Why and How UMBC Publishes Its Most Active Bb

Courses Report

Jeffrey Berman

Graduate Assistant, Instructional Technology and New Media

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Agenda

• What The Databases Are Used For

• Process For Running Reports

• Methods We Used

• Sample Queries

• Future of UMBC Reporting

What The Database Is Used For

• Blackboard Reports– Most Active Courses/Communities

(Hits Per User)– Number of Active Courses Per Discipline– Tool Usage (System Wide and Per Course)– Most Active Users

• myUMBC What’s New– Checks for recent activity in

announcements/discussion boards

Process For Running Reports

• Connect to a Data Source

• PHP Script

• Uses PDO (PHP Data Objects)– Data-access abstraction layer

• Data is written to an array in PHP

• Array is parsed, and formatted into a table

• Table is then cached as an html page

First Method (Production Queries)

Blackboard(Production) Queries

(PHP Scripts)

Cached Reports

First Method (Production Queries)

• Pros– Contained current semester data

• As opposed to 6 month gap with the Stats Db

– Data was guaranteed to be up-to-date.

• Cons– Large queries could take down Blackboard

Blackboard(Clone) Queries

(PHP Scripts)

Cached Reports

Second Method (Cloned Database)

Blackboard(Production)

Updated with changed

transactions every 4 minutes

Second Method (Cloned Database)

• Pros– Could query current semester data with

minimal impact on production– Data was close to up-to-date (no more than 4

minute delay)

• Cons– Cloning process inserted extra columns– Replication service broke numerous times

limiting query accuracy

Third Method (Static Replica)

Blackboard(Static Replica) Queries

(PHP Scripts)

Cached ReportsBlackboard(Production)

Complete copy of database made

infrequently, but as needed for reports

Third Method (Static Replica)

• Pros– Can query current semester data with no

impact on production– Data is up-to-date (at time of the static copy)

• Cons– Requires a manual process to make the static

copy– Need to know in advance when we want to

run queries– Will not allow myUMBC What’s New to run as

it needs continually up-to-date data

Most Active CoursesSELECT TOP 50 count(a.event_type) as Hits,

count(DISTINCT a.USER_PK1) as Users,count(a.event_type) / count(DISTINCT a.USER_PK1) as HitsPerUser,

c.course_id as CourseID, c.course_name as CourseNameFROM activity_accumulator a, course_main c, course_users d, users uWHERE c.course_id LIKE '%FA2007' AND a.event_type = 'COURSE_ACCESS' AND a.course_pk1 = c.pk1 AND a.user_pk1 = u.pk1 AND c.pk1 = d.crsmain_pk1 AND d.users_pk1 = u.pk1 AND d.role = 'S'GROUP BY c.course_name, c.course_idORDER BY count(a.event_type) / count(DISTINCT a.USER_PK1) DESC

System Tool UsageSELECT

count(*) as Hits,a.internal_handle as Tool

FROMactivity_accumulator a, course_main c, users u, course_users d

WHEREa.event_type = 'COURSE_ACCESS‘ ANDa.course_pk1 = c.pk1 ANDa.user_pk1 = u.pk1 ANDd.crsmain_pk1 = c.pk1 ANDd.users_pk1 = u.pk1 ANDc.course_id LIKE '%FA2007'

GROUP BYa.internal_handle

ORDER BYcount(*) DESC

Recent Updates

• Use of Delivered Stats Database– (on replica)

• Live (Self-Service) Queries– Tool Usage Per Course– Grade Distribution Per Course

• Deep Link Generator

Future of UMBC Reporting

• Tool Usage for All Courses

• Tool Usage for 3rd Party Tools– Learning Objects, Wimba

• Fully Implement myUMBC Blackboard Integration