Blackboard collects activity and grade data as students work in your course. You can use it to see how the class is doing, notice patterns, and reach out to students who may need support. Most of these reports open="" from the Analytics area of your course, from the gradebook, or from a student's overview.

Activity data refreshes about every 24 hours, so the numbers reflect recent activity rather than the current minute.

The Course Activity report gives you a class-wide view of engagement. Open Course Activity from the Analytics tab in your course.

You see a table with each student's overall grade, missed due dates, hours in the course, and days since last access. You can send a message to a student from the report, and you can download the data. A scatter plot compares grades against time in the course and marks students who trigger an alert.

Step-by-step guides

Progress tracking shows whether students have opened and completed each piece of content. Turn it on in Course Settings under Progress Tracking.

Once it is on, each content item shows a progress icon: an empty circle for not started, a half-filled circle for started, and a green checkmark for complete. You can view progress for one student in their overview, or view a single item's progress to see who has not opened it, who has accessed it, and who has marked it complete.

For a single assignment or test, you can see how the class engaged with it. From the Course Content page, open="" the assessment's menu and select Student Activity, or open="" the assessment and select the Student Activity tab.

You see how many students have not opened it, opened it, started a draft, or submitted, along with a grade distribution. A timeline shows when each student opened, started, saved, and submitted. Late submissions and accommodations are marked, and you can download the data. This view is not available for assessments graded anonymously.

You can look at one student's activity over time. Open the student's overview and select the student activity view, or select View Details from the Course Activity scatter plot.

The report shows the student's hours in the course by week next to the course average, and their overall grade over time next to the course average. This helps you see whether a student is keeping pace with the class. You can download the report.

The student activity log records events for a student, such as when they accessed the course, started or submitted an assessment, and opened content. The log covers about the last 120 days and can take up to 20 minutes to reflect the newest activity.

Assessment submission events include the IP address used. Read the section on academic integrity below before you use this information to draw conclusions.

Activity and access data can support a review of academic integrity, but it should not be the only basis for a decision. A changed IP address can come from a router restart or a normal network change, and activity that looks unusual can have an ordinary explanation.

Use these reports as one source of information, look at the full picture, and consult your college and the university's process for academic misconduct when you have concerns.

An observer is a person who can follow a student's activity, such as an academic advisor or coach. An observer can see a student's last access date, grades, and progress, without being able to take part in the course.

Observers use an observer dashboard. Setting up observer associations is usually handled centrally, so contact OIR if you think an observer role applies to your course.

WSU uses Ally, which reviews your course materials for accessibility and gives you a course-level report. The report shows an overall accessibility score for the course and points you to the items that need attention.

Open the course accessibility report

1. Open your course in Blackboard.
2. Select the Books & Tools icon, or find it under Course Tools.
3. Select the Accessibility Report. The Course Accessibility Report opens.

Read the report

The Overview tab shows your overall course score and groups your content by type. The Content tab lists the items with issues. The overall score falls into bands:

• Low, 0 to 33 percent. Severe issues that need attention.
• Medium, 34 to 66 percent. Somewhat accessible, with room to improve.
• High, 67 to 99 percent. Accessible, with some improvements still possible.
• Perfect, 100 percent. No issues found, though you can still refine.

Fix issues from the report

You can start with the content that has the easiest issues to fix, or start with the lowest-scoring content. Ally explains each issue and walks you through the fix, and you can upload a corrected file to replace the original. After you make changes, refresh the report to see your score rise.