1. Mining User Data: Getting the Most out of your CMS John Fritz, UMBC

2. About UMBC Founded in 1966 “Research extensive university” Carnegie classification 12,041 Students –9,464 undergrad, 2,577 grad 1,319 Faculty –636 FT, 683 PT Selected Brags –One of 50 Best Colleges for Women –1 st in undergrad chemistry degrees awarded to African Americans –Six-time National College Chess Champions

3. Blackboard @ UMBC Learning System Version 7.2 As of Fall 2007 –11,614 students (96% of all students) –1,074 Bb course sites (includes multi-section courses) –808 Instructors (61% of all instructors) –356 Communities Includes all student, faculty and staff senates Support Staff: –2 FTE (Admin & Support) –1 Server Admin

4. Faculty Support Challenges MOST FACULTY LEARN BEST FROM OTHER FACULTY... BUT the “default state” of a Course Management System is a closed door. Most faculty don’t talk to each other about their teaching. Unanalyzed data: don’t know what we don’t know.

5. Academic Analytics

6. Solution: Transparency Show faculty what peers are doing through publicly available reports of student use. –System Administrators should not have the only “birds eye” view of an application. Which courses do you show? Average “hits per student” makes all courses equal candidates regardless of size. –Usage alone is not an indicator of quality. –But activity by students piques faculty interest.

8. Three Types of Usage

9. Rankings Based on Usage

10. Course Tool Usage

11. Rankings by Department

12. Rankings in Context

13. How Faculty Connect

14. Student Usage Results

15. GDR for SCI100

16. Self Service Reports

17. Future Plans Provide self service reports to students who can monitor their activity against –Anonymous summary of the current class roster. –Activity by grade distribution for students in past versions of the course. Alert students who may be at risk? Who decides?

18. More Information "Copyright John Fritz, 2008. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author."