What is Task insights?

Task insights is a powerful analytics tool designed to help monitor and inform the homework policy across your school. It allows staff to analyse task data across the school, groups of students or staff, time periods, and visualise the data in charts or export the raw data in XLS format.

View Task insights

🔒 The actions within this page are controlled by the Task insights permission

To access Task insights, navigate to Homework → Insights.

Alternatively, go to Reports → Task insights.

Task insights consists of several interactive charts, each helping you visualise different metrics related to tasks set across the school.

The underlying data for the charts can be manipulated through the filters at the top of the page, or by selecting different variables in the dropdown menus on each individual chart.

Filter Task insights

The filters at the top of the page allow you to analyse a specific set of tasks. When filters are applied, all of the charts are updated to reflect your selection.

Data records

The Data records menu at the top contains two options:

Tasks count – counts each task as one unit
Tasks duration(min) – counts the expected duration of each task

All of the charts are automatically updated to reflect whichever option is currently selected.

Dates

Academic year - Defaults to the current academic year, but you can select previous years if required
Date - Select either Issued on OR Due on to analyse tasks issued / due within the date range
Date range - Define the beginning and end of the period you’d like to investigate (default is the past 4 weeks)

More filters

Click More filters to further define the scope of your analysis. Toggle on Filter tasks and Filter tasks set to to access all available filters.

Filter tasks:

Due status
Task types
Subjects
Issued by staff
Submission methods

Filter tasks set to:

Year groups
Groups

💡Top tip: You can select more than one option within the same filter menu. For example, a Head of MFL might Filter tasks by Subjects, and then select French, German and Spanish:

📝 Note that while selecting your filters, you can choose to Include or Exclude the selected option in your dataset.

After selecting your filters, be sure to click Apply filters so that the charts update to reflect your selection. Active filters are shown in the text at the bottom of the page.

Save / Load filters

Want to monitor the same dataset on a regular basis? Select and apply your filters, then click Save filters and give the filter set a related name e.g. "Year 9 Maths".

Next time you want to produce an updated version of the same report, simply open Task insights, click Load filters and select your saved filter set. Much quicker than having to apply the same filters repeatedly!

Export data

Data can be exported from Task insights in three different ways:

For a visual PDF report containing multiple charts and tables, click Export PDF on the top right-hand side of the page. When you click Export PDF, a popup appears allowing you to select exactly which components to include in your export:
For a more spreadsheet-friendly download, change ‘Explorer’ mode to ‘Raw data’ and then click Export raw data. This downloads all task data into a CSV, which you can analyse using an external tool.
Finally, you can analyse / export data from one specific chart. On the bottom right-hand side of each chart, there are two buttons:
- View data – reveals the raw underlying data of the chart in table format onscreen
- Export data – downloads the data table as a CSV

Use cases

The charts in Task insights are versatile and customisable. We’ve outlined how to customise each chart and a few common use cases below.

Task count / duration as a percentage by variable

The first chart (pie chart) displays a proportional representation (%) of the task count / duration by a particular variable.

Select a variable from the 'Data to display' dropdown menu:

Year groups
Task types
Subjects
Submission methods

📝 Use case - Expressed as a percentage, which task type has been set most often since the academic year began?

Select Tasks count in the 'Data records' menu at the top of the page.
In the 'Dates' section at the top, select the current academic year, Issued on, and adjust the date range from the beginning of the academic year until today's date. Click Apply filters.
Scroll down to the first chart. Select Task types in the 'Data to display' dropdown.

In the above screenshot, we can see that Assignments (green) are set more often (57.7%) than any other type of task.

💡Top tip: Hover your mouse over the right side of the pie chart to reveal a clickable camera icon. This downloads the pie chart as a PNG image file - handy for adding to a presentation!

Task count / duration over time

The second chart (bar chart) shows how many tasks (by variable) have been set over a specified timeframe.

Select a variable from the 'Data to display' dropdown menu:

Year groups
Task types
Subjects
Submission methods

Then select a timeframe from the 'Frequency' menu:

Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Termly

📝 Use case - How much homework (in minutes) has been issued by each department each week?

Select Tasks duration(min) in the 'Data records' menu at the top of the page.
Scroll down to the second chart. Select Subjects in the 'Data to display' dropdown.
Select Weekly in the 'Frequency' dropdown.

💡Top tip: Click and drag your mouse on the bar chart to zoom in to a particular section, and double click to rescale.

Task count / duration by a single variable

The third chart is a highly flexible bar chart. It displays the task count / duration by a particular variable.

Select a variable for the X-axis:

Task types
Subjects
Teachers
Submission method
Year groups
Groups

There are many use cases for how you might use this variable, plus the filters at the top of the page, to give you valuable insights.

📝 Use case 1 - How many tasks has each year group received this term?

Select Tasks count in the 'Data records' menu at the top of the page.
In the 'Dates' section at the top, select the current academic year, Issued on, and adjust the date range from the beginning of the current term until today's date. Click Apply filters.
Scroll down to the third chart. Select Year groups on the X-axis to show the distribution of tasks set to each year group.

📝 Use case 2 - As a Head of Department, what are the submission rates for homework across my subject area?

Select Tasks count in the 'Data records' menu at the top of the page.
In More filters → Filter tasks, select the relevant subjects and Apply filters.
Scroll down to the third chart. Select Subjects in the X-axis. Click the ‘View submission status’ toggle - this opens a new chart just below called 'Submission status per subject'.

The new chart shows submission rates for each subject area.

Task count / duration by two variables

The 'heatmap' style chart at the bottom displays the count / duration of tasks set based on two variables of your choosing.

Select a variable for the X-axis, and then one for the Y-axis. Both dropdowns contain the same list of options:

Date
Week day
Week
Month
Term
Task types
Subjects
Teachers
Submission methods
Year groups
Groups

📝 Use case - Staff may be required to set homework on specific days of the week based on the subject they teach e.g. English should be set on Mondays, Maths should be set on Tuesdays etc.

Select Tasks count in the 'Data records' menu at the top of the page.
If staff teach more than one subject, go to More filters → Filter tasks, select the relevant subjects, and Apply filters. This ensures irrelevant data is not included.
Scroll down to the chart at the bottom. Select Week day in the X-axis.
Select Teacher in the Y-axis.
The colour gradient on the heatmap indicates low volumes (light) and high volumes (dark) of tasks set.
Hover over the coloured squares to see the amount of work set by each teacher on each day of the week.
The heatmap quickly show if staff are adhering to the policy or setting tasks outside of their allocated days.

FAQ

Question	Answer
How can I download one of the charts as an image file?	Hover your mouse over the right side of the chart to reveal a clickable camera icon. This downloads the pie chart as a PNG image file - handy for adding to a presentation!
Does the export include filters I’ve applied?	Yes. All exports from Task insights reflect the filters applied.
Can I see full details including the description of each task in this report?	No, please use the Issued Tasks report for this.
Can I see the grades that students obtained for their submissions in this report?	No, please use the Student Submissions report for this.
Can I set up an automatic scheduled email to myself or my colleagues containing the Task Insights report?	No. To monitor the same dataset on a regular basis, we recommend setting up Saved filters.