Companies invest millions into their online learning and development programs every year and for good reason. Effective training programs can provide some pretty valuable benefits including increased employee retention, boosted morale, improved productivity and a rise in profits. In fact, organizations who invest in employee training can see as much as a 24% increase in profits (1).
As the global workforce continues to grow, it is becoming more and more common for employees to work in teams that are distributed across the globe. Learning and development teams are using machine learning to train these diverse teams.
Unfortunately, not all learning and development programs are successful. The good news is that learning analytics is an educational tool companies can use to measure the effectiveness of their corporate training programs. Evaluating your online learning programs can help you determine whether or not your training programs are effective but there a few other key reasons measuring your training programs are essential to success.
Measuring the ROI of your L&D Programs with Learning Analytics
By definition learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts. This information is used for the purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs.
It also can be a useful tool when you are trying to determine the ROI of a training program. A common model for training evaluation is the Kirkpatrick Model. This model has four levels of measurement that are used to determine the effectiveness, overall impact of training and the ROI.
The levels are reaction, learning, behavior and results. Data from learning analytics reports can be used to measure each level in this model.
The desired result of any employee training initiative is to improve employee performance and productivity. Analytics can help you determine whether employees are retaining the knowledge they learn and if they remember it well enough for them to apply it in the workplace. This will help give you the key insights you need to determine whether these goals were met.
Using Learner Data to Improve Learning Experiences
Quality learning and development opportunities are an important part of attracting new talent and increasing employee retention. In fact, 94 percent of employees would stay with a company longer if there was an investment in learning (2).
Learning analytics can be used to identify learner patterns to find key insights that can improve employee engagement. For example, you may find that the most popular learning modules with the highest engagement in one of training programs have a lot of video content. You may then decide to change low performing content with videos to increase engagement.
Learner data and reporting can also be used to identify users who are struggling with content and those who may benefit from in person training or mentorship. In fact, many analytics programs offer several different kinds of reports that identify learner patterns you can use to make improvements.
Creating Personalized Learning Experiences with Analytics
Personalized learning has become a popular trend due to its ability to increase engagement, knowledge retention and application. Personalized learning is when individual learning paths are created to meet individual learner needs and preferences.
For example, some employees may speak different languages, skill levels and abilities. A personalized learning path will make adjustments to make sure that the learning content is in the right language and pertains to the most relevant concepts they need to learn.
Advanced learning analytics alone cannot create these changes on its own, but analytics is the first step towards personalizing learning. The information collected from learning analytics can be used by AI technology to create a more personalized learning experience.
Conclusion
As online learning programs continue to increase in popularity learning analytics is quickly becoming an essential educational technology. Learning analytics can be used to measure, create and improve learning experiences. It can also help your organization provide engaging personalized training experiences for its employees.
The truth is it is difficult to accurately measure the effectiveness of your training programs without some form of learning analytics.
Learning analytics provides the learner data your l&d team needs to make data-informed decisions. This will ensure that you are getting the most out of your learning and development programs.Check out the eBook, The Power of Learning Analytics Measuring L&D Outcomes for Business Performance to learn more about the benefits of analytics.
