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Tracking app for use on iPad?

zedp

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Hello,

I'm considering doing some research into the use of iPads by academics and students at University and evaluating their effectiveness in the current teaching structure. For example, is the iPad suitable for students to view our University's teaching software, use as a textbook reader, create assignments, etc...

Rather than asking the participants to keep a journal/diary of their use, are there any tools out there to log what features of the iPad that they are using that can then be either uploaded by the user or downloaded by me at a later date? I don't really want a keylogger as I'm not interested in the specifics of what they get up to, just the general applications they use, how often and for how long, etc...

I'd love any suggestions

Thanks,
zedp

P.S. I don't have an iPad myself yet, so I'm just beginning my preliminary research.
 

twerppoet

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The iPad only allows a limited number of background task types. What you want to do is not supported. It might be possible with a jailbroke iPad, but I doubt you're going to convince the entire campus to do that.

For your websites, it should be possible to create some kind of tracking that will recognize and record the types of devices that visit. Talk to your web managers.
 

Ipadquery

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Hi,

I was wondering if you had found a way to track usage after all. I am also asking for research purposes, not mine but at a school I work at. Currently the teachers are logging every time the students are using the iPads and I feel like it is a lot to ask the teachers. I am a concerned bystander :)
 

AppPortion

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iOS is very much a closed shop in terms of what an app can access so unless it is jail-broken your options would be limited. The other problem you have is that the ipad is typically running all the time as are the apps - albeit "backgrounded" in iOS 7. The fact that no one is looking at the screen is almost irrelevant. So any monitoring app that does check to see if an app is running - even in the background - is most likely going to report that it is running constantly. The only real way to monitor use is actually at the server end - which is actually how most of these games that notify you work. They use the internet to log your usage and then use the Apple Notification Service to send you a reminder message if it's been too long since your last use. This is essentially a variant on what twerppoet said - in that you'll essentially have to track usage from the other end rather than on the device. You could look to see if the campus uses an MDM solution like AirWatch or similar. Those sorts of packages might be able to access a little more info on app usage.
 

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