Bb Mobile Learn Analytics

Reference: the Mobile Learn Analytics User Guide (which I've suggested be posted somewhere on Behind the Blackboard)

Getting Started

To access Blackboard Mobile™ Learn Analytics, you must have Blackboard Mobile Web Services Building Block version 9*.2.9 (or higher). To upgrade:

1) Go to the System Administrator panel in your Learn instance
2) Under the Building Blocks module, click on the Building Blocks link
3) Click on Installed Tools
4) Click on the Settings button next to Blackboard Mobile Web Services Building Block
5) Click on Server Registration Settings
6) Click where prompted to upgrade to the latest Building Block
7) Once the Blackboard Mobile Web Services Building block appears, change “Unavailable” to “Available” in the drop-down menu under the “Availability” column

Accessing the Analytics tab

To access the Blackboard Mobile Learn Analytics page:

1. Go to the System Administrator panel in your Learn instance
2. Under the Building Blocks module, click on the Building Blocks link
3. Click on Installed Tools
4. Click on the Settings button next to Blackboard Mobile Web Services Building Block
5. Click on Mobile Analytics

Metrics

* Total Logins

The Total Logins graph will show the total volume of app usage at your institution.
Specifically, it will show you the total number of visits to the Blackboard Mobile™ Learn app from all app users at your institution, by day, within the specified time frame (Week, Month, Year).

Logins are broken out by device type (color coded): Blackberry, HP webOS, iOS (iPad, iPod touch, iPhone), Android

* Logins by Day of the Week

The Logins by Day of the Week graph will show when the app is most heavily used at your institution, by day of the week. Specifically, it will show you the total number of visits to the Blackboard Mobile™ Learn app from all app users at your institution on each day of the week, cumulative for every day of the specified timeframe.

* Logins by Hour of the Day

The Logins by Hour of the Day graph will show when the app is most heavily used at your institution, by time of day. Specifically, it will show you the total number of visits to the Blackboard Mobile™ Learn app from all app users at your institution over each specified hour of the day, cumulative for every day of the specified timeframe.

* Logins by Platform

The Logins by Platform graph will show which Mobile platforms are most frequently used to access the app at your institution. Specifically, it will show you the total number of visits to the Blackboard Mobile™ Learn app from all app users at your institution, by type of device used to access the app, within the specified timeframe.

* Unique Users by Platform

The Unique Users by Platform graph will show how many individuals are using the app, and which devices are most popular for accessing the app at your institution. Specifically, it will show you the total number of individuals that have downloaded and successfully logged in to the Blackboard Mobile™ Learn app at least once within the specified timeframe, by type of device used to access the app.

Sharing Analytics

Metrics can be shared with other members of your institution using the “Share This Page” button at the top of the page.

Note: there is no authentication required for this shared link. Anyone who has it can view all the same metrics you see.

Google Analytics and Mobile Learn

Can you track Blackboard Mobile Learn access?

Yes, but you may have some difficulty separating out "pure" Mobile Learn from clients who use browsers on Mobile Devices. Especially since Mobile Learn also allows clients to launch the browser when it encounters something it cannot display, e.g., an assessment.

Note: because of SSO (SiteMinder) we have our own custom login page. We put the GA tracking on the login page. And we have the Mobile Learn Building Block configured

Authentication Type: Force To Web

This forces the Mobile Learn client to our custom login page.

Google Analytics: Visitors > Mobile > Mobile Devices shows Android and iOS (iPad/iPod).

When I accessed via Mobile Learn on the iPad, it showed up as "Mozilla Compatible Agent/iPad", where "Mozilla Compatible Agent" is the browser type, and "iPad" is the Operating System.


Google Analytics: Visitors > Mobile > Mobile Carriers shows Sprint access

Google Analytics allows you to filter based on "Mobile Devices". You select an "Advanced Segment" called "Mobile Traffic".

Here's Content Overview without any filtering:

Here's Content Overview filtered on "Mobile Traffic":

Blackboard recently updated the Mobile Learn building block (91.2.9); among its features is

Blackboard Mobile Learn usage analytics available from the Building Block registration page (MLBB-118)

We'll be taking a look at that next.

Google Analytics (9.0SP5, 9.1SP4)

Blackboard Learn 9.1SP4 added the ability to easily embed tracking javascript onto the jsp pages.

From the release notes:

Google Analytics™ is a free service offered by Google for mining web traffic data to a website or application. The process for setting up Google Analytics is the same for each Blackboard Learn codeline including 9.0 SP5 and 9.1 SP4 and beyond.

1. Register with Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/)

• Identify a test server outside your firewall and note its domain name
• Create a Google Analytics Account
• Register the domain name of your server through the Google Analytics setup pages
• Save the script provided by Google Analytics

2. Open sharedDir/web_analytics/googleAnalyticsSnippet.vm (For example c:/blackboard/content/web_analytics/googleAnalyticsSnippet.vm), paste your script, and save the file.

3. You can restart Blackboard Learn Services for the changes to take effect immediately or wait until the .vm file cache is refreshed, once every 12 hours.

For information on Secure and Non-Secure sites, visit
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55483


How often does Google Analytics update your stats?

Google Analytics generally updates your reports every 24 hours. This means that it could take 24 hours for data to appear in your account after you have first installed the tracking code.

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When you get into your google analytics account, you can see the list of sites (Website Profiles) you are getting stats on. Remember it'll take up to 24 hours (well, midnight) to start seeing stats.

View Report - you get to a dashboard view of pretty charts, maps, etc of the visits.

From there you can drill down into the various sub-areas: Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content, etc.

Visitors - How many people came to your site and how extensively did they interact with your content? This was probably the most interesting to me.

It is useful to see what kinds of browsers/operating systems are visiting your Bb site. Other things you can find out: Screen Colors, Screen Resolutions, Flash Versions, Java Support. All useful for folk who develop their own website content.

And you can see geographically where your visitors are coming from

My test server isn't available externally, so my map overlay doesn't show much. I'll try to find better results with an external Bb server.

Traffic Sources - This report provides an overview of the different kinds of sources that send traffic to your site.

It was useless with my test server since all the traffic was "direct" - visits from people who typed in the url directly.

Content - This report provides an overview of pageview volume and lists the pages (Top Content) that were most responsible for driving page views.

Content Overview screen

Top Content - guess which link has the most hits?

/webapps/portal/execute/topframe?tab_tab_group_id=_1_1&frameSize=LARGE

Everyone has to access the topframe, see My Institution (typically the first tab group).


Content by Title

Content by Title has limited usefulness in the context of Blackboard because most of the page titles aren't that specific (e.g., Courses, Home Page, Users, Blackboard Learn)