Reframing eLearning ROI: 6 Alternative Approaches
Learning is highly people-dependent and, by its very nature, can be difficult to assess. A traditional ROI calculation can sometimes work, as long as your eLearning has a tangible financial goal. But what if it’s not that clear-cut? L&D teams have long struggled to prove the value of their eLearning, which leads to all sorts of challenges when it comes to reporting, stakeholder buy-in, and budget security.
It’s time to take a more holistic view of what we mean by eLearning ROI. Advanced authoring platforms, detailed learner analytics, and state-of-the-art xAPI integrations have made it possible to calculate ROI based on human interaction. Demonstrating the correlation between learning programs and improvements against objectives, plus additional ROI measures, create a strong case for the value that effective eLearning brings to your organization.
The most important thing is that you measure ROI in a way that makes sense for your organization and its specific goals and objectives.
6 Suggestions For Different Ways To Demonstrate ROI From Your eLearning
1. Speed To Market
How quickly you can launch new learning content can be a key value driver for any business. An obvious example of where this is a great measure of value, is for training providers dealing in competitive industries. If an opportunity for a new training program or product has been identified, speed to market is key for competitive advantage and offers a clear return.
What impact would getting content launched 50% faster have on your organization’s key metrics?
2. Virality
There’s a big difference between eLearning that’s undertaken because it’s compulsory and eLearning which is undertaken willingly and even shared organically with others. To check whether your content is hitting the mark in proving to be interesting and useful to your users, look at the number of shares or the sentiment of comments.
3. Time Spent Authoring
Ultimately, you want the outcome of your eLearning to outweigh the resources and time you invest in creating it. Additionally, if your organization has identified the need for training in a certain area, it’s in the best interests of the business to make that learning available as quickly as possible, while ensuring it’s going to deliver real-life impact.
4. Time Spent Learning
You don’t want your eLearning to feel like a burden. Luckily, this is really easy to avoid by measuring the time it takes your audience to complete your content and aiming to deliver snappy, highly focused modules. This is a core pillar of the people-centered approach to eLearning. Rather than wading through long and boring eLearning courses, your learners will be spending more time on their day-to-day jobs... and if your content is hitting the mark, they’ll be achieving their goals too!
5. Geographical Influence
This one’s particularly relevant for global organizations. To ensure you are delivering consistent training that’s having an effect across the world, you could measure the number of countries you’ve reached or the number of languages your content is available in. Additionally, because the way that your eLearning is received can vary massively between countries, you may want to look at your completion and engagement levels for each country.
6. Learner Feedback
For your eLearning to be truly people-centered, you’ll, of course, want to know the effect it’s having on your audience. Along with taking into account any comments and discussions about your content, measuring learner feedback with ratings at the end of each module is a great way to gauge how your eLearning is being received.
What Else Is Needed To Deliver ROI From eLearning?
Hopefully, these 6 alternative ways to demonstrate ROI have given you some ideas about how to prove the value of the work that you and your team are doing.
Delivering ROI is one of the 6 pillars of people-centered eLearning, a philosophy informed by data from millions of learners, insight from industry experts, and experience of serving hundreds of eLearning projects. You will only really be able to demonstrate impressive ROI if your strategy is underpinned by all 6 of the pillars.
