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Finding Your High-Traffic Files

Finding Your High-Traffic Files

High Impact
Planning

One way of planning or assessing your course materials is to create a spread sheet for each course, where a row represents a document. Then you can use this sheet to track the state of your files, changes you’ve made and plan future work. Most importantly, you can generate a comprehensive assessment of where your materials are at, and identify trends.

  • PDF and PPTX files are possibly viewed more than reported due to being downloaded and viewed in other applications.
  • The files must be in their own Content Topic to be tracked (this is typical practice)

Step by Step Instructions

Export Statistics from D2L Brightspace

  1. From your Course homepage, click on Content

  2. In the left sidebar, locate Table of Contents and select it

  3. Towards the top of the center section, under Table of Contents, click the gray Related Tools dropdown and select View Reports

  4. By default you should see Statistics highlighted, locate and click the gray Export Statistics button underneath.

    • If you cannot see this button make sure Statistics is selected and the Content tab is selected

  5. In the pop-up window, click the generated link to download the CSV file and make note of the filename

Create a Tracking Sheet

  1. Open a new Google sheet

  2. Click File and select Import

  3. Underneath the search bar locate and select the tab on the right labeled Upload, click Browse

  4. Find the report you downloaded in your Downloads folder, searching for your CRN might narrow it down

  5. Verify the options, and click Import the default are typically fine.

Add Filters and More Data

  1. Right click anywhere once the data loads, locate and select Create a filter

  2. In the Column F header, AverageTimeSpent, click the button on the right side of the cell, select sort Z to A

  3. Create new columns to count major issues like missing alt-text.

  4. Optionally you can use Convert to Table and all your other favorite Google sheet features to make this data more readable.

Next Steps

Remember AvgTimeSpent is the average time that file sat open in a browser window in front of your students.

Even with all the implicit ambiguities in the data, this is a pretty decent indicator of what files your students are using the most in an attempt to succeed in your course, and because of that, likely worth prioritizing. From here you can:

  1. Audit – Check most used files for accessibility issues in the Panorama dashboard
  2. Plan – Estimate time needed for each file
  3. Make Progress – Work through files systematically
  4. Document – Track your progress and any barriers encountered
Complex ImagesFinding Critical Issues