"How much is Blackboard actually used?" This question is being asked more frequently as college administrators begin to review budgets and work to limit expenditures as the economic downturn is causing everyone to look more closely at software and hardware systems in place on college campuses today.

Blackboard powers the teaching and learning environment and is used for the core business of an institution.  A requirement therein is - if this is the case, then how much is the system actually being used?

Since the native reporting tools in Blackboard are limited, one of the tools we have been using on our campus to track usage is Google Analytics.  I first came across this idea from Paul Erickson who works at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.  He has blogged about his use of Google Analytics on his pheWork blog.

Google Analytics provides a great set of capabilities that allow to measure the visits to your servers, the geographical location of your visitors, their browser, their OS version, their network speed, and all sorts of other interesting information.  Best of all, this service is FREE!

So how do you get started measuring your system with Google Analytics?

1. The first step is to setup a Google Analytics account. 

2. The next step is to create a profile for your Bb system using the "+ Add new profile" link.

3. When adding your profile, the Google setup wizard will guide you through adding your domain and then present you with a "tracking code".

4. Using the tracking code provided, you will need to place this code on your Blackboard system.  It varies as to where you place this code.  Some colleges place the code in the header of Blackboard's frameset.  I have our system setup with the code in a footer on our Blackboard Community System.

5. Once the Google Analytics application can connect to your site, the system will begin to aggregate data.  Reports can be viewed from then Website profiles area. 

This data can then be shared with others at your institution as one metric that can help you share with your administrators and colleagues at your campus as to how valuable Blackboard is from a "hits" standpoint.  Here are some sample reports that I have assembled from our usage on our campus.  While these reports don't tell you what exactly is happening inside of your Blackboard environment from a teaching and learning perspective, these data do demonstrate how frequently your server is being accessed on a day to day basis.

How do you measure "hits" to your Blackboard system on your campus?