When considering the question of what I would most like to track using web analytics, I thought I would explore the issue systematically by considering the types of things that would be found on an online course website. I was then able to think of some questions that I would like to answer regarding these parts and pieces.
• Text
○ Specifically for text that is long enough to have a scrollbar, are the students reading all of the text? Could we know if students scrolled all the way to the end of a textbox? How about the end of the page?
○ What is the amount of time that students spend on a page? Seeing the average time spent on a page might reveal some interesting usage trends.
• Figures, Tables, and Graphs - Can we find out if the students moused over visuals on the screen, such as tables and graphs? In general, can we track the position of the cursor as it moves around the screen? This would reveal very interesting usage patterns, as it would give us some idea of how people visually navigate through our web pages.
• Videos
○ Are students watching the whole thing? If not, is there any way we could find out when they stopped watching?
• Sounds - with any kind of audio, same questions as with video: Are students listening to the full audio track?
• Assessments
○ How much time spent does a student spend on an online assessment? This would indicate if students are really thinking about the questions, or just answering them as fast as they can. Could we find out how much time they spend on each item?
I know that web analytics can track the geographical location of the IP address used to visit the page. In addition to these questions regarding the specific components that are used to create an online course, it would also be fascinating if we could compare usage trends to the geographical location of the people visiting the page.
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2 comments:
Good list. It is interesting to me how everyone has categorized their interest items differently. I think it is very valuable for us to all see it from different perspectives as we move forward.
I really liked how you looked at how we could break down the time component on our web pages. Even if we didn't have a web analytics program that looked at time in a video or time on quiz question, there may be ways to program that in and view the times ourselves. That would be very interesting.
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