Generate Reports in Moodle

Overview

As a teacher, you can generate:

  • a log of activity in your Moodle course, for various periods
  • a course activity report, showing the number of views for each activity and resource (and any related blog entries)
  • a participation report for a particular activity
  • graphs and tables of user activity.

This page gives you basic instruction in generating reports.

Instructors can also enable access for students to view their individual reports. See Enable student access to reports.

When to use

Reports tell you what your students have been doing in your Moodle course: generate them when you need to know which pages they are accessing, the times at which they access them and the activities they perform there.

Benefits

When you know what your students have been doing in your Moodle course, you can adjust the course to suit their viewing habits. Or you can alert them (or make navigation clearer) to course material they're neglecting, to make sure that they take full advantage of all the online resources you're providing.

Guide

Step by step instructions

You can generate one of a selection of reports for the course.

Report
Report contents
Further info or action
Logs Selected activity by selected users within selected items for a selected period, in a selected format  
Live logs The past hour's activity within the course  
Activity report Number of views of each activity in the course, sorted by topic Click through to the relevant activity.
Course participation Selected actions by selected users for a selected period in relation to a selected activity. Send all or selected users a message. For example, you might want to encourage users who have not posted to a forum to make some contribution.
Activity completion Completion of all activities for all users in the course Display by group, or sorted by first name or surname, or download the data in 2 different formats.
Statistics You select a Course, a Report type and a Time period. The statistics display in a graph and a table Click through to the relevant course logs.

Generate logs

  1. In the Settings block, under Course administration, click Reports.
  2. From the expanded Reports menu, select which report you want to see (this example shows Logs)

Reports 1

  1. In the Choose which logs you want to see page, make parameter selections in the drop-down lists (learning resource/activity, included and excluded participants, date, actions, report format). To locate logs prior to a Moodle upgrade, please change the Standard log dropdown to Legacy log.
  2. Click Get these logs to fetch the selected records.

Reports 2

 

Generate course participation reports

For some courses, student participation in forums plays a significant role in determining their final mark. To obtain a quick scan of posting activity by students for the purpose of awarding a participation mark, follow these instructions on the Set up a forum page.

Use the Course participation report to send messages to participants who may be falling behind on certain learning material. To do this:

  1. In the Settings block, under Course administration, click Reports.
  2. Select Course participation from the expanded menu.

Report 3

  1. On the Course participation page, select:
  • the relevant Activity module to run a report on
  • how far you'd like to Look back
  • the relevant user role (e.g. Student) and
  • the actions users performed in relation to a certain activity (e.g. View or Post, in a forum)
  1. Click Go.

Report 4

  1. When the list of students displays, select students' check boxes or click Select all or Select all 'no'.
  • If the Select all 'no' button is missing, click the Show all button to expose it.
  1. At With selected users, select Send a Message and click OK.

Report 5

  1. On the Message course users page, enter your message and click Preview.
  2. On the HTML format preview page, click Send message.

Enable access to reports for students

  1. Locate the Settings block.
  2. under Course administration, click Edit settings.

    Release a Moodle course to students 1.2.png
  3. Under the Appearance section, Change Show activity reports to Yes.
  4. Click Save changes.

    Release a Moodle course to students 1.2.png

When enabled, the student will see a reports section on their profile page which is accessed by:

  1. Click your name in the top right to access a drop down menu and select Profile.
  2. Locate and click the course in the list under Course details > Course profiles.
  3. Locate the Reports section on the right hand side and select a report or log to view
    Students Reports section

Advanced guide

Additional information

External resources

Further information

See this Moodle Docs page for more information about reports and user activity statistics.

See these pages for further information on the Activity report and the Participation report.

Further assistance

If you experience technical or other issues, consult the Where to get help page.