In a distance or hybrid learning environment, understanding who's engaging—and who isn't—is critical to making sure that students aren't getting left behind.
This guide was developed to help administrators get started with engagement reports, which provide more visibility into individual engagement across an organization: by role, over time, and with granular, actionable data.
We'll cover:
Whether you’re a seasoned data wrangler or brand new to data analysis, we hope these resources and best practices will help you get the most out of your Remind engagement data.
***
If you’re looking for a way to begin measuring engagement in your organization—or just a new metric to use—we suggest starting out with two-way communication.
Measuring two-way communication gives you two crucial pieces of information: Whether students and parents are receiving messages, and whether they’re sending or responding to messages. Together, these demonstrate whether stakeholders are reachable and responsive.
Two-way communication is also a more precise and equitable metric for engagement, especially in a remote learning environment. Metrics like time logged on or behavior on camera often don’t reflect meaningful engagement, and they can also be affected by a number of reasons beyond a student’s control.
The Remind plan includes a few different ways to see and track engagement in your organization. For a bird’s-eye view, your administrator dashboard displays aggregated engagement statistics like message volume and active participants. But for a deeper dive, the best way to drill down into individual engagement data is with Remind engagement reports.
Engagement reports give you additional visibility and insight into individual engagement on Remind. These are automatically included with the Remind plan for schools, districts, and organizations.
With more granular engagement data, you can track who’s engaging and who’s stopped. Each report is exported as a CSV file and contains raw data that you and your team can format and analyze—including the total number of messages, reactions, and voice calls sent by each person in your community.
Next, we'll go over some resources and tips for working with your engagement data.
***
One way to begin analyzing your engagement report data is with pivot tables. Feel free to create and use your own if you’d like to gather custom insights—but if you’re not familiar with pivot tables or want to get started right away, we’ve created some simple engagement templates that you can use specifically for school engagement reports.
These templates are pivot tables that let you pull basic insights for student, parent, and teacher engagement. Just download the format you prefer:
We'll go over how to use them below.
Once you’ve downloaded both your engagement report and the engagement template, you’ll need to copy every field in your engagement report, including every column header and every row. If the rows and columns are out of order or don’t match in number, the pivot tables won’t work.
Then, go to the page of the template titled Paste your report here! Paste your data into the A1 cell in the upper left corner; you'll be replacing all the the cells marked Sample, including the headers. For the fastest processing time, we recommend pasting without formatting. (Keyboard shortcuts: Mac = Command + Shift + V, Windows = Ctrl + Shift + V)
Depending on the size of your report and the program you’re using—as well as things like internet and computer speed—you might experience a lag or see the spreadsheet freeze momentarily. That’s normal, so just give it a minute or two to finish processing.
[.c-grey-box]Tip for Excel users: Template not populating? Try going to the Data tab and selecting Refresh All.[.c-grey-box]
The engagement templates include pages for students, parents, and teachers with selected data insights for each role. We'll go over those below, along with their corresponding fields in the engagement report.
Who sent messages this week?
Who did NOT send any messages this week?
Who received messages this week?
Who’s opted out of notifications?
[.c-grey-box]Where’s the data for students under 13? Because of COPPA, students under the age of 13 don't have access to two-way communication on Remind—and our templates don't show their information. However, you can still find their data in the raw engagement report.[.c-grey-box]
Who received a message this week?
Who's opted out of notifications?
Who spoke by phone this week?
Who sent messages this week?
Who received messages this week?
Who spoke by phone this week?
[.c-grey-box]Common data issues: As you’re working with your report, you might also encounter missing or incorrect data—like blank fields or outdated phone numbers, for instance. If this happens, check out our FAQ for troubleshooting tips.[.c-grey-box]
Our engagement templates are designed to help you track two-way communication in your organization, but feel free to modify them for your own analysis and programs! Here’s a list of all the available data fields for your reference.
If you'd like to start setting specific engagement goals or developing targeted interventions, check out our resources, blog posts, and case studies for ideas and inspiration. Here are some of the latest:
Interested in what else you can do with your Remind plan? Check out our premium training offerings here and reach out to training@remind.com for more information.
