This short video will walk you through how to access
and use reports in Blackboard Data Reporting.
There are three reporting areas
Learning – reports about student activity,
engagement and performance
Teaching – reports about instructional practice
and course design
And Leading – reports about administration,
adoption and institutional success
Once you sign in, you can access each reporting area
by selecting the Explore Learning,
Explore Teaching or Explore leading options
in the Reporting home page.
or by selecting the reporting area from the menu
Each reporting area contains several reports.
Each report has a summarized “report card”
which shows the types of questions answered by the report.
Select the report’s title to open it
When you open a report, a secondary menu appears
to the left of the screen,
enabling you to navigate between reports
within the same reporting area.
You can hide this menu by selecting the arrow,
and it will appear as a purple tab in the top-left corner,
which you can select at any time to reopen
the secondary menu.
now lets take a look at the report
in this example we will use the student
engagement report in the learning reporting area
keep in mind
a similar design is used across most of the reports
Each report is comprised of one or more tabs.
You can view a different tab by selecting its title.​
Every tab in a report uses filters to enable you
to focus on a specific part of your organization.
We cover the common filters in our video
"using filters in Blackboard Data Reporting";
all you need to know for now is that:​
the reports are initially unfiltered,
meaning that they are showing data from across
the institution and as far back in time as we have data,
though some reports are limited in historical data
for performance reasons.
When you make a selection in a filter, it is applied immediately,
and the report refreshes to reflect this.
There is no additional action you need to take.​
When you select, or hover over, a filter,
a three-dot menu icon appears in its top-right corner.
You can select this to be able to refresh
or reset the filter selection.​
You can collapse the filter pane by selecting
the up arrow in the top right corner of the pane
to focus on the report content.
Note that your filter selection is retained
when switching between tabs in the same report,
but not when you move to another report.​
Each report is designed around a series of questions
that are answered by one or more visualizations,
to help you understand how this information can be used.
Each tab has a primary question as its title
and a brief introduction to the context of the report.
In the bottom-right corner of every page,
you’ll find a question mark icon that opens a help page
for the current report in a new window.
It’s a good idea to review this the first time
you use each report.
Most reports start at a high level and provide
more detail as you scroll down the page.
Starting with a binary yes or no,
in this example, Active versus Inactive students.​
Then showing distribution, in this example,
frequency and recency of course access.​
Then showing a comparison of related academic units,
powered by the “Institutional Hierarchy” feature in Blackboard Learn.​
Then summarizing information for each course.​
And finally, summarizing per enrollment,
therefore one row per student per course.​
Some visualizations provide links to additional
actions such as emailing the student.
This creates a new email addressed to the
relevant student in your default email application.
Tables can be sorted by any column.
Just select the column title,
and select ascending or descending.
Additionally, visualizations are interactive,
automatically filtering a visualization based on
your selection in another.
So, if you select a course in this visual,
it shows only students enrolled on that course
in the visual below.
You can also combine interactions
from different visualizations,
so you can filter the student list to show
only recently active students on the selected course.
If you hover over or click on a visualization,
you’ll see additional options appear
in the top-right corner,
enabling you to maximize the selected visualization,
Export to CSV or, in the case of tables, Excel,
to share data with appropriate stakeholders
And remove or reset the interactive filtering​
Finally, in the top right corner of the report,
you’ll find a download icon that enables you to
print the entire tab or download it as a PDF.