Analytics Dashboards and Widgets
Out-of-the-box Dashboards and Widgets
This article describes the dashboards and widgets built-in to the Veracity Learning LRS. In the LRS, we grouped and sorted the widgets in the same way that xAPI statements organize metrics in their data. Here, we've grouped the widgets by how you may want to use them.
You can find all out-of-the-box (OOTB) metrics in the Analytics page of the LRS.
All dashboards share a common Time
Range filter, which you can change. You can export each widget within a dashboard as
an PNG image, JSON, or EXCEL file. You can also copy a public link and paste it
in your application, for each dashboard as well as for individual widgets within
a dashboard.
LRS-wide Metrics
The following widgets appear in the LRS Overview dashboard, and they all depict general metrics: metrics that are not specific to a single lesson or student.
LRS Overview
List
Basic statistics about this store
- The name of the selected store, and the URL.
- Counts of all the xAPI statements, agents (students), activities (objects), states (milestones), and attachments that appear in these statements in the selected store.
- A tally of the total memory used, in megabytes, of the selected store.
- A count of log entries, including errors, for the selected store.
Activity over Time
Timeseries Chart
How is total traffic to this store changing over time?
The LRS hides this widget if it has no data for the selected period. Although it looks like two series, it’s really two views of the same, single series. You can drag the handles on either side of the upper view to scale (zoom and pan) the lower view, a different time interval.
How to Interpret
The vertical axis is a count of statements in the selected store at each timestamp.
In timeseries charts, the Veracity LRS "skips intervening nulls", and plots an area connecting the top of each timestamp, which estimates activity between values in the x-axis.
Weekly Traffic
Heatmap Chart
For the top ten activities, what days of the week are they most often accessed?
The LRS hides this widget if it has no data for the selected period.
How to Interpret
This is a heatmap chart. The horizontal axis is time, but divided into days of the week. The vertical axis is several (up to ten) objects. The axes define a table with each cell filled with color intensity standing for the total count of statements on that day for that object. The gradient bar across the bottom is a legend showing frequency as an increase in color saturation: the scale runs to the highest calculated value.
Top Ten Most Active Objects (Clickable)
Pie Chart
What objects (courses, lessons, questions...) are used the most, and how often? (Click a pie wedge to focus on the object)
Click a pie slice to open that object in the Activity Overview dashboard. Click an item in the legend to hide that pie slice and recalculate the percentages of the remaining slices against the whole. Hover the cursor over a pie slice to reveal a tooltip with the absolute value (count).
How to Interpret
These objects appear in the most statements within the selected parent or object, in descending order.
Top Ten Most Active Grouping Contexts (Clickable)
Pie Chart
What grouping context activities have the most total traffic, including all their child activities? (Click a pie wedge to focus on the group)
Click a pie slice to open that grouping in the Activity Overview dashboard.
How to Interpret
A “grouping” is any outer contexts (e.g., course, module, or lesson), while a “parent” is the innermost context, (e.g., a learning objective, scenario, or quiz bank). See the xAPI specification for more information about context types.
Top Ten Most Active Parent Contexts (Clickable)
Pie Chart
What parent context activities have the most total traffic, including all their child activities? (Click a pie wedge to focus on the parent)
Click a pie slice to open the Activity Overview dashboard for that parent.
How to Interpret
This widget ranks parent contexts in descending order of total statements for each, plus all the objects each has.
Activity over Time Breakdown
Timeseries Chart (Split Series)
For the top ten activities, how is total traffic on each changing over time?
The LRS hides this widget if it has no data for the selected period. You can scale (zoom and pan) the chart and can hide each of the series.
How to Interpret
In a timeseries chart, we show a split series as multiple, overlapping, translucent area charts. Each series in the chart is one of the top ten most “active” objects.
Usage by Authority
Pie Chart
Which access keys were used the most, and how many times?
How to Interpret
The authority described in an xAPI statement is the ID of the system that emitted the statement: the LMS. Although an LRS can grant access keys to many Learning Record Providers (LRP) in addition to an LMS, the statements for one store and for one parent come from one authority.
Course, Module, and Lesson Metrics
The Activity Overview dashboard shows several
widgets about a single activity, such as a lesson or a quiz within a course. You
can select an activity using the Activity Explorer widget, which offers an
interactive and hierarchical list of available parent and child activities. You can also select an activity by clicking in some of the widgets in the LRS Overview or Agent Overview dashboards. This dashboard shows different widgets depending on what data the activity contains.
Activity Overview
List
Basics statistics about this activity
- The name of the selected object, and the URL.
- The “Activity Type”, extracted from the object.definition.type.
- Date of most recent activity.
- A unique disclaimer about potential nesting conflicts, “This object appears in the Context Activities for some statements”, which may affect the inclusiveness of query results.
- Count of all the xAPI statements within which this object appears.
Activity Explorer
Explorer
All Activities
This widget shows a hierarchic directory of the selected object’s contents. Click an item to “drill-down” the Activity Overview dashboard to the selected object. Click the Parent: All Activities item to “drill-up”.
How to Interpret
This widget works just like the Activity Explorer on the Home page of the store. If the course were authored with a coherent hierarchy of modules, lessons, and pages; then this widget will show that nesting. The hierarchy depends on the instructional design and authoring tool conforming to the xAPI specification.
Page and Interaction Metrics
Top Ten Most Active Objects, for a Single Course (Clickable)
Pie Chart
What objects (courses, lessons, questions...) are used the most, and how often were they used? (Click a pie wedge to focus on the object)
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows objects in the most statements only for the selected course.
Weekly Traffic, for a Single Course
Heatmap Chart
For the top ten activities, what days of the week are they most often accessed?
The LRS hides this widget if it has no data for the selected period.
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows relative increases in statements only for the selected course.
Activity over Time Breakdown, for a Single Course
Timeseries Chart (Split Series)
For the top ten activities, how is total traffic on each changing over time?
The LRS hides this widget if it has no data for the selected period.
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows changes in total statements for objects only in the selected course.
Activity over Time, for a Single Object
Timeseries Chart
How is total traffic to this LRS changing over time?
The LRS hides this widget if it has no data for the selected period.
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows activity only for the selected object.
Test Question Metrics
Top Ten Highest Scoring Test Questions (Clickable)
Bar Chart
What are the top ten child objects of this activity by score? (Click a bar to focus on the activity)
The LRS hides this widget if no data supports it.
How to Interpret
This is another instructionally important built-in widget because it shows the relative (highest) total scores on the most-used interactions.
This widget compares objects at the same level within a course. However, not all child objects are comparable.
Bottom Ten Lowest Scoring Test Questions (Clickable)
Bar Chart
What are the bottom ten child objects of this activity by score? (Click a bar to focus on the activity)
The LRS hides this widget if no data supports it.
How to Interpret
This is another instructionally important built-in widget because it shows the relative (lowest) total scores on the most-used interactions.
Score Deviation, for the Top Ten Test Questions
Error Bar Chart
For the top ten child activities, what is the average and standard deviation of their score?
The LRS hides this widget if it has no data for the selected period.
How to Interpret
The upper bound of each bar is the average scaled score for that activity (higher is better), while the lower bound is the standard deviation (variation from the mean, lower is better) for the same activity and metric.
Complete versus Incomplete, for All Test Questions in a Single Lesson
Pie Chart
What is the ratio of complete to incomplete events on this activity?
How to Interpret
This widget is unique to the Activity Overview and is the most instructionally important built-in widget. The LRS has no record of the total number of students enrolled and the LRS has no record of the length of a course or lesson (and calculating them from canonical objects is inefficient). This widget is the LRS trying to show the relative achievement of all actors in all activities in the selected object. For example, using the Activity Explorer, you can “drill down” to an individual interaction to see this widget change to show the statements that have result.completion set to true for that chosen activity.
Success Rate, for All Test Questions in a Single Lesson
Pie Chart
What is the ratio of successful to unsuccessful events on this activity?
The LRS hides this widget if no data supports it.
How to Interpret
This widget measures the total of all statements with result.success. A correctly configured LRP should send statements describing success (true or false) only if completion is true. Success is most useful as a measure of instructional effectiveness in the context of the number of attempts, which the LRS doesn’t know and cannot easily extrapolate. You can also switch among lessons within a course, for comparison.
Responses, for All Test Questions in a Single Lesson
Bar Chart
What different responses did learners make on this activity?
The LRS hides this widget if no data supports it.
How to Interpret
This widget lists all the result.response, with the height of the bar showing the number of statements in which they occur.
Responses, Average Score, and Duration, for a Single Test Question
CMI Interaction
To see a CMI interaction widget for a single test question:
- Go to the Analytics page.
- In the left menu, select Activity Overview.
- In the Activity Explorer widget, scroll down and select an interaction.
- In the left menu again, expand Advanced Dashboards, and select Assessment Questions.
Each interaction (assessment) appears with the following data:
- Interaction type — e.g., choice, numeric, true-false, etc.
- Stem question.
- Distractors, if any.
- Responses.
- Percent correct.
- Time spent.
How to Interpret
A common complaint with this type of report is that it doesn’t show range values… “What are the correct answers?” “What’s the percent correct on the first try?” “What’s the number of responses compared to the total of students in the class?” The courseware sends none of this information to the LRS. You must provide it yourself.
Navigation Patterns, for a Single Test Question
CMI Interaction
This question was in the Bloom’s-level-three quiz bank of an adaptive learning course. It was a sequencing interaction: a student must arrange the distractors into the correct order. Here's how their performances appear in the LRS.
The chart of the correct versus incorrect distribution would normally appear as a pie chart or a bar chart for a multiple-choice question. For this type of interaction, the LRS uses a Sankey chart. Each distractor appears as a colored box with connections between each. Across the top of the chart, we see that three of the five students who answered this question, answered it correctly. The ribbon connecting the bars shows them in the correct order. Below that baseline are two other ribbons, showing the incorrect order that the other student chose.
How to Interpret
In this instance, all students got the first distractor correct. Four out of five got the fourth distractor correct. Of interest is that the two students who got the question incorrect, both placed the second distractor in the incorrect third position. That's harder to see any other way than with a Sankey: it's out-of-the-box with the LRS.
This chart is useful for diagnosing assessment design workflow only for the types of CMI interactions for which it appears: matching and sequencing.
All Responses, for a Single Fill-in-the-Blanks Test Question
CMI Interaction
If it's a fill-in-the-blanks test question, then you should see a widget like this:
This widget shows the most frequently selected responses, but not all. Don't worry, the remaining data is still in the xAPI statements. Here's how you can see all of it:
- In the left menu of the <Store> Home page, expand the xAPI Data menu, and select Statements.
- Click the Configure button. In the dialog box, click the Add Filter button, and click the magnifying glass.
- In the next pop-up, from the left menu, select Activity Tree, scroll, expand the lesson, click the relevant test question, and click the Select button. Click the Save button.
- In the menu, toggle Response on, and close the dialog box.
- In the Statement Viewer, at the top of the Response column, click the filter query icon (
) next to the heading. This shows the unique values of all the responses to the test question:
How to Interpret
Now, we can see all the responses. This way of manually configuring a filter on the Statement Viewer is less intuitive, but more effective. It’s also much less costly in time and effort than creating a widget in a custom dashboard.
Action Metrics
Verb Type
Pie Chart
What verbs (event types) are most frequent, and how many times was each used?
In this widget, hovering the cursor over each slice shows a tooltip with the absolute count of statements with that verb in the selected LRS.
How to Interpret
Verb count distribution is popular among LRS vendors: it’s an easy query because there’s only one verb in each statement. The challenge is counting and showing the verbs by their “canonical” name. However, from an instructional view, this built-in widget is worth little.
Verb Type, by Lesson
Pie Chart
What verbs (event types) are most frequent, and how many times was each used?
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows activity only for the selected object and is similarly worth little.
Student Metrics
The Agent Overview dashboard shows several
widgets about a single agent at a time. The terms “agent” and “actor” usually refer
to a single user or student. You can select the agent by clicking the Set
Parameters button, which opens a dialog box with a drop-down menu of
available names. You can also select an agent by clicking in some of the widgets in the LRS Overview or Activity Overview dashboards.
Agent Overview
List
Basic statistics about this agent
- The name of the selected actor (student), and their ID.
- Date of most recent activity.
- The URL of their “homepage” (usually their university e-mail address).
- Count of all the xAPI statements within which this actor appears.
Top Ten Actors with the Most Events (Clickable)
Bar Chart
Which agents most often appear in xAPI statements, and how many times? (Click a bar to focus on the actor)
Click any of the bars to open the Actor Overview dashboard for that student.
How to Interpret
The top ten students in descending order of their appearance in all xAPI statements within the selected parent or object.
Top Ten Actors with the Most Events, for a Single Course (Clickable)
Bar Chart
Which agents most often appear in xAPI statements, and how many times? (Click a bar to focus on the actor)
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows activity only for the selected object.
Actor Behavior (Verbs Used by Student)
Bar Chart (Grouped Series)
For the top ten actors, what different verbs (event types) did they experience?
How to Interpret
The top ten most active students, in descending order of the number of statements they each appear in. The widget groups bars by a count of all verbs in all statements (one verb per statement) for each student. The order of verbs is descending by total count (not metric).
Actor Behavior (Verbs Used by Student), for a Single Lesson
Bar Chart (Grouped Series)
For the top ten actors, what different verbs (event types) did they experience?
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows activity only for the selected object.
Actor Behavior (Verbs Used by Student), for a Single Student
Bar Chart (Grouped Series)
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows activity in the top ten objects and only for the selected actor. It also divides the bars by verb.id.
Top Ten Most Active Objects, for a Single Student (Clickable)
Pie Chart
What objects (courses, lessons, questions...) are used the most, and how often were they used? (Click a pie wedge to focus on the object)
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows activity only for the selected actor.
Weekly Traffic, for a Single Student
Heatmap Chart
For the top ten activities, what days of the week are they most often accessed?
The LRS hides this widget if it has no data for the selected period.
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows activity only for the selected actor.
Activity over Time Breakdown, for a Single Student
Timeseries Chart (Split Series)
For the top ten activities, how is total traffic on each changing over time?
The LRS hides this widget if it has no data for the selected period.
How to Interpret
It’s the same as the widget in the LRS Overview dashboard, except this instance shows activity only for the selected actor.
Sessions, for a Single Student
Gantt Chart
What learners accessed this content, and when did they start and end?
The LRS hides this widget if it has no data for the selected period. This widget has a display bug in that it doesn’t automatically “end” sessions until another begins. Unless the courseware or the LMS explicitly ends a session (context.registration), this can lead to instances of what look like multi-day sessions.
How to Interpret
Most people don’t have much experience with Gantt charts. Moreover, most Gantt charts show a “waterfall”, and this widget doesn’t. Like with many linear charts, the horizontal axis (x-axis) is time. The alignment of the vertical bars along the x-axis shows which days in xAPI statements the student’s ID appeared. The width of the bars shows (unreliably) the length of the session on that day.
Another word of caution, unless you filtered the dashboard by course, you can’t tell from this widget “what” the student’s activity was on any given day. Hovering your mouse over a bar won’t show which course or object the student interacted with.
This is better for small groups: e.g., workshops with forty or fewer students.
Raw Statements, for a Single Student
Statement Viewer
This widget lets you inspect individual statements in which the actor appears. Click a statement to open it in an accordion.
Click the Widget Menu button in the upper-right corner and click Expand. This gives you more room to navigate and see more of each statement, without scrolling as much.
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