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[zuzu_]

I have the most recent Blackboard platform, and I cannot figure out how to track a student. Having googled this problem, I find many websites like this one this one that explain how to do this in earlier versions of Blackboard, but I don't have a "Tracking" button in my tools.

I have tried doing every "report" in the "Reports" section, and while I can get info for the individual student, it is largely useless bar graphs and pie charts with no indication of whether or not Sally Snowflake really DID click on the instructions for Big Assignment before the actual due date. The link above indicates that this kind of tracking WAS possible in earlier versions of Blackboard; can I still do this? Where is it???

Oh yes, and I HAVE "enabled tracking" in all of my crucial content items.

Thanks for advice you can offer.

(We have a small IT dept; the only person who might be able to answer this for me is off campus on a family emergency for the rest of the week, and I actually doubt she knows the answer to this one.)

[kedves]

Are you using Blackboard 9?  We are using 8.  In 8, I have never used the feature described in the link, but when I want to track use, in each Assignment, I click Modify to Track Views (which I think you have already done).  Then to look at views, I click Manage opposite the assignmnet folder, then Statistics Tracking.  That can give me all students, one student, some student, but only beginning with the date I modified the assignment to track views.  It gives a spreadsheet indicating how many times on every day of that month the student accessed the folder, including 0.  It is clunky but functional.

It's not what the total student tracking feature is, which I've never used effectively because it makes me insane with irritation, but it works to see if and when the student at least opened the folder.  However, I don't know how Blackboard 8 and 9 might differ.

[zuzu_]

Yes, I am using 9, and it had a major update last week.

I just tried what you said, but the report I got was useless. It had no tracking info at all (empty page) regarding day of week, but then the time of day page showed a bunch of hits--indicating 16 total hits. And there was a bar chart about what times of day the hits occurred. But there was no information on the report about what DATE those hits occured on.

I'm also not certain if the report is correct, because the student's name isn't on the report, nor is the name of the content item I clicked on.

This stuff sucks. I'm missing WebCT 4.0, which was a P.O.S., but had handy student tracking.

[kedves]

How frustrating and pointless. 

At the same time, I've found that feature (in the current BB) to be less than helpful because there seemed to be little relationship between a student's opening the folder and following the instructions.  I think many of them open the folder only to print the assignment, but they don't really read it.  If I could disable printing, I would experiment with that.

I tried to learn something new with Blackboard today using the weighted-grade/drop-grade feature, then gave up and did it manually by exempting grades.

[dept_geek]

BB9's tracking system is worthless. It is broken, and BB might fix it in some future release. We have (and are still!) complaining about it and that has been been meaningless.

BB7.x's tracking system worked really well. Something got badly broken in the upgrades since.

Sorry.

[zuzu_]

Thanks for taking a stab at the problem, Kedves. At least I now how how to (theoretically) track a individual content item.

And thanks for the solid info, dept_geek. I'll stop wasting my time trying to figure it out.