There’s no off switch.
Not for learning and development (L&D) leaders like you who are driven to deliver on the learning goals that support your business objectives.
That means keeping trainee engagement and course design a priority.
Fortunately, today’s L&D professionals get strong support in this pursuit from the right learning management systems (LMS).
Before the advent of the modern LMS, L&D professionals keen to know what worked and didn’t work in their training content had to use manual methods, such as paper-based questionnaires and in-person interviews.
Not so today.
Your LMS records the data of every interaction anyone has with the platform. The result?
Mountains of data on learner behavior, engagement indicators, and performance metrics, to name only a few categories.
But how can you make sense of it, so you can improve engagement and course design to meet your goals?
What your LMS analytics tool can do for you
Fortunately, your LMS analytics tool can sift through vast troves of data in a few seconds to detect patterns, trends, and correlations. Through LMS widgets, you can observe at a glance a dashboard of your performance indicators in real time.
Furthermore, through the LMS reporting function, you can consult reports in standardized and custom formats, including spreadsheets and easy-to-read data visualizations.
And that’s not all.
The right LMS will have an API (Application Programming Interface) that enables you to effortlessly export data to third-party software where you can analyze the data in greater depth.
As a result, your analytics and reporting tools help you gain easy-to-read insights that support fast, proactive decisions about engagement and course design.
The following discussion describes exactly how.
1. Gain valuable insights into learner and course performance
Whether you need a macro or micro view of learner and course performance data, your LMS analytics tool delivers.
For example, a macro view may surface patterns in the data such as:
- What part of a course was reviewed the most often by the group?
- What section did employees spend the least time on?
- Are employees in one business function learning more efficiently than colleagues in another?
- Does one location of your organization attain course goals at a higher rate than other locations?
You can also drill down into your data to get a micro view of how a particular employee is performing:
- How does employee B perform compared to employee A?
- What section of the course produced the lowest test results?
- Does employee B retain knowledge better with video content compared to interactive text?
Based on the insights gained from the data, you can brief your course development team on how to adapt or create your training content.
2. Evaluate how employees interact with your training to improve engagement
Through your LMS analytics tool, you can analyze training effectiveness from several angles: learner behavior, engagement, and performance, among others.
Learner behaviour—For example: What are your course completion rates? How much time are employees spending on various modules? What scores do you see in assessments?
These insights can guide deeper dives into your data to get to the root of the issues you must resolve.
Furthermore, the real-time status of this data empowers you to react proactively to help your employees. For instance, you can provide timely support if a specific employee or group is experiencing difficulties.
Or, if another group is racing through a course, you can provide more advanced content to keep them engaged.
Engagement metrics—Your engagement rate reveals the percentage of your employees interacting actively with your training. Metrics for engagement could include the number of assignments submitted, the modules completed, and the time spent on the course.
Other measures for engagement can provide further insight. For example, if your training includes forums, your LMS can count the number of questions, answers, and participants.
Your LMS can also track social media shares about your training on public applications or an internal platform.
Don’t forget your gamification statistics. The leaderboard, the points awarded, and the badges earned will show what courses or sections of courses are the most engaging to trainees.
Performance indicators—Take for instance your compliance training. You want to maintain a high level of efficient learning to ensure your teams have learned what was required, in the time allotted.
Three performance indicators, among others, could be useful:
Completion rate: How many trainees completed every part of the course?
Knowledge retention rate: How did your learners perform when tested?
Achievement rate: What portion of your employees met the specific goals of the course?
With these numbers in hand, you can compare the year-over-year or month-over-month performance of a group or an employee. Your conclusions can inform your instructional designers on how to adapt or develop the training curriculum to enhance engagement.
3. Develop personalized content and learning paths for more efficient learning
Training content that’s “one-size-fits-all” simply can’t be as effective as training customized to the learner’s needs.
Through your analytics tool, you can segment your learners based on a number of factors to provide them with more engaging training. Consider these three factors:
Level of expertise—Novices, experts, and everyone in between need training content that will challenge but not overwhelm them. Based on your analysis of expertise, you can offer each employee the appropriate course content.
Learning preferences—People have preferred ways of learning: visual, audio, and kinesthetic (i.e., a hands-on approach using physical movement). For example, a shop-floor employee may be a visual learner who does not learn as effectively with interactive texts. Providing more video-based content would help boost this learner’s performance.
Knowledge needs—Let’s say you’re training employees on the new HRIS platform. Your HR team would need a much deeper knowledge of the system than your other managers. By customizing the learning content and path for each group, you’ll improve engagement and deliver a more efficient return on time invested.
Keeping your employees engaged in their training is a never-ending challenge in course design. Fortunately, the insights you gain from your LMS analytics tool can provide great support in your drive to meet your learning and business goals.
To learn more about LMS analytics, connect with us today!
