Canvas Data Usage

Canvas keeps data about users' access and engagement. Our goal in this page is to summarize which data are made available, to whom, and how.

Several analytics & reports about student activity are made available to teachers & TAs within Canvas courses. These analytics & reports are limited to the course in which they are found. Learn more about what is available through New Analytics and other course reports, as well as examples of how and why it may be useful, at our Analytics page. Students can open New Analytics to see its analytics about themselves (although the most comprehensive info about one's own course grades is the Grades area).

We also create custom reports using Instructure's Canvas Data warehouse as a data source. Some reports focus on activity data for specific students (e.g., the number of days since students accessed any Canvas course, missing submissions, current course score); these reports are only available to authorized administrative staff. Some reports aggregate data about users and/or external tool use to improve the Canvas service (e.g., the number of students who use Canvas mobile apps each day, or how many courses use TurnItIn).

User data is also gathered by external tools, i.e. third-party applications integrated with Canvas, typically through the LTI - Learning Tools Interoperability - standard. We review the data security of external tools in conjunction with OIT Security. A list of external tools integrated with Canvas is available. Reports and analytics about student use of these tools may be available to the staff and faculty who administer and use them.