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How To Use VR Training Metrics To Measure Success

When you think of a successful training program, what comes to mind? Perhaps you think of setting goals or a strong return on investment (ROI), but are you tracking the right metrics to show success? 

Too often, learning and development professionals overlook the power of metrics. Each training program comes with its own set of metrics and are custom to training objectives that are trying to be met. Specifically in VR training programs, common metrics include, but are not limited to:

  • Usage Data
  • Progress, Completions, and Replays
  • Body Movements
  • Retinal Tracking

 

Virtual Reality (VR) may be the right training tool for your organization, but how do you measure its true effectiveness? This is where metrics can help!

In learning management, metrics refer to quantifiable measures used to track learners’ activity and assess the value of a training program. Collecting metrics can be challenging, but they’re critical in measuring the value of your investment in your VR training programs. Metrics indicate the quantity, quality, time, cost, and effectiveness of your training program. 

In this article, we’ll explore the importance of collecting training metrics, metrics you can collect with VR, how to analyze VR metrics, and how to choose a VR training partner.

Why Are Training Metrics Important?

Unfortunately, not all training programs live up to their potential. Lucky enough, you can use training metrics to ensure your program is effective. With VR training metrics, you can measure the success of your training program and ensure your employees are meeting their learning objectives. Training metrics are important for the following reasons:

  • Metrics quantitatively measure the effectiveness of your training program — Metrics provide numerical evidence of successes or shortcomings of your training program, such as high completion rates or low assessment pass rates. Metrics allow you to ensure that your investment was worth it and yields a strong ROI. 
  • Metrics identify problems and can help you make improvements — With metrics, you can pinpoint problems and refine them to maintain better post-performance results. For example, if your metrics show that a learner is great at stacking a wall of storage boxes, but they struggle with the orientation of boxes, you know that this is the specific issue you need to address.
  • Metrics verify that your learners are learning — Various numerical data including completion rates, progress, and retention trends can help confirm that your learners are effectively retaining information.

Read More: Why Training Metrics Matter

Common Training Metrics

It’s easy to get lost in the labyrinth of training metrics, but if you nail down your training program goals, the process of identifying and collecting metrics becomes easier. With clear goals in mind, your organization can keep its metrics in check and ensure that they align with the organization’s strategy. Common training metrics can tell you the quantity, quality, time, cost, and effectiveness of your training program.

Popular training metrics include: 

  • Time spent on each activity
  • Time needed to complete the course
  • Completion rates
  • Assessment pass rates
  • Employee ROI
  • Training ROI

These common training metrics can help you stay on track with your learning objectives and organizational needs. For example, if over 80% of your learners are passing their training assessment, you can confirm that the majority of your learners are retaining information and will perform well at their job.

Read More: Training Metrics for Workplace Learning Success

VR-Specific Training Metrics

To avoid poor quality training and financial losses, it’s important to make sure you pay attention to and collect VR training metrics. VR training is special because every action a learner takes within the training environment can be measured and fed into an XRS dashboard. Let’s take a look at the best metrics you can collect with VR.

Usage Information

Usage data are the most basic and fundamental technical information needed to track various components of your training program. Usage data includes:

  • Who is using the training
  • How often they’re using the training
  • How long it takes them to complete a task

This data sets a foundation for all analytics to come by indicating the user and their usage activity within the training space. These metrics help the facilitator ensure that their participation rates are high and that learners are engaging with the program. 

Usage data can help facilitators get their learners closer to reaching strategic training and development objectives. The more usage data facilitators collect, the more they can learn about how their training program is used, how to more effectively facilitate it, and how to better meet learners’ needs.

Progress, Completions, and Replays

Progress, completions, and replays are quantitative measures of the learners’ VR training journey. These metrics help make sure learners are on the right track.

  • Progress — Lends accountability to learners through tracking the lessons they’re in the process of completing.
  • Completions — Indicates how far learners are on their learning track and that they have finished their assigned modules. 
  • Replays — Shows how often learners are restarting or repeating lessons. Replays can point to areas where learners are struggling to understand key ideas or need repetition to better understand information. 

This information makes it easy for facilitators to assign content, as well as make sure their learners are on track and completing modules successfully. When systems are in place that measure progress, learners and facilitators are both reminded of the timeline of the program and desired learning goals. Additionally, tracking learners’ progress ensures that later down the line of the employee’s lifecycle, problems can be avoided or revisited. 

Performance Indicators

Performance data are numerical indicators of productivity and engagement. These metrics include, but are not limited to:

  • Decisions — Demonstrates learners’ cognitive judgment. By tracking decisions made within a training program, facilitators can see correct and/or incorrect decisions made by learners and refine their skills to ensure higher quality outcomes.
  • Timing — Shows the time spent making decisions and completing training modules. Timing records the elapsed time of an act, action, or process in VR training, which can indicate areas of difficulty that should be revisited by learners. 
  • Body movements — Nonverbal signals that convey learners’ feelings in a specific context. Body movements in VR training, like lifting boxes or scanning items, signal physical responses felt by learners in various situations. 
  • Retinal eye tracking — An up-and-coming performance metric that shows who, where, and what learners are looking at. This data can be used to indicate areas of unconscious bias and potentially improve an organization’s diversity and inclusion efforts. 

Performance data demonstrates how well learners are at a given skill and how they would behave in the real-world situation. Learners’ decision-making processes, where they’re looking, and their reactions and interactions with objects can indicate key information about their attention span, engagement, and focus. Performance metrics allow facilitators access to unique data that wouldn’t normally be available during real-world training programs. 

How to Collect and Analyze VR Training Metrics

VR training metrics can be collected with an extended reality learning management system, such as Mercury XRS. A standard XRS can maximize the value of your VR training by reporting all metrics to one web-based dashboard. Organizations can analyze results by looking at the performance of learners and comparing it to ideal performance measures. 

With an XRS, real-time training metrics are automatically tracked and received in easy-to-read digital reports. Once received, these reports can help organizations gain a deeper understanding of the impact that training is having on its profits and operations. If your program doesn’t provide successful results that align with your organizational goals, then you may need to re-evaluate it. This way, you can foster a more positive training experience and ensure a successful training program. 

Choosing a VR Training Partner

When working with a VR training partner, be sure to assess potential providers thoroughly. You should review their portfolio, ask for pricing information, and check for any reviews or ratings. A reliable partner should answer any questions you may have with full transparency and guide you through every step of your VR training journey. A partner should know that effective VR training doesn’t have to stand alone, and could be part of a blended learning program that utilizes a mix of training modalities to achieve learning objectives. 

Your best bet for conducting VR training metrics reporting at scale is to invest in an XRS with reporting capabilities, and a good partner can help you work through this process. With an XRS like Mercury, you can install software on headsets and manage your VR training all from one platform. This way, you can eliminate the need to access each VR headset in-person and instead execute and manage all VR training operations remotely.

Watch More: Driving Simulation VR

Are You Ready to Use Metrics to Measure Your VR Training Program’s Success?

We’ve covered the importance and challenges of collecting metrics in VR training, examples of both common and VR-specific training metrics, and the value of choosing a trusted VR training partner. 

Now, it’s time to ask yourself: “Is my organization effectively measuring and prioritizing our VR training metrics?”

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