students to get this information. At the beginning of last year I enquired about a road map for A4L and was told there wasn't one - I would love to see this as a discussion topic and get the views of other active users.

Val Ruffle
Learning Analytics Specialist
Learning Teaching & Student Engagement
JCU.
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- dan2bit @ vr38112 on Feb 24, 2016 6:55 PM
  Val this is great feedback, thanks! Can you give a couple of examples of how faculty would use general file access reports by subject? Is it for determining usage/popularity of content across the subject? For "proving" that a particular student looked at a particular item? Some other purpose? As you might guess, that's a lot of data to collect & marshall every day into the granularity you're looking for, so I'm interested in understanding the teaching or administrative goals of the reporting you'd build with it.
  
  Also, we do plan a new release of A4L this quarter ( version 4.3.2 ) which will include the new Pyramid visual theme, new styling for the embedded reports to improve their legibility and align them with the new look and feel across the products, and a new Level 2 "Attendance Exception" report.
  
  Beyond that, we are planning for an additional maintenance release later in 2016, but we're still assembling client feedback for it, so keep these ideas coming!
  
  I'll open a new thread on the site for these ideas shortly - look for it, and thanks again!
  
  -DR
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  - vr38112 @ dan2bit on Feb 24, 2016 7:11 PM
    Great to have contact with you Dan. To answer your question, Integrated reports really need someway of showing more detail about what students are interacting with, but at a subject level, eg, Video Lectures, Lecture notes etc. Level 2 reports like 'Items accessed by Student', could also be Items accessed by Subject that drilled to a list of student names that actually accessed the items. It would be great in Pyramid to also have that next layer, as our Associates Deans of Teaching and Learning and Educational Designers in Colleges what information on what items in a subject are accessed, like Subject Outlines, Collaborate, Videos etc, but again on a subject level, not by Student, and this is not currently available.
    
    The only other comment I would make is that as a result of the variety of roles that use the Reporting Services reports, (and this may be an actual customization for our site) users identify students through various tags, eg their login jc number, their last name, their student id number. Student at a Glance reports doesn't offer this variety and just searches on the last name. Our International Student Support Officers may have 10 students with the same first and last name, which makes it a lengthy journey to get to the one they want to look at.
    
    I could probably go on for hours, but I will add feedback as I come across it.
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- mike.sharkey@blackboard.com @ vr38112 on Feb 26, 2016 12:46 AM
  Thanks for the note, Val, and thanks for responding to Dan's post. We hope it was helpful. And as Dan said, please look for the thread here on gathering that kind of customer input.
  
  By the way, I spent a semester at Uni. NSW in 1990. I took a trip up the coast during break and spent a memorable day/night on Magnetic Island. Beautiful place and wonderful people. Maybe I'll have to do a site visit to James Cook University? ;-)
  
  Mike
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  - vr38112 @ mike.sharkey@blackboard.com on Feb 28, 2016 6:29 PM
    Mike, You are more than welcome to visit our beautiful area. I would recommend visiting in winter though, as we are currently in an El Niño weather cycle, and the heat and humidity is extreme and has been all summer. The tropics in Australia certainly is a wonderful place to live.
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Table	Variation on FK Name
ACTIVITY_ACCUMULATOR	COURSE_PK1
COURSE_CONTENTS	CRSMAIN_PK1
WIKI	COURSE_MAIN_PK1