Why and How UMBC Publishes Its Most Active Bb Courses Report Jeffrey Berman Graduate Assistant, Instructional Technology and New Media University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Agenda What The Databases Are Used For Process For Running Reports Methods We Used Sample Queries Future of UMBC Reporting

What The Database Is Used For Blackboard Reports –Most Active Courses/Communities (Hits Per User) –Number of Active Courses Per Discipline –Tool Usage (System Wide and Per Course) –Most Active Users myUMBC What’s New –Checks for recent activity in announcements/discussion boards

Process For Running Reports Connect to a Data Source PHP Script Uses PDO (PHP Data Objects) –Data-access abstraction layer Data is written to an array in PHP Array is parsed, and formatted into a table Table is then cached as an html page

First Method (Production Queries) Blackboard (Production) Queries (PHP Scripts) Cached Reports

First Method (Production Queries) Pros –Contained current semester data As opposed to 6 month gap with the Stats Db –Data was guaranteed to be up-to-date. Cons –Large queries could take down Blackboard

Blackboard (Clone) Queries (PHP Scripts) Cached Reports Second Method (Cloned Database) Blackboard (Production) Updated with changed transactions every 4 minutes

Second Method (Cloned Database) Pros –Could query current semester data with minimal impact on production –Data was close to up-to-date (no more than 4 minute delay) Cons –Cloning process inserted extra columns –Replication service broke numerous times limiting query accuracy

Third Method (Static Replica) Blackboard (Static Replica) Queries (PHP Scripts) Cached Reports Blackboard (Production) Complete copy of database made infrequently, but as needed for reports

Third Method (Static Replica) Pros –Can query current semester data with no impact on production –Data is up-to-date (at time of the static copy) Cons –Requires a manual process to make the static copy –Need to know in advance when we want to run queries –Will not allow myUMBC What’s New to run as it needs continually up-to-date data

Most Active Courses SELECT TOP 50 count(a.event_type) as Hits, count(DISTINCT a.USER_PK1) as Users, count(a.event_type) / count(DISTINCT a.USER_PK1) as HitsPerUser, c.course_id as CourseID, c.course_name as CourseName FROM activity_accumulator a, course_main c, course_users d, users u WHERE c.course_id LIKE '%FA2007' AND a.event_type = 'COURSE_ACCESS' AND a.course_pk1 = c.pk1 AND a.user_pk1 = u.pk1 AND c.pk1 = d.crsmain_pk1 AND d.users_pk1 = u.pk1 AND d.role = 'S' GROUP BY c.course_name, c.course_id ORDER BY count(a.event_type) / count(DISTINCT a.USER_PK1) DESC

System Tool Usage SELECT count(*) as Hits, a.internal_handle as Tool FROM activity_accumulator a, course_main c, users u, course_users d WHERE a.event_type = 'COURSE_ACCESS‘ AND a.course_pk1 = c.pk1 AND a.user_pk1 = u.pk1 AND d.crsmain_pk1 = c.pk1 AND d.users_pk1 = u.pk1 AND c.course_id LIKE '%FA2007' GROUP BY a.internal_handle ORDER BY count(*) DESC

Recent Updates Use of Delivered Stats Database –(on replica) Live (Self-Service) Queries –Tool Usage Per Course –Grade Distribution Per Course Deep Link Generator

Future of UMBC Reporting Tool Usage for All Courses Tool Usage for 3 rd Party Tools –Learning Objects, Wimba Fully Implement myUMBC Blackboard Integration