Accuracy of Completion Reporting
Paul Johnson
Tyro
I use Panopto with Blackboard. When students ask about grades or suggestions for studying, the first thing I do is check their stats on User Completion for the lecture videos. I want to ensure they're doing the work before I make suggestions. I've had several students say that these stats are not accurate. Someplace else on this forum, another user said that they had confirmation from Panopto that the Completion stats are not accurate for users on older versions of Safari or Chrome.
So, is this true? Because I know of at least one faculty who is assigning extra credit based on completion (promise it isn't me). If Panopto is not providing accurate stats, then this needs to be in the documentation so faculty don't use it as part of their grading.
If it is true, is there a timeline on resolution?
Thanks for your time.
Answers
Hi @Paul Johnson - Is this the previous forum you were referencing: https://community.panopto.com/discussion/comment/3132#Comment_3132?
Yes, thats it.
Hi Paul,
Apologies that this didn't receive an answer from us earlier - I just noticed that both "answers" didn't come from us. Panopto does list in our requirements that users need to be on an updated version of the browser: https://support.panopto.com/s/article/Learn-About-Viewing-Requirements
If they are on a version of the browser where we would not be able to collect statistics, large portions of the site would also not load. There is still a work item in our system to make the need to update more prominent when someone tries to access from a very out-of-date browser, but there is no current timeline on when this might be implemented.
Hi Kathryn,
Thank you so much for the response! Do you happen to know where in the versioning that the browsers break this functionality? I'd like to be able to say, "You need Chrome 12.1.3+ and Safari blah blah blah" The requirements page says "Latest Versions". Does that mean just the current version? Also, it is unlikely someone looks for that requirements page unless they're having usability issues. So, if the browser shows the video but breaks the tracking, there is no way for users to know that. That said I will certainly be including the requirements information in my class now. I appreciate you taking time to answer. Thanks!
@Paul Johnson - You "hit the nail on the head"! The Panopto video streams/plays as normal, so the user has no idea their activity is NOT being recorded. Panopto indicated the user was supposed to get some pop-up or alert, but they never did. Nothing indicated to the user there was any issue. Kathryn mentioned in her comment that "large portions of the site would also not load"; however from what I recall, our users didn't experience any other issues. So there was no way for our users to know and there was no way for us Admins to try and proactively warn those users who were using old browsers as Panopto didn't gather that information. I submitted our support case January 27, 2022. Sounds like not much progress has been made on these issues in the past 10 months.
@Paul Johnson The official requirement is to use the most recent version of the browser, and when troubleshooting we would ask users to update to the current version if they have not. Unofficially, a browser version would likely need to be a year or more out of date before these issues may appear. I don't have an exact version list that I can provide, however.