Extract Discussion Data for Analysis

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Purpose

This tool was created to allow you to extract the data Canvas has on discussions in a class into a spreadsheet to allow analysis of the data to explore students' participation and engagement with discussions in a course.  Exploring this data could identify ways to improve discussions in future courses.

This tool extracts data from a Canvas course into a Google Sheet.  the first worksheet in the Google Sheet contains a list of the discussions in the course and their due dates.  Data for each discussion in a course is placed on a separate worksheet.  The data for each discussion includes:

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  A user ID - either the student name or a randomly generated anonymous identified.
  
  
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  The date and time of the post.
  
  
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  The number of words in the post.
  
  

 

Questions that could be explored with this data might include:

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  When do students contribute to discussions in relation to the due date? Are posts made throughout the period or are they clustered near the due date? I find that students are due date driven, so am looking forward to trying the checkpoint feature -  Students engage in deeper, more meaningful discuss... - Instructure Community - 595548  
  
  
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  What is the average word count for replies? In my discussions I ask students to post replies that extend the discussion. Looking at the average word count shows that some discussions have low word counts and reading the replies shows lots that just agree with the original post.
  
  
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  Is there a correlation between when students post and the length of their posts? For example do student who post near the due date have longer posts because they have spent more time working through the content or are their posts shorter because they are rushing to meet the due date?
  
  

 

Instructions

 

1. 
   
   Open the Google Extract Canvas Discussion Data Spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iOpDPkrM4pOz8pIDoxfk8w6WQ_mRzz66RXzZ0IRupNY/copy    This will require you to make a copy of the spreadsheet.  Edit the file name and browse to select a location to save the file.
   
   
2. 
   
   When the spreadsheet opens, after a short time (approx. 30 seconds) a Canvas menu option will appear. 
   
   
3. 
   
   From the Canvas menu, select the "Configure API Settings".  An "Authorization Required" pop-up will display.  Click continue and then select your Google account.  Click "Allow" to enable the script in the spreadsheet to run.
   
   
4. 
   
   Now that the script is able to run, select "Configure API Settings" from the Canvas menu again.  Enter the hostname for your Canvas instance and a Canvas API token.  See How do I manage API access tokens as an instructor? for details about how to generate an API access token.
   
   
5. 
   
   From the Canvas menu, select "Specify Course ID" and enter the ID or URL for your course.  Confirm that the course name is the course you selected and click "Yes."
   
   
6. 
   
   From the Canvas menu, select "Get Discussion Posting Data" to get data that includes student names or "Get Anonymized Discussion Posting Data" to get data where student names are replaced with random numbers. A new sheet named "Discussion Details" will be added with the details of all of the discussions in the course. Additional sheets will be created for each discussion in the course.
   
   
7. 
   
   Steps  1 - 5 are one-time setup steps.  Once you have done them, you can re-run step 6 at anytime to update the data.