Upskilling and reskilling is the top priority for L&D teams worldwide, according to LinkedIn’s 2021 Workplace Learning Report.
For L&D teams, a critical component of upskilling and reskilling is taking the time to check up on your learners. However, L&D teams often don’t have the resources to assess every piece of learning.
In this blog post, we will share how you can use data analytics to track your learners’ progress and assess what’s working versus what’s not. You’ll start by answering these three questions:
1) What does your learner love?
2) Does the learning stick?
3) Is your community still going strong?
These questions explore how learners experience content, engage in practice, and find community. Learners need all three to upskill or reskill successfully.
What Does Your Learner Love?
Instructional designers often conceptualize courses linearly. But, that’s not how learners use the platform. They’re also not just moving through courses but through a learning ecosystem. So how are they moving through both the courses and the learning platform?
Your data can show you the learner’s journey. You’ll see which content learners skip and what they come back to again and again. You’ll see which courses people take next. You’ll discover what separates successful learners from unsuccessful learners. This data can help you strategize how to help more learners upskill successfully.
Suggestions for how to capitalize on what your learners love:
● Use push notifications or automated emails to trigger favorable actions from your learners. Research from Proliteracy showed push notifications improved attendance by 25%.
● Think like a marketer. Advertise the resources people love through emails, bulletin boards, or learning campaigns.
● Create more content for specific audiences in their preferred modality. This data can help you complete your next learners’ needs analysis.
Does the Learning Stick?
Big data can illustrate the stickiness of learning based on the number of visits by a single user. The stickier the resource, the more often they return to it. However, more qualitative data can also be helpful. Learner surveys with open-ended questions three months later can show you if people are still using their new learning.
If learners are not using their new learning, you have to ask some big questions. Do they find it irrelevant? Or, do they lack confidence?
Research shows that doubtful learners may ace the test, but hesitate on the job. You must achieve mastery before you can make the right decision every time. For newly upskilled learners, this presents a big challenge. You can either wait for the experience to cure the doubt or measure learner confidence.
Confident users are not just better at their jobs. They’re also more active learners. BenchPrep data shows that the most confident learners answered almost 5 times more questions. By showcasing the confidence, you also create engagement.
Suggestions on how to make learning stickier:
● Ask learners to rate their confidence in each answer.
● Make learning stick with daily microlearning questions.
● Integrate the new learning into their daily workflow.
Is Your Community Still Going Strong?
Often, online learning communities start out strong but eventually teeter off. Without a strong community, learners easily stop practicing their new skills.
BenchPrep data shows that the average online discussion participant is 15 times more active online. This means they aren’t just using discussion boards. They’re playing games, doing practice quizzes, and consuming more learning content overall.
Your online community can function as a jumping-off point for learners. They log in for the community, but end up taking a few microlearning modules. For upskilled or reskilled learners, learning communities keep the learning fresh and combat the forgetting curve.
Suggestions for rejuvenating your online learning community:
● Offer weekly challenges where everyone can share their solution.
● At the end of a Q&A, suggest posting thoughts to a discussion board.
● Use moderators to provide an expert voice.
● Include live events through the Zoom integration in your LMS.
Build in a Learner Check-Up
Learning technology has never made it easier to check up on your learners, giving you access to the data you need right at your fingertips. In fact, you can make learner check-ups part of your process.
Together, Richardson Sales Performance, a global sales training company, and BenchPrep launched Richardson Accelerate, a solution that provides various online training programs to inspire and motivate sales teams to better engage with buyers and drive results. BenchPrep’s data and analytics dashboard allows managers to monitor progress and determine where additional coaching was needed. This method illustrates the success of each learner against their personal best. Learners show progress by measuring against benchmarks from the start of the training. Everyone loves seeing learners’ skills and confidence grow. Plus, it proves the results of your instructional materials. Find out how Richardson made learner check-ins a reality using the BenchPrep platform in this case study.