Learning & Courses: Learning Analytics- Course Layer

Overview

You can think of the Course Layer as the place to go after the Overview Layer when you want to know which individual courses are actually being used, and to drill into one course to see how users are engaging with its lessons, quizzes, and overall completion rate.

What you will see when you open the Course Layer

The Course Layer opens to a single page with three main areas: a filter bar at the top (carrying over the scopes you set on the Overview Layer), an Overview panel of course-level KPIs on the left (Courses With Usage, Total Users, Users With Usage, Total View Time, Avg Quiz Score, Avg Completion), and a Popular Courses panel on the right showing each course with its total view time as a horizontal bar.

Tip: The Course Layer only shows courses that have actually had activity in the selected time window. If a course you expect to see is missing, expand the time window to find it.

Why the Course Layer Matters

Overview

The Course Layer is especially useful when you want to confirm that important pieces of training content are actually being consumed by your team. Three of the most common reasons to open the Course Layer are compliance, brand communications, and visual merchandising directives.

When to use the Course Layer

• Compliance — verify that staff have engaged with mandatory training such as safety, privacy, or regulatory courses.

• Brand Communications — check that internal brand updates or campaign briefings have been opened by the people they were sent to.

• Visual Merchandising (VM) Directives — confirm that store teams are reviewing the latest VM directives so floor sets and displays match the current standard.

In each of these cases, the question is the same: who is actually engaging with this course? The Course Layer is the fastest way to answer that question without having to dig through every individual user record.

Tip: When you are checking compliance for a specific course, set the time scope to a window that matches the rollout date of the course. A "Last 7 days" view will only show recent engagement; "Last 90 days" or "Last 12 months" is usually a better fit for compliance reporting.

Scope Persistence Between Layers

Overview

One of the most useful behaviors of Learning Analytics is that the scopes you set on one layer carry over when you move to the next layer. If you set a Store and a "Last 7 days" window on the Overview Layer, those same scopes are already applied when the Course Layer opens.

How scope persistence works

When you switch from the Overview Layer to the Course Layer, the platform locks in your previously selected location and time scopes. You do not have to re-pick them. This makes it much faster to drill from a high-level summary into the courses driving those numbers, because you already know you are looking at the same scope of data.

Changing scope on the Course Layer

You can still change scope at any time directly from the Course Layer. The scope drop downs work exactly the same way as they do on the Overview Layer — pick a different location level or a different time window and every metric, chart, and table on the page recalculates immediately.

Tip: As you move through the layers, you will not have to re-click what you were already looking at in the previous layer. This makes drill-downs from Overview to Course to User very fast.

 Finding Courses With Activity

Overview

The Course Layer is built around two questions: how many courses are being engaged with, and which specific courses are they? The Overview panel on the left answers the first question; the Popular Courses panel on the right answers the second.

Reading the Overview panel

On the left side of the page, the Overview panel summarizes course-level engagement:

• Courses With Usage — the number of courses that have had any activity in the selected window.

• Total Users — the number of users in scope with an active subscription.

• Users With Usage — how many of those users actually opened a course.

• Total View Time — the total amount of time spent viewing courses in the window.

• Avg Quiz Score / Overall — the average quiz score across the courses with activity.

• Avg Completion / Overall — the average percentage of course content that users complete.

Reading the Popular Courses panel

On the right, Popular Courses lists every course that had activity in the selected window, with a horizontal bar for total view time on that course. Longer bars mean more cumulative time spent. Course titles are clickable links that take you straight to the course detail page.

Expanding the time window to find more activity

1. Open the time scope dropdown at the top right of the page.

2. Change the window from "Last 7 days" to a wider window such as "Last 30 days", "Last 90 days", "Last 12 months", or "Select Dates".

3. Watch the Overview panel and Popular Courses list update in real time — you should see additional courses appear if they had activity within the wider window.

Tip: If a course you expect to see is missing, the most common reason is that it had no activity in the selected time window. Try widening the window before assuming the course is unavailable.

Drilling Into a Specific Course

Overview

Once you have identified a course you want to investigate, click its title in the Popular Courses panel. This opens a course detail page that shows every piece of activity for that one course within the currently selected scope.

How to open a course detail page

1. From the Course Layer, locate the course you want in the Popular Courses panel.

2. Click the course title (it appears as a clickable link).

3. The course detail page loads, with the course name shown at the top of the page.

4. All metrics on the page reflect only that course, within your currently selected scope.

What is on the course detail page

The course detail page is structured similarly to the layer landing page, but every metric is calculated for the single course you opened:

• A course-specific Overview panel — Users With Usage, Total View Time, Avg View Time, Avg Quiz Score, and Avg Completion for this course only.

• A Course Usage chart — a daily activity chart with one peak per day on which the course was opened. Hover any peak to see the exact date and total user count.

• A Quizzes panel — every quiz inside the course, with view time and average quiz score.

• A Leader Board — the top users on this course by quiz score.

• An underlying activity table — one row per user that has actually engaged with the course.

• Tip: The Course Usage chart is the fastest way to spot when a course was rolled out and whether engagement is steady or concentrated on a single day. Look for clusters of peaks rather than a single tall spike.

Reading the Quizzes Panel, Leader Board, and User Activity

Overview

Below the Course Usage chart on a course detail page, there are three more sections that go deeper than the headline KPIs: the Quizzes panel, the Leader Board, and the underlying user activity table. Together they answer the question "who is engaging, and how well?" for the specific course you have opened.

The Quizzes panel

The Quizzes panel lists every quiz inside the course you are looking at. For each quiz it shows the section, unit, quiz name, total view time, and average quiz score across users in scope. This is the right place to check whether a single quiz is dragging the average down.

The Leader Board

The Leader Board shows the top users on this course by quiz score, with their score listed as a percentage. It is a useful at-a-glance view for recognising high performers.

The underlying user activity table

Scroll further down the course detail page and you will reach the underlying activity table. This is the row-by-row record of every user who has engaged with this course in the selected window. The columns include:

• Name — the user.

• Role — the user’s role title.

• Location — the store or location the user is associated with.

• View Time — the total time that user spent on this course.

• Last Viewed — the most recent date this user opened the course.

• Completion — the percentage of course content the user has completed.

• Quiz Score — the user’s average quiz score for this course.

• Attempts — how many quiz attempts the user has made.

Tip: The user activity table only contains rows for users who have actually engaged with this course in the selected window. If a user is missing, it generally means they have not opened the course yet — not that they have been removed.