The Importance of Student Reports in Online Learning

There’s no doubt that creating a quality course in LearnDash is step one to having a successful online learning business.

BUT. You have to keep moving to reach the top of the staircase.

And for that, you have to evaluate the impact of your course offering from time to time. And, since the evaluation is online, doing a SWOT analysis can be hard.

To improve learning outcomes, you must follow student engagement, identify top-performing courses, pinpoint lessons they are struggling with, and give them detailed feedback.

But basic Learndash reports can only tell you so much. They can track no. of lessons the student has completed or the marks he/she has scored, and in some cases their progress on lesson or quiz completion.

But, is that enough? 

No.

Look beyond basic reporting

Basic reports don’t give you enough data to gauge how much the student has actually understood. 

To ensure the success of your eLearning website, you need to step up your game. Basic reporting is common. Everybody uses it. 

You need to think out of the box.

Access different types of advanced student report to gain in-depth analysis and figure out actionable insights.

With advanced student reports in your artillery, you can track your students’ performance accurately and paint a better understanding of how well the student is doing.

Plus, it’ll even help your Teacher Instructor figure out better ways to keep the students engaged.

Types of Online Reports

There are different stakeholders involved in eLearning in different capacities. Hence, having a detailed analysis and report is important for each of them.

To understand the importance of online reports, we’ve divided the stakeholders into 3 categories:

• Website Admin (You)
• Teachers or Course Instructors (Your associate course creators and managers)
• Students

1. Importance of Advanced Reports for Admin

As an admin, you need to plan and take important decisions relating to your business, courses, students, teachers, structure, etc. 

And, to do this, you need solid actionable insights into different aspects of your eLearning business.

For e.g: Viewing any student(s) progress report and checking the number of quizzes/lessons they’ve attempted, and completed, their scores, the class average, comparisons, etc. 

Such in-depth analysis and reports will help you:

• Gauge your student(s) performance – The results and the answers in a quiz, lesson, etc. will enable you to identify weaker students and plan out extra classes or other solutions to help them increase their scores.
• Measure the performance of your Instructors – The class average and the % of students that have passed with distinction, first-class, or failed will indicate the efficiency of your Instructors.
• Chart out actionables – Depending on the analysis, you can plan the next course of action. For e.g: You can suggest changes in the course(s) if needed.
• Market your courses – The passing percentage in a particular course, the feedback, etc. can help you market your courses and increase sign-ups.

2. Importance of Advanced Reports for Teachers/Course Instructors

Providing an extensive analysis and reports for Teachers with respect to their own courses is extremely important.

For e.g: Teachers viewing different aspects of the student(s) progress reports can check the number of students who’ve passed/failed their course, time taken to complete a lesson, overall performance of the class, no. of questions answered correctly, etc.

These student progress reports will help the Teachers in:

• Identifying the struggle areas – The questions answered incorrectly or the time taken to finish a particular test can help Teachers identify the scope for improvement.
• Measuring the performance of their group leaders – The analysis will help them gauge the capabilities of their group leaders.
• Making changes in their course to improve quality – The detailed report will enable the Teachers to make edits to their courses to make them more effective.
• Paying attention to weaker students – It’ll become easier for teachers to identify students who’re falling behind, help them cope with their scores, and possibly conduct extra classes for them.
• Improving their own efficiency – These reports reflect the quality of the Teacher’s course. This will motivate them to work towards increasing signups and their commissions.

3. Importance of Advanced Reporting for Students

For students, keeping track of their own progress is an equally important factor. And, online reports act as a medium to keep students in line with their personal goals.

For e.g: Student reports can help them keep tabs and gather details on their individual lesson completion duration, no. of quiz retakes, marks scored in different subjects/quizzes, no. of questions answered incorrectly, etc. 

And, access to these reports will help the student(s) to: 

• Reflect on their overall performance – The detailed insights will give them an idea of where they stand.
• Realign with their goals – Student reports will motivate them to study harder. For e.g: If they’ve scored less than their class average, then this comparison will push them to work harder.
• Reach out to Teachers for more help – Students can identify the areas of challenge based on their individual reports and reach out to their Teachers for help in overcoming those shortcomings.

In case you’re running a K-12 academy, these student reports can also be downloaded by the pupil’s parents. This will help them gain better insights and understanding of their child’s academic progress and performance. 

With that being said, the need for different stakeholders to access and analyze advanced student reports is extremely valuable for your online learning business.

After all, it helps you stay on your toes at all times. It enables you to grow, and be ahead of your competition.

Now that you know its importance, the next thought to probably pop into your head might be…

Ok, but, What about its implementation?

Well, don’t you worry. We’ve got you covered 🙂

There are some platforms like Moodle that offer extensive reporting systems. However, today we’re going to look at different options available to set up online reports with a rather popular and powerful LMS – LearnDash.

How to Set up Online Reports in LearnDash

So, LearnDash, offers basic reporting capabilities such as student scores, time taken to complete a quiz, etc. Unfortunately, there is too little data or insights available for stakeholders to act on and incite decisions.

Hence, having an extensive student reporting system for LearnDash is necessary for:

• Logical and data-backed actionable insights for different stakeholders. 
• Carrying out an in-depth evaluation, analysis, and accurate tracking of students’ performance and progress.
• Improving learning paths.
• Marketing your courses and increasing student signups.
• Evaluating teachers’ as well as group leader’s performance.

And, to set up these insightful reporting systems, there are additional plugins available that’ll let you add advanced reporting capabilities to LearnDash. 

Here are some of the plugins you can use to set up advanced reporting in LearnDash:

1. WISDM Reports for LearnDash

Developed by WisdmLabs, WISDM Reports for LearnDash offers the most comprehensive reporting and analytics dashboard for all LearnDash users. The dashboard is customizable and also saves a lot of time by offering all crucial reports in one place.

It focuses on giving users insightful data on all learner activities to compare learner engagement as well as progress among other things.

Apart from generating reports for learners, you can also export reports for groups of learners to check groupwise performance.

This analytics tool allows you to be on top of all courses, topics, quizzes, lessons, their completion rates, and their pass/fail rates. Therefore, you can easily follow along with your learner’s progress.

Having said that, it also comes with an absolutely smashing and intuitive interface with graphical reports and advanced reporting filters. This makes viewing and understanding learner reports super easy.

Key Features of WISDM Reports for LearnDash

• Comes with a clean and sharp user interface for Admins, Teachers, and Group Leaders.
• Enables Admins, Teachers/Instructors, and Group Leaders, to access their own personalized dashboards with customizable reports.
• Has graphical reports that are not hazy but neat and easy to understand.
• Comes with filters to drill down data by course, course category, quiz, lesson, topic, date, etc. to track learner activity in depth.
• Offers learner-specific trends to monitor engagement like avg. time spent on courses, course categories, quizzes, etc.

Demo

You can check out the Live Demo to explore the plugin and its functionality.

2. User Insights

User Insights is an add-on that helps you search and analyze your LearnDash user activity. It gives you reports related to courses completed, the course in progress, course engagement, number of quizzes passed, etc.

You can use the user table and filters to search and analyze your user list based on their LearnDash activity. This plugin provides insights into several different course-related fields.

Key Features of User Insights

• Filter and search for data related to courses completed, courses in progress, course engagement, course activity details, etc.
• Find the most or least active students by sorting the student list based on lessons/topics completed.
• Adjust your quiz difficulty level based on reports related to quiz retakes and quiz attempts.
• Lets you download and export the user insights in a CSV format for future reference.
• Presents report analysis using pie charts and bar graphs.

Demo

Unfortunately, there’s no live demo available. You’ll have to rely on reviews and feedback to gauge its effectiveness.

3. Tin Canny LearnDash Reporting

This is a comprehensive reporting plugin that highlights LearnDash earner activity trends. It presents course reports to see where your learners stand across all of your courses. 

Furthermore, it also drills deeper to provide reports on student lessons and quiz activities. 

You can check out reports on an individual and course level.

With that being said, it even allows your group leader to access the same reports for the groups they control. This makes it easier for them to make decisions quickly. 

Additionally, it supports SCORM modules and integrates H5P and xAPI records inside WordPress.

Key Features of Tin Canny LearnDash Reporting

• Enables you to monitor course and learner activity at a glance through an intuitive dashboard.
• Supports SCORM module and has the ability to generate reports that combine LearnDash quiz scores with SCORM/xAPI scores.
• Allows you to provide front-end access to the reports to the Group Leaders to help them track student progress easily.
• Allows you to compile LearnDash, SCORM, xAPI, and H5P data into a single report to get a clear picture of student performance and activity.

Demo

You’ll have to check out its reviews to understand its performance since a Live Demo isn’t available.

Our Opinion

All 3 plugins do a brilliant job of providing detailed and insightful student reports. However, we suggest checking out the WISDM Reports for LearnDash.

It doesn’t just come with powerful reporting features but it also has great support and after-sales services. 

So, if you’re looking for an uncomplicated yet advanced reporting add-on, you should try WISDM Reports for LearnDash.

Parting Thoughts

In e-Learning, learner course activity and progress reports are important.

But to get insights from these reports you need to go beyond a simple reporting tool in LearnDash.

A tool that — Tracks. Analysis. Consolidates. Information with the help of intuitive reports.

And, with the right reporting plugin, you can easily generate detailed learner progress reports for your LearnDash users including Admins, Teachers, and Group Leaders.

If you want to try out the new WISDM Reports for LearnDash and start using it for free. It offers all student insights with the help of comprehensive graphical reports.

That’s it for today. Let us know if you found this article helpful.

• eLearning, LearnDash
• With tags: eLearning, learndash reporting, Online Learning, Report

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• Nitansha T

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