How do I see my students' browsing activity? Follow
In this article:
Overview
Hāpara Highlights gives you visibility into what students are doing in the Google Chrome Browser, so you can provide necessary learning supports.
Highlights has three ways to view students’ current browsing, so you can see the information that best supports your teaching.
Customizing your view in Highlights
There are several ways to customize what you see in Highlights in order to best support your teaching.
Rearrange student tiles
Drag and drop
In the Browser Tabs and Current Screens view, you see student browsing information displayed in individual tiles for each student. You can arrange these tiles in a custom order by dragging and dropping them to different spots on the screen. Highlights will remember this order when you leave and come back. This can be a helpful way to arrange tiles when you have students learning in person and you want your Highlights view to reflect your seating chart.
Ordering tools
In the Highlights toolbar there are some additional tools that can help you order student tiles in the way that makes the most sense for you.
Groups
If you have set up class groups, the Groups dropdown allows you to filter your view in Highlights to focus on one group of students at a time. This can be a helpful way to clean up your view when you’re doing a station rotation model and only some students are working online at a time.
Sort
The Sort dropdown gives you several options for arranging your tiles, including showing online or offline students first, or alphabetically.
If you have several absent students, showing online students first is a good way to drop these inactive tiles to the bottom of your screen so you can focus on the students who are present.
# of items
In the Browser Tabs view, you can change the number of items displayed in each tile to see more or less of which tabs students have open. If you have a large class, it can be easier to see everyone if you reduce the number of tabs shown in each tile.
Browser Tabs
This is the default view when you select highlights. This view is helpful for seeing everything a student has going on in their browser. It shows individual tiles for each student in your class.
Each tile shows a list of the tabs the student has open on their device. The bolded item is the tab they are actively looking at. You can scroll within the tile to see all of the tabs a student has open.
If you’re unfamiliar with a website shown in the student tile, you can click on the website name to go to that page.
Note - if the student is logged into a site, you may not be able to see exactly what they see without their login credentials.
If a student is on a website that they shouldn’t be using during class time, you can click the X next to that website name to close the tab for that student. You may be prompted to give the student a reason for why their tab is being closed. Learn more about closing tabs here.
Current Screens
This view displays screenshots of what students are actively looking at. This view is helpful for quickly seeing what each student is currently viewing.
Like Browser Tabs, in Current Screens there is an individual student tile for each student in your class. In each tile, you will see a screenshot of what that student currently has open in their Chrome Browser. You can close the student's active tab by clicking the X next to the website name at the bottom of the tile.
You can click on a screenshot to open it in a larger modal.
From here, you can click on the URL to access the website the student is viewing
Or, if you need to document or follow up on the student’s browsing activity for any reason, you can click Download to save the screenshot to your device.
To protect students' privacy while they are using webcams, Current Screens cannot display a screenshot of students' screens when they are on meet.google.com or hangouts.google.com. When students are on either of these sites, you will see a message like the one below in the student tile.
This message only displays while students have Meet or Hangouts in their active tab. If they move to another tab or website, the screenshot will update. For more information on this, please read this FAQ.
Note - How frequently Current Screens updates depends on a combination of factors including your internet connection and how Highlights has been configured by your Hāpara administrator.
Activity Viewer
This view shows a near-real-time summary of the browsing activity for all of the learners in your class. It’s a great way to understand what your class is doing as a whole.
The Activity Viewer has 3 sections:
- Class Activity lists all sites that students currently have open in their browsers
- Collaboration lists all URLs and documents that two or more students have open at the same time.
- Unique Activity lists all URLs and documents that exactly one student has open.
Class Activity
The Class Activity section lists all sites that students currently have open. It gives you an overall view of what sites your students have accessed while Highlights has been open.
- If all students were browsing the same one site, this section would show one entry
- In the above image, the students are browsing eight sites
- If a student should browse to a ninth site (e.g. www.nytimes.com), the new site would be added to the bottom of the list.
This section uses colored bars to show how many students are active:
- The blue Currently bar shows the students that are currently viewing the site. The actual number of students is shown to the left of the bar.
- The orange Previously bar shows the students who were viewing the site recently but have stopped viewing it, for example by closing a browser tab.
- The gray Never bar shows the students who are not now, and have not recently viewed the site.
Clicking anywhere on the colored bars will give an expanded view - displaying the names of the students within each section. Clicking once more will close this expanded view.
Clicking on the camera icon 
at the end of the colored bar will create a Snap.
Collaboration
The Collaboration section shows all URLs (individual site pages) and documents that two or more students currently have open. This is a great way to see if students are working together in documents or finding similar results in their research.
- If two students both browse to the same new page, the new page is added to the bottom of the list
- If two students start to work on a new document together, the new document is added to the bottom of the list.
- If two students were working on a document together, and then one of them leaves the document, the document is removed from this list (as there is only one student left editing it and that is not collaboration!)
This section uses colored bars to show how many students are active (in the same way that the Class Activity section does).
Clicking on any of the colored bars will give an expanded view–displaying the names of the students within each section. Clicking once more will close this expanded view.
Unique Activity
The Unique Activity section shows all URLs (individual site pages) and documents that exactly one student currently has open.
This section helps you see students who are "exploring" or working on a document by themselves. You can see:
- Who is doing the exploring
- What URL or document they are exploring
- How long ago they first opened the URL or document.
If a student closes the "unique" document or tab in their browser, the corresponding line in this section automatically disappears within seconds.
If you see unique activity that is not appropriate or off task, you can close the site for the student by clicking the X to the right of the website name
Refresh rate
The default Highlights setting is set to refresh student information every 2.5 seconds. Your school System Administrator may reduce this frequency to reduce network bandwidth usage. If the current refresh rate does not meet your expectations, please consult your System Administrator in order to assess whether Highlights was configured for a lower refresh rate (eg. every 20 seconds), or your school network is busy.