# What data is available about posts, to design analytics to understand student engagement and understanding?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-data-is-available-about-posts-to-design-analytics-to-understand-student-engagement-and-understanding/169987
**Category:** Data & reporting
**Created:** [November 12, 2020, 9:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-data-is-available-about-posts-to-design-analytics-to-understand-student-engagement-and-understanding/169987 "2020-11-12T21:44:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 12

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### Author: ![jkmadathil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jkmadathil/32/362832_2.png) [@jkmadathil](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jkmadathil)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2021, 2:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-data-is-available-about-posts-to-design-analytics-to-understand-student-engagement-and-understanding/169987/12 "2021-04-29T14:14:09Z")

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> [@John\_Faig](#):
>
> Discussions are underutilized in education because they lack analytics teachers need to easily monitor and advance discussions. They are also underutilized because most teachers haven’t used it enough to become proficient.

Completely agree to this statement.

I am also trying to integrate Discourse for an Online program and we use GSuite. The SSO integration was pretty straight forward (after I saw the post).

> [@pfaffman](#):
>
> The [data explorer](https://meta.discourse.org/t/32566?silent=true) plugin includes all of the tables. Also, discourse is open source, so it’s all at github. You can look in `/app/models` and each file includes the associated table at the bottom.

I found the [Data Explorer](https://meta.discourse.org/t/32566?silent=true) plugin to be a very useful tool for initial reports. With a good SQL programmer, I am able to get pretty much all the main reports that I want (especially when I want to filter for specific categories and do multiple join statements). We have just started our exploration, but already Discourse is offering so much that it will take us some time to explore them to the fullest. The [network graph](https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-network-graphs/153311) is one addition that I would like to suggest as a possible add-on feature/plugin for educational institutions.

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