Find out what’s new in iLearn Insights for 2024, how to access it and where to get help with using the tool.

iLearn Insights is an easy to use reporting tool which allows teaching staff to visualise student activity and engagement in iLearn units. This article summarises the new and improved functions of iLearn Insights that are now available for you to use to monitor and increase student engagement in your unit.

You can now:

  • View all Gradebook category totals for your unit side by side in one report
  • Find out which students have completed the Safer Communities course
  • Add the iLearn Insights Block to your unit for quick access to the most popular iLearn Insights reports
  • Macquarie Business School (MQBS) faculty staff now have an additional nine different email templates for sending personalised bulk emails
  • Easily provide direct links to key student services in your targeted emails using a range of new iLearn Insights email variables that have been added
  • Activate cached data in your iLearn Insights settings to speed up the time it takes for pages to load – especially helpful if you have a large unit
  • View a report on H5P quiz performance

This presentation gives an overview of key iLearn Insights functions, including what’s new.

Access the recording of the February 2024 Zoom presentation for an overview of all the iLearn insights functions.

Here’s what’s new in iLearn Insights:

  1. Gradebook categories report

    The Gradebook categories report offers a way to view all Gradebook category marks side by side in one report with an option to filter by an individual Gradebook category item and send a personalised email to a targeted group of students. The Gradebook categories report can be viewed from Unit > ‘Gradebook Categories’ menu within iLearn Insights.



    (Initiative thanks to: Professor Nathan Daczko, Natural Sciences)
  2. Report showing completion of the Safer Communities course

    Macquarie University has launched an important new course for students called Safer Communities @ MQ. This new course, available via iLearn, replaces Consent Matters, and covers a wider range of topics such as healthy relationships, consent and creating a safer university community. You can view which students have completed this course by accessing the Safer Communities Completion Report in iLearn Insights – go the Participants report by selecting Unit > Participants menu.

  3. iLearn Insights Block provides quick access to popular reports

    The iLearn Insights block provides quick access to the five most popular iLearn Insights reports directly from your iLearn unit home page:
    1. Student login summary
    2. Unit access trend
    3. Academic Integrity Module (AIM) completion
    4. Top 5 hits within the last 7 days
    5. Students who are yet to access the unit

    You can add the iLearn Insights block in iLearn by –
    Turning ‘Edit mode’ on and then selecting ‘iLearn Insights’ block from ‘Add a block’ menu.

    iLearn Insights block also has a direct link ‘Go to iLearn Insights’, which once logged in, takes you directly to unit dashboard in iLearn Insights.



    (Initiative thanks to: Team Applications Services)
  4. Email templates for Macquarie Business School (MQBS)

    Macquarie Business School (MQBS) faculty staff now have an additional nine different email templates to choose from for sending a personalised bulk email. These email templates are only available for use in MQBS units and can be selected only for ‘Personalised bulk email’. To use these email templates for ‘Personalised targeted email, please copy any of the email templates and paste within the ‘compose email text’ area.

    For further enquiries related uses of these email templates contact Lisa Rohanek lisa.rohanek@mq.edu.au





    (Initiative thanks to: Lisa Rohanek, Lecturer, Department of Marketing, MQBS)
  5. New email variables provide direct links key student services

    To make your emails more informative you can use the following new variables to include direct links to relevant web pages in your emails to students (saving you time as you don’t have to look up the link).



    An example of the use of these email variables is shown below –



    All iLearn Insights email variables can be selected from the ‘Variables’ combo box within the compose email page. Further reading related to iLearn Insights variables can be found in Improve personalised student emails by using iLearn Insights ‘Variables article.



    (Initiative thanks to: Lisa Rohanek, Lecturer, Department of Marketing; Roneil Latchman, Learning Design and Production Lead, MQBS)
  6. Activate cached data to make iLearn Insights pages load faster in large units

    If you’ve got a large unit (high number of students and activities) you may have noticed in the past that the iLearn Insights pages would take longer and longer to load as session progressed. This is due to the high volume of data processing required as iLearn Insights is constantly calculating and displaying data. To overcome this issue, you can now choose to activate cached data so that iLearn Insights will only process data once when you first login (instead of every time you go to a new page). This way, once you have logged in any other subsequent pages you access will load faster. Please note that, if you activate cached data and then want to have the data refreshed, you will need to re-login.

    By default cached data for iLearn Insights is disabled. To activate cached data click the settings icon next to ‘selected dates’ within the unit dashboard. Select ‘Activate cached data’ and ‘Update’ settings.



    Once cached data is activated, you will see the notification ‘Cached data in use’ in red at the top right corner on the unit dashboard page.

Here’s what else has been improved:

  1. H5P Quiz report

    View the performance of H5P quizzes using the H5P Quiz Report. It shows the numbers for total correct, incorrect, partially correct and not attempted for each question. You can drill down further in this report to show individual student performance for each question. This was a bug fix and the report is now working as intended.



    (Initiative thanks to: Natalie Cernigoi, Senior Learning Designer, FMHHS)

Need more help?

Further information can be found on the iLearn Insights website.

Access the other iLearn Insights posts in this series:

Got an idea for an enhancement or special report from iLearn Insights? Please submit a Feature Request and we will contact you to discuss.

Please contact Shamim Joarder or Jeremy Hind for more information.

Posted by Shamim Joarder

Shamim Joarder has worked for various educational institutions since 2001. His eLearning journey began in 2009 working as an eLearning Project Manager at the University of Adelaide. Mr. Joarder currently works at Macquarie University, Sydney as Senior Learning Analytics Adviser, where he has designed and developed two unique learning analytic applications titled 'iLearn insights' and 'MyLearn'. He has also authored the book 'Moodle eLearning Course Design: A Flexible Approach'. Mr. Joarder received numerous accolades, including awarded silver at the QS Reimagine Education Awards 2023 in Abu Dhabi under the Regional (Oceania) award category, 2022 ACODE and CAUDIT Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, and was a finalist in the 2022 AFR Higher Education Excellence Awards. His work was first recognised in Singapore at the ASCILITE 2019 conference by winning the ASCILITE award for innovation. He also won 2021 Vice Chancellor's Learning Innovation award at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

All Posts

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *