Logging the time a student has spent working on Smart Revise
Although some applications attempt to show the number of minutes / hours a student has used a product for, it isn't actually technically possible to do this accurately. so we do not have a report for that.
Why can't the time used be calculated accurately?
The main reasons that apply to both apps and websites are:
- A student can open the application and then go away and do other things, or keep it open in the background. For example, when eating dinner, playing on a console, interacting with social media etc. This is not time spent engaging with Smart Revise in a meaningful way, this is just the time the application was open. So, monitoring the time between logging on and either logging off or timing out does not show the time it is actually being used.
- It is possible to keep a timer associated with button presses or key entries. For example, every time a key on the keyboard is pressed, a tap by a finger on a touch device, or click from a mouse. However, this assumes that a student is always interacting. It is entirely possible that a student needs to think before answering a question, and we should encourage this rather than penalising it. They may also spend time looking up an answer in their exercise book or textbook etc. Again, this is learning and should be encouraged. So how do we effectively differentiate between a student who has the application open but is not working and a student who is doing useful activities away from the system to help them answer the question?
Therefore we do not show data that cannot be trusted and may give teachers a false impression of the time students actually used the system.
A solution
However, it is possible to make approximate calculations using the available analytics reports for Quiz, Terms and Advance. The data is not accurate but may give you a rough ball-park.
Quiz
Assuming that a multiple-choice Quiz question probably takes between 10-20 seconds to answer, you could calculate a rough time the student engaged with this mode.
Use the filters on the Analytics - Quiz Usage report to filter a time frame. E.g. "Last 7 days". You can also set custom date ranges.
The report will show you the number of attempts the student has made in this time. Multiply this by 20 to arrive at an approximation of how many seconds a student spent using Quiz.
E.g.
Bell, Molly - Last 7 Days - 41 attempts.
41 * 20 = 820 seconds / 60 = 13 minutes.
Terms
Most terms should take the student about one minute to consider in interactive mode, so the number of attempts is also the number of minutes. In reflective mode assume 30 seconds per Term.
E.g.
Bell, Molly - Last 7 Days - 10 attempts.
10 * 30 = 300 seconds / 60 = 5 minutes.
Advance
With Advance, use the filters on the Advance - Overview report to filter a time frame. E.g. "Last 7 days". You can also set custom date ranges. Select "Show all data". The available marks is a rough guide to the number of minutes.
E.g.
Bell, Molly - Last 7 Days
Available marks: 15 + 12 = 27 minutes. It is likely that students spent more or less time than this, especially if they did not achieve full marks, but it is an indication.
Tasks
The teacher can see an approximation of how long a task should take most students during the task creation process, at the question confirmation/selection stage. Use this as a guide if you are setting tasks. Clearly students who don't write answers probably spent little if any time reading and working on the question.