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Creating an Echo360 Media Analytics Tool in Moodle

Echo360
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Who can do this?
The procedures on this page must be performed by a Moodle Administrator who is also an Echo360 administrator, or working with an Echo360 administrator.

The Echo360 media analytics link provides viewing data for all of the media currently associated with the Moodle Course where the link is accessed from. Clicking the analytics tool link opens a consolidated media analytics page in Echo360, showing view data for all of the Echo360 media currently embedded in the Moodle course as well as for media located in any Echo360 section linked to this Moodle course.

Instructors can use this to get at-a-glance information about Student views of course media as well as polling responses for embedded interactive media or section-published presentations.

Providing a direct link to Echo360 media analytics involves creating an External Tool link for the media analytics page. This makes the tool available to be added to each course as needed. The procedures on this page are for creating the tool, and are nearly identical to the procedures for creating the Echo360 Library tool.

The procedures below are provided as guidelines to the Moodle tool configuration process. Refer to the Moodle documentation for additional details if you need further assistance.

BEST PRACTICE: Selecting and copying the values between Echo360 and the LMS can be difficult, and can be prone to selection errors. To select the full value of an LMS field, do the following:
1) Use your mouse to select a portion of the field values.
2) Press Ctrl+A / Command+A to "select all" of the field.
3) Press Ctrl+C / Command + C to copy the selected value.
4) Paste the value into the corresponding field in the LMS LTI External Tool configuration.

To create an external tool for Echo360 media analytics

  1. Log into Moodle as an administrator.
  2. From the Settings menu, select Site administration > Plugins > External Tool > Manage tools as shown in the below figure.
    moodle site administration page with navigation to manage external tools shown as described
  3. On the Manage Tools page, click Configure a tool manually, as shown below.
    configure tool manually link identified on manage external tools page for steps as described
    The External Tool configuration page appears.
  4. Enter a Tool Name that clearly identifies this as the Echo360 analytics tool you are configuring. Since you may already have other Echo360 tools for course use, specifying this as the Analytics tool link is important. 
  5. Copy the following fields from the Moodle LTI Profile in Echo360 into the corresponding fields on the External Tool Configuration form:
    • Tool URL > Host URL
    • Consumer Key > Consumer Key
    • Shared Secret > Shared Secret
  6. In the Tool URL field, go to the END of the URL you pasted and append it with the following: /launch/analytics THIS IS CASE SENSITIVE!! Be sure to enter the text in all lower case, exactly as provided here and shown in the below figure
    MoodleAnalyticsTool_URL_arrowCircle.png
  7. In the Tool configuration usage drop-down list, select Show as activity chooser and as a preconfigured tool, as is shown in the below figure.
    LTI tool configuration usage dropdown list open with selection identified for steps as described
  8. For Default launch container, select New Window as the figure earlier in this procedure shows. While optional, this setting opens the media analytics page in a new browser tab, giving plenty of space to access all of the view and polling data. 
  9. OPTIONALLY: Click Show more... to expand this section of the page, then enter the following URL into the Icon URL field (using the base URL for your region as appropriate - echo360.net.au, echo360.org.uk, echo360.ca):
    https://echo360.org/assets/images/echo360_play_icon.png
  10. Expand the Privacy section of the page.
  11. For the Share launcher's name and Share launcher's email options, select Always as shown in the below figure. This is required so that Echo360 can identify the incoming user and only show the student viewing data to Instructor or Admin users.
  12. Since there are currently no gradebook integrations with the analytics page, you can ignore the Accept grades option and leave it at the default setting. You can adjust this setting in the future if necessary.
    tool configuration privacy settings with required selections enabled for steps as described
  13. Complete any other fields in the form as appropriate for your institution.
  14. When finished, click Save changes.

The Echo360 Media Analytics Tool should now appear in the list of selections for adding an External Tool activity/resource to any Moodle course.