Tracking student engagement in library modules embedded in Canvas courses

[Becky Croxton]

Please excuse cross-postings.

At Colorado State University, we are planning to launch new library tutorials for our Composition department through Canvas. We were wondering, how do other libraries collect student engagement information/stats from their Canvas modules?

Additional context:

• These tutorials will be added to around 100 sections. The tutorials are added to the course shell, and then professors copy that shell into their section. We are not able to get added to all sections in the Librarian/TA role.
• We do have video components in our modules that were created in Ech360, where it seems we can collect some engagement information (but it seems spotty).
  
  

Thanks for the help!

Becky

______ 

Becky Croxton, Ph.D.

Pronouns She/Her Strategic Assessment Librarian

Colorado State University Libraries 

Morgan Library | 1019 Campus Delivery | Fort Collins, CO 80523 

Phone: (970) 491-1116 

Email: becky....@colostate.edu

[Erin Cassity]

We have different modules for different purposes in Canvas. One of them is a self-enroll class with assessments that go out to LibWizard. The students receive a certificate that they upload into Canvas and get credit for completing. This works great since the work is done mostly by the students uploading the certificate. It is usually an optional module, though, so participation can be sketchy. We use the Banner enrollment numbers to determine participation rate (did at least one element) and completion rate (did the final assessment).

 Another module has assessments that are in Canvas so we ask for librarians to be embedded in the librarian role and we pull out the data in CSV files. I then work with the files to compile participation rate and completion rate. We do this for our first year library unit and it's about 55 sections.

If there are other ideas, I'd love to hear them. 

Erin

Erin L. Cassity, MLS

Coordinator of Learning Assessment & Liaison Librarian

J.E & L.E. Mabee Library

University of the Incarnate Word

San Antonio, TX

210.283.6316

cas...@uiwtx.edu

[Cecelia Parks]

We've wrestled with this question as well, and one option we've used is embedding a Qualtrics survey into the Canvas module. If we own the Qualtrics survey, we can see the results regardless of where it's embedded. We specifically use our module and survey as pre-class work for a library session, but you could use it for more general assessment purposes. 

A few challenges we've encountered include response rates (I estimate that we get between 50% and 70% of students to respond, depending on the semester) and updating the module in between semesters. If you change the survey or want to have different surveys for different semesters, instructors need to update the module in their Canvas courses and some of them will not do so (this is also true if you make changes to the content of the module).

We also have YouTube videos embedded in the module and we get viewership data on those.

I hope this is helpful!

Cecelia

Cecelia Parks (she, her, hers)
Undergraduate Student Success Librarian
Clemons 403

E cp...@virginia.edu
P 434.243.7561

University of Virginia
University Library

www.library.virginia.edu/

Make an appointment with Cecelia

[Erin Cassity]

Just to give a little more info on how our modules are embedded in Canvas: We have had to address how to maintain version control because faculty will copy over modules from a course shell and then keep copying the elements over from a prior course rather than the new updated versions that we put into the shell. Therefore, our first-year seminar module is a bluelprint course that syncs directly with the list of sections that I give to the Canvas administrator and it maintains the link to all for the sections when we update content. Then the instructors add the assigned librarian who can double-check everything and pulls the data. With over 50 sections, it is a lot to coordinate so the blueprint really helps. We had much less usage of old elements in the spring when we piloted it.

The other module (GenAI Literacy) is a self-enroll course so we can control that content, as well. We did have to weigh which would work better with which module. One is required and one is optional for students. You do have to have someone embedded in a Canvas course in order to have access to the assessments and data, or you link it to an external tool that you control, but how to get grades back into Canvas? You can send faculty lists of who completed LibWizard quizzes, but that can become untenable in bulk. You have to really standardize your quiz fields to get identifying info, for example, whereas that's not a problem for assessments directly in Canvas.

Also, for individual courses that embed librarians, we also will use the LibApps LTI in Canvas to link out to LibGuides where you can embed LibWizard content.

Maybe this will help someone. :)

Erin

Erin L. Cassity, MLS

Coordinator of Learning Assessment & Liaison Librarian

J.E & L.E. Mabee Library

University of the Incarnate Word

San Antonio, TX

210.283.6316

cas...@uiwtx.edu

[Becky Croxton]

Erin and Cecelia,

Thank you to you and all others for sharing your insights, workflows, and challenges. This is really helpful for us here at CSU. I'm adding Kendra Macomber, our Student Success Librarian, to this string.

Thanks again!

Becky

______ 

Becky Croxton, Ph.D.

Pronouns She/Her Strategic Assessment Librarian

Colorado State University Libraries 

Morgan Library | 1019 Campus Delivery | Fort Collins, CO 80523 

Phone: (970) 491-1116 

Email: becky....@colostate.edu

---

From: Erin Cassity <erinl...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, August 14, 2026 8:56 AM
To: ARL ASSESS <arl-a...@arl.org>
Cc: Cecelia Parks <clp...@gmail.com>; Becky Croxton <becky....@colostate.edu>
Subject: Re: Tracking student engagement in library modules embedded in Canvas courses

 

** Caution: EXTERNAL Sender **

[Laura Baker]

I've heard intriguing possibilities about H5P.  H5P is a product that integrates with Canvas and other LMSs.  Its selling point is that it offers an easy way to create interactive assignments and quizzes, but a side benefit is that it creates a pipeline between its content and the campus LMS.  As I understand it, when a student completes a quiz in H5P, it passes those results to the instructor's gradebook in Canvas.  So classroom faculty get feedback like they are used to.  The library would retain a master account for its material on H5P that would enable the library to get performance data.  So the library has data it can use.

If this is true, then it sounds really promising.  I have only a vague knowledge of this and would be interested if anyone can confirm how this works.

Laura

--
To post to this group, send email to arl-a...@arl.org
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to arl-assess+...@arl.org
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/a/arl.org/d/forum/arl-assess?hl=en
For instructions on logging in visit https://sites.google.com/a/arl.org/techguides_arl/login.
Discussions on this list are subject to ARL's Code of Conduct: https://www.arl.org/who-we-are/#section-codeofconduct.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to arl-assess+...@arl.org.

--

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laura Baker
Librarian -- User Experience and Assessment
Abilene Christian University Library
221 Brown Library / ACU Box 29208
Abilene, TX  79699-9208

bak...@acu.edu
phone: (325) 674-2477
fax:   (325) 674-2202
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~