Powerful Web Analytics in Education

I did a quick analysis of an educational course and I have some ideas and a question. Not much has been done in education with web analytics, so it is ripe for the taking.
First I believe that unique pageviews may be very beneficial (as long as students are not deleting their cookies too often). This may also be interesting to compare to pageviews to see how often people return to certain pages. One of the main things that I found with unique pageviews was that people were not completing the course. A lot of them would start, but many of them never finished.
Tracking the direction of students through the course may also be very beneficial. I did not use the most dependable way to track students, but I did look at the site overlay and found that about a third of students are skipping over the middle part of the lesson straight to the end. I would be interested to back this information up with usability testing or interviewing to find if the middle of the lesson is thought of as a waste of time, or just is not helpful. I would guess a little bit of both.
I did not do any analysis of time on page, but I would trust that it would be a rich source of data.
One of the interesting statistics I looked at was bounce rate. I tried to compare high bounce rate on a normal educational page to the type of page it was. It appeared that a high bounce rate was connected to content that was harder to understand. The bounce rates were lower with about 50 instances, but may be pointing in the right direction. I also thought that bounce rates were hitting a page and then directly leaving it, but I must be mistaken. I saw some pages with a 100% exit rate, but a lower bounce rate. If bounce meant hitting a page and leaving directly from it, then the exit rate should always be higher. So my question is what is a bounce rate? If it is hitting a page and leaving it, or just a short time on a page, then we can distinguish between some of the user actions. The same with exit rates. If they are leaving a page more than other similar pages, maybe they are going to a textbook or somewhere else to learn a concept. We may need to bolster the content to meet the students' needs. Could bounce rates and exit rates be a key to making educated guesses about the content on a page? At least it could lead us to some A/B testing and see if the statistics change.
It seems that the forced path that students go through in a course changes the statistics that are needed to analyze a website. Getting someone to buy items on a website is very different than helping a student learn and complete a course. The search for beneficial KPIs may be quite a challenge. It will be an interesting collaborative effort by all that are studing this emerging field.

Getting to Know Web Analytics Better

I read two articles for class this week. Unfortunately I missed that they were supposed to be about e-learning, but even having missed that information I am glad that I read them. The first article definitely was not on the unique list, but was probably the best thing that I could read. I went to Wikipedia and read Web Analytics. That was very informative going through the history of web analytics, giving some definitions, and giving me a list of different tools that are out there. I do suggest that everyone that is new read it because of its simplicity.
The second article I read was Improving Web Usability through Visualization. The author helped develop a system that tries to present the statistical data found in web analysis in a visual way. They use what they call a "disk tree technique" which uses expanding circles and lines of different colors to represent the website. They believe that this method allows people to better process the statistical data that they are giving, seeing things like paths taken through a website, new popular sections of the website, broken links, and other interesting information quickly and more effectively. They even felt that it could give good information as to ways to change the site in order to more effectively present information the users need and shorten pathways from the home page. I initially thought that they would show something like the visual studies that show where people look at a web page or something of that nature. Even though it was not in that way, I could see programs move more in a visual direction, and more visual than the graphs that are currently used in programs like Google Analytics. The focus on information and its placement in a website may also be very beneficial in the e-learning and education arenas. Tracking of information and movement through a website would help to improve a course tremendously.

My Google Analytics Wish List

I cannot say that I am a Google Analytics expert, but here is my wish list for the program. Who knows if any of this will ever happen, but I can hope can't I!

1. I would love to be able to track the links that are in Flash, as well as the html links.
2. I would love to know where the user is going with their mouse. (It may even be nice to have some sort of averaging system that shows where the mouse is most of the time.)
3. I would love to have some way of tracking where their eyes are going. (Ok, so this won't happen, but wouldn't that be cool!)
4. I would love to know why they are doing what they are doing--maybe web analytics could have some type of qualitative section that they have found helpful--a tried and true method.
5. I would love to know what the most common paths through the website are. This may be possible, but I haven't figured it out yet.
6. I would love to know who is coming back multiple times to the site and where they are coming back to.
7. I would love to have Google pump me out some feedback on how to improve my site based on what they saw, maybe like in Amazon style: "other people who had the same statistics made effective changes on their site like this" and give all kinds of good suggestions.
8. I would love to have Google make dynamic content changes for me. (Ok, I know I'm going to far, but it would be nice).

Overall I think that Google Analytics is wonderful. It does some pretty amazing things, and you can't beat free! Just a few more bells and whistles would be nice, but I'll take what I can get.

What Should I Gain from a Class

To clue everyone in, I have started this blog for a class on web analytics. And why take a class on web analytics, well I like design and there seems to be a lot of power in web analytics. We don't have to take as many random guesses.
So what do I want to get from the class? I want to understand web analytics better.
But at the same time I want to find more meaning in understanding web analytics better. I know that power and tools by themselves are not connected to morality, but the way we use them is. I want to know ways that I can use the power of reaching people through media in a positive way. I hope that is as far from the traditional model of getting a grade as possible. I just hope that I work hard enough to fulfull my desires. And that hope should take me a long way.
Michael

School, Family, and Enjoyment: About Me

I heard that PhD stands for piled high in debt long before I got into a PhD program. Maybe that means I am a monetary masochist. Currently I am in the Instructional Psychology and Technology PhD program at BYU (and yes I have been asked what that major is a lot of times). I work with all the things behind the scenes in education--the designing, evaluating, researching, technology, and everything else that doesn't have to do with teaching.
Even more important than my PhD, I have a wonderful family. My wife is about to finish off a bachelors in Humanities with an English emphasis, and I have three wonderful daughters. We work hard to raise them well. The other night we were doing a Family Night and my wife was teaching our children about good things we should do. She had a solid list going and my five year old added to the end "and eat chicken." Keep the commandments or eat chicken. At least we've gotten across the importance of a health diet even if it's against the desires of the palate.
Other than that I am trying to get some exercise from basketball once a week and would like to get into handball (yes, the game we played in middle school). Writing gets more and more interesting as well. I'm learning to enjoy life more and more, and I'm sure this blog will be part of that learning.
As the Argentines say, stay under the shade!
Michael