Version 8 Reporting Tool

From what I could see, the D2L reporting tool in version 8 is far more powerful than in version 7. One nice thing is that it creates reports out of a data warehouse rather than the live production data (at least I think that is what he said). One advantage of that is that we can run complicated reports without compromising the performance of the production server where students are taking quizzes and faculty are creating content.

The number of reports available appears to be quite comprehensive. The tool also includes a great number of filters that can be employed to narrow the report to particular user groups, or other particular factors that allow you to focus your report on a particular group. For example, maybe you want to get a report on the number of failed logins. You can do that. Maybe you only want to know how many failed logins there were for student users. You can do that. Maybe you only want to know how many failed student logins occured on Sunday night between 8 and midnight. You can do that. etc. etc. etc.

You can change the report display type. Don't like a line chart or a pie chart, change it to an area chart. I walked away from this demo wiht the following thought: if we want to gather rich research data about our online learners, this tool will enable that.

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