How LibPaths’ analytics tools help support learning outcomes
18, July 2025
Tracking usage means you can respond to engagement
In today’s classrooms, digital platforms and curated library content go hand in hand to support learning. When students are engaging with your online collection, every click tells a story.
By keeping an eye on how learners access and use these resources, library staff can tailor their LibPaths portal collection and jump in with support right when it’s needed.
Leveraging LibPaths for collection development
Curating digital resources through LibPaths portals extends collection development. Like print circulation reports, tracking how these digital repositories get used provides valuable feedback for every school.
By monitoring portal usage and engagement with specific content, educators can identify areas where they might need to give additional instructional support – as well as determine which guides are most effective in engaging students.
Understanding the dimensions of student engagement
ACER’s research divides ‘engagement’ into three layers:
Behavioural engagement
How often and how long students use a resource.
For example, are they only spending a few seconds reading a particular source?
Emotional engagement
Students’ attitudes toward the material.
For example, are they motivated by or frustrated with the content?
Cognitive engagement
How deeply students process the content.
For example, are they referencing quality academic sources in an essay?
Mapping resource use to assessment data can reveals useful patterns and behavioural insights. Frequent use of essay guides may indicate that a student needs help with structure or citations, while low access to research or study guides could show disengagement.
Tracking data helps identify who is progressing, who needs support and which interventions are effective.
Three strategies for harnessing the power of tracking data:
1. Promotion and tracking go together
Ensure students know what resources are available to them. Use direct links on class pages or assessment task sheets, so students can easily find support.
Share anonymous access research guide links with parents – through newsletters or the parent portal – to further encourage student engagement.
2. Engage in timely reflection
Collecting feedback from students who are currently engaged in the assessment task means you can adjust as needed.
When combined with analysis of available tracking data, and other post-assessment feedback, you can leverage immediate insights from teaching staff and students to facilitate meaningful improvements.
3. Share analytics with key stakeholders
Sharing tracking data with teaching staff, and examining how it corresponds with assessment data, can help identify patterns or connections between student outcomes and their use of available resources. This offers information that’s relevant to both teams.
Evolving alongside student needs
By integrating a content curation platform like LibPaths, and tapping into its analytics, libraries can track which research guides, study aids and other digital resources see the most use (and which ones gather dust).
That usage data becomes a roadmap for building and refining collections because it highlights:
- hot topics to expand,
- outdated materials to retire, and
- gaps where new content is needed.
In this way, libraries evolve their digital offerings alongside student needs, cementing their role as a vital partner in the learning ecosystem.
Want to know more about how to make the most of LibPaths’ tracking capabilities? Talk to our team today.
Links for further reading
Australian Council for Educational Research. (n.d.). Monitoring learning progressions. https://research.acer.edu.au/monitoring_learning/
Australian Council for Educational Research. (2022). National Assessment Program – ICT Literacy 2022 public report. https://research.acer.edu.au/digital_learning/
Australian Council for Educational Research. (n.d.). Digital learning research overview. https://research.acer.edu.au/digital_learning/
Australian Council for Educational Research. (n.d.). Libraries curating evidence [Conference presentation]. https://people.acer.org/en/publications/libraries-curating-evidence
Australian Council for Educational Research. (n.d.). Information management research. https://research.acer.edu.au/information_management/