Navigate 3.1.4 LMS Reporting

What are the options for grade reporting?

A Content Management System offers a toolbox of options for grade reporting. The gradebook function can be found as a tab or on a dropdown menu. Teachers can create self-assessments so students access prior knowledge & better pace themselves through material helping learners with time management. Rubrics provide students and teacher with the same assignment expectations and serve as a backdrop for meaningful, objective feedback/comments. Discussion boards and a students' dashboards allow the learners to be proactive in their understanding while charting their performance progress. Interventions with e-mail notifications & alerts help teachers monitor student engagement and reach out to students & parents if learners haven't logged in regularly.

The above steps help ensure better results when students take quizzes/tests and upload supporting data for assignment submissions. Teachers can set scoring as alpha or numeric. To increase student engagement, teachers can offer a grade for discussion board participation. A sense of community is generated, communication increases and the discussion area now functions as a Q&A repository.

Are there various levels of analytics? 
Below are the 4 levels and a brief description of each.

Student Level - At this cellular level, teachers can note individual student performance (log-in frequency, time spent on various course pages, assignment pacing - is student completing pre-assessments, quizzes, tests, surveys & participating in Discussion Boards?). Gap analysis can then allow student, parents & teacher to identify areas of concern.

Teacher Level - Student course/module surveys are invaluable to teachers. Aggregately, they give a snapshot to a teacher of areas of strengths & weaknesses in effective content delivery. To improve these skills, teachers can take professional development. This training needs to incorporate technical skills (i.e. how to organize a gradebook or how to create a podcast) AND a few application suggestions based upon sound pedagogical approaches (i.e. numeric or alpha gradebook set-up with automated alerts to students' e-mails or cell phones with a text; fosters student responsibility for their learning / podcast is an audio file that reinforces learning by tapping into auditory learning style; teachers can "record auditory directions" for a project/assignment with multiple steps to help clarify process).

Course Level - Analysis on this level helps target areas of strengths & weaknesses of course. Data is useful in re-designing specific modules and overarching approaches to topics.

Program Level - Gaps can be identified on a programmatic level, and strengths/weaknesses addressed to improve a third party's view of the program and its features.



Which levels remain most valuable for the online instructor in regard to student performance?
On a daily basis, student  and teacher level analytics are the most impactful to student performance. Teacher-student communication is immediate and gaps in understanding or content delivery are easily fixed. These micro changes that generate favorable results should become course changes to assist future learners.