Chapter 9. Monitoring User Activity

Moodle collects usage data of all activities taking place from the time a user logs in until he/she logs out. This data can be utilized for a range of monitoring activities that will be examined in this chapter. After providing an overview of monitoring, the chapter deals with two types of techniques:

• Monitoring provided by Moodle

  This includes activity reporting and user tracking as well as some basic statistics.

• Monitoring provided by third parties

  This includes web log analyzers and live data trackers such as Google Analytics.

Given the nature of the tasks involved, we will finish the chapter with some information on privacy and data protection concerns.