WebCT allows for this kind of tracking. (Although not independent of WebCT as you suggest.) Instructors can view a quiz session history from initial load to final submission for grading, including each (re-)submission of an individual answer (each question is it's own HTML form...), each with a time stamp. It creates a nice chronological view of a quiz attempt. Looking at this history, you can even tell if a student likes to answer all the question on the quiz and then go back and correct their possible mistakes; or work on each question one at a time until they think they've got it right before proceding to the next question. You could even tell that some students would print the quiz, work it out on paper, and then "batch input" the answers back into WebCT.

On a side note, WebCT will also calculate the upper quartile, lower quartile, discrimination, standard deviation, and mean for questions. Hopefully instructors use this information to tell when they've got a bum question, but I suspect few know this type of analysis is available to them.

Additionally, the instructor can view individual student statistics for page views of course content, a chronological list of pages hit in WebCT, length of time spent on pages, messages read in the bulletin board system.

Furthermore, WebCT collates all that per student data and will provide averages across all students. It even provides for longitudinal analysis across semesters.

I agree whole heartedly about the privacy issues. I think most students would freak if they saw the depth of statistics WebCT tracks.

If I ever had a wiff of something not jiving with the data I had available, I would have hit up our networking staff for something like you suggest to get data from outside of WebCT. (BTW, the network people at my institution were great! Their attitude was "We're here to help you do what you want to do." When was the last time you've heard networking / systems admin. people say that?) It was a pleasure to work with them.

Cheers!

Brent

-- Yeah, I'm a Delt.