Improving Visibility in Learning Pool LRS: Visualizations Update

Chris Dunne, Digital Marketing Manager

Hold onto your hats everyone, Learning Pool LRS is coming to you with some brand new features to experiment with, and while there is much more to come, we’re really excited to see these developments out in the wild!

Why All the Excitement?

Well, that’s an easy one for me.

Learning Pool LRS has become such an easy tool to integrate with. Its ability to store multiple sources of data now means that gaining valuable insight has never been easier.

The problem we found however, was that there wasn’t a simple way to take this rich data and analyze it within the tool – a source of frustration our end as well, I can assure you!

And so, the Learning Pool LRS team ventured back to improvements for dashboards, with exciting new features available for both OS and Enterprise users.

So What’s New?

Table Data

Many of you have commented on the source table view and expressed how useful it would be to have it available in the dashboard. Not only have we listened to that request, but we’ve improved the look and feel, and even made an option available for you to switch between the graph and table view in the dashboard builder itself.

Figure 1: Example table showing the average test results by day (scaled is a %)

This feature now gives you the option to show raw data without having to view points on a graph, which is preferable to some users as it’s easier to read/understand.

Benchmarking

Being able to make comparisons to past results is something I’ve always felt we should provide in a simple way. The most sensible place to put this feature was always going to be on the counter visualization.

In terms of how this will be displayed, we settled on a percentage of the value; a green up arrow for a positive value, and a red down area for negative values, with the date range below, as you can see in Figure 2.

If you’re wondering why you might want/need this feature, it’s useful in comparing changes in activity/performance over a set time period so that you can identify peaks in learner activity and where nudges might be needed to help motivate learners to continue.

This feature is simple to understand, and involves a one-slick solution to set it up.

Figure 2: Example negative value for the benchmarking feature.

New Options Menu

This new menu will continue to be developed over the coming months, but for now, each of the visualizations have new options available.

These include: adding trend lines to the X V Y graph, alternating to the table view, changing the number of results displayed on a bar, and adding benchmarking (as above).

Figure 3: Example trend lines option switched on in the new options menu.

These improvements to the options menu ensure a simple and straightforward way to customise visualizations. They also provide a single place of access to all options, as well as a simple but familiar way to add and update available options.

Watch this space for more ideas currently developing behind the scenes. I hope this first edition provides some useful functionality for you to get your teeth into for the time being.

Aesthetic and Usability Changes

This part is probably the most significant at this stage, as these changes focus on a better overall user experience. One of the main aims for Learning Pool LRS right now is to make the tool much more straightforward to use, more intuitive, and generally a more pleasant experience as we see the platform being used by a more varied user base.

Some of these usability changes (for example, default title text and an image in the menu to indicate what type of visualization you are selecting) might seem simple, but these are often the things that provide most value in the day-to-day use of a piece of software.

Other simple changes, such as adding gridlines to charts and improved highlighting of menus, have added nice finishing touches to the aesthetics of this element of Learning Pool LRS.

In terms of functionality, these usability changes offer a more desirable tool for displaying reporting to internal stakeholders, ensures easier navigation of the tool, as well as a seamless setup and configuration of the dashboard.

What’s Next?

The work doesn’t stop here! We are working on implementing various new components that will add new visualization types and further expansion to the options menu.

Some of these things are really close to being ready, whilst a few others will take a bit more time, but I can assure you that you won’t be waiting too long for next release. I look forward to sharing the next set of updates with you all.

If you’re new to Learning Pool LRS and would like to see a demo of what it can do, arrange one now. For more Learning Pool LRS insights, check out the dedicated blog posts.