How To Gather Valuable Insights With Learning Management System Analytics
The more you know about your learners, the better you’ll be at executing your L&D objectives. Learning data can help leaders gain deep insight into what’s working well and what isn’t. LMS analytics can also show patterns in your learners’ data and empower you to make data-driven decisions to improve your strategy and deliver exceptional training experiences.
Read on to discover what data you can extract from your LMS and how it drives a thriving learning culture.
What You Can Learn From LMS Analytics
Reporting from your LMS brings valuable data to your fingertips to help you create informed learning strategies. Your LMS should contain pre-built reporting capabilities, which include information such as:
- Learner Activity, Progress & Competencies: Break down each individual’s actions and training journey to get an idea of their current growth and of how you can contribute to their development.
- Department Progress: Get a look at how each department or team performs. Are there training gaps among the team? Are there areas where some departments struggle and others where they shine?
- Course & Curricula Activity: What is the current progress in a particular module or course? How quickly are the courses being completed?
- Course Evaluations: Use Course Evaluations as a valuable tool when determining how effective your lessons are. They can help you get feedback on what parts of your course were a success and what areas need improvement.
- Certificates & Other Training: A Certificates report provides a convenient way to review the learners who hold certificates or credentials, identify users whose certifications are about to expire, and update or print any previously awarded certificates or special recognitions.
These reports should be able to provide actionable insight and inform future learning and development strategy shifts. It’s important you’re also able share learning insights across your organization, schedule regular email updates and target specific groups to receive relevant reports.
The Importance Of Customizable Reporting For Even Deeper Insights
Pre-built reports are a must for every L&D manager and are enough for some companies. However, others may need more specialized, organization-specific reports. If you’re searching for an LMS, find one that can accommodate your need for more in-depth reporting that opens a world of possibilities, including:
- Advanced data visualizations
- Personalized reporting dashboards
- API access for data integration
- Deep data analysis
Critical business intelligence insights help you make informed decisions and plan for what's ahead. Even if you don’t yet require customized reports, it’s a good idea to ensure you can get them if things change and you need in-depth LMS analytics.
How Reporting & Learning Management System Analytics Influence Your Learning Culture
Once you gather data from your report, you can factor that valuable information into your learning strategy and culture. Low engagement on compliance courses could indicate a refresh is needed or perhaps more communication around the value of such courses. Lots of buzz in a discussion forum around a particular topic could signify an area of opportunity for future content creation. And so on. How do you find these great pieces of intel? There are multitude of ways to find this data, but there are a few key areas to keep your eye on.
Learner Search Data
Searches happening within the LMS is a great place to start. Understanding what learners are searching for and clicking on can help identify topic areas that learners are interested in as well as where content gaps might exist. Or, if you have content on a highly searched topic, maybe the data is telling you that information is too hard to find.
Content Engagement Rates
Looking at engagement rates between typical eLearning courses compared to videos might also yield good insight into the content format(s) learners prefer. If videos are engaged with at a much higher rate than a typical course then you may want to discuss creating more video content. Similarly, what seems to be the drop off point in videos? Is there a similar point at which most learners stop watching a video? These can help you better understand the ideal content for your particular learners.
Sign-In and Completion Rates
Finally, and most importantly, how often are learners engaging with your LMS? If adoption and engagement are low, then perhaps the biggest opportunity lies in securing learner buy-in. You can get a feel for this by understanding how often learners are accessing the system and how many courses are being started and completed. If you do need more buy-in, starting at the very top of the organization and generating excitement around learning is a solid course of action. If you’re serving the content your learners want and in the formats they like best, then your odds of creating a strong learning culture increase exponentially.
Conclusion
In the end, it’s important to keep an ever-watchful eye on your LMS data to gain greater insights into what’s going well and where there may be areas of opportunity.
If you want more tips on how to create a thriving learning culture, download the eBook ‘Lifelong L&D: How To Develop A Continuous Learning Culture To Support Modern Work Environments.’ It has strategic tips, evolving L&D trends and best practices to support your modern learners through a learning management system. Also, join the webinar to discover the best L&D approach for remote or hybrid work environments.
