Understanding Impact OLX For xAPI Beginners: Making Sense Of Week 2

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Chris Dunne, Digital Marketing Manager

Join the OLX here:

https://beta.curatr3.com/courses/understanding-impact-the-final-xapi-frontier/

We’re very nearly coming to the end of our ‘Understanding Impact: The Final xAPI Frontier’ OLX and we would like to extend our thanks to all the xAPI enthusiasts who have taken part and, taken the time to ask insightful and discussion provoking questions so far.

We have been exploring the nitty gritty details concerning using the xAPI to prove the impact of learning in your organisation. We’ve covered how to utilise Personas within a Learning Record Store [LRS] and now, how to implement a ‘Learners Journey’ as part of a users learning experience.

Week 2 Recap: Personas represent an actual person, or learner, and hold a combination or zero or more identifiers and attributes which help in distinguishing between users.  

Personas are used by Instructional Designers to help understand their audience when designing courses or learning initiatives, ensuring courses are engaging and relevant to the end user.

This week, our Learning Pool Learning Record Store team have introduced us to the term ‘Journeys’; an Enterprise feature of the Learning Locker and, guided us through how to represent these Journeys within an LRS in order to gain a greater insight into learning content and, the impact this has on your organisation.

Week 3 focused on how to set up user ‘Journeys’ in the User Interface [UI], how to create them within your dashboards and, how to use the API and ‘Journeys Outcome’ feature.

What is a ‘Journey’?

‘Journeys’ exist as a visualisation option that allows a trainer to set individual Waypoints for their learners.

If we think of a Journey as a to-do list, then a Waypoint is a task within that to-do list. For a learner to complete a Waypoint, they are required to perform a task that will then send a statement to match a single piece of criteria which is specified in the Learning Locker.

Journeys allow you to specify complex patterns of user behaviour, visualising those people who complete your journey requirements.

These ‘Journeys’ can be used to measure learning initiatives or tasks that are considered a requirement, for example compliance training or Onboarding.

An xAPI Story

Joining the OLX this week, you will first hear Learning Pool’s (formerly HT2 Labs)’s Ian and Ryan discussing the xAPI and the use of ‘Journeys’ with Bryan of Macy’s department store in the US.

Bryan shares his experience of xAPI and LRS and, informs us of how, previous to the xAPI, learning records for Macy’s employees were spanning across three separate systems. xAPI enabled them to integrate all of their data into just the one LRS.

Bryan also discusses some of the varying problems or issues that they have stumbled into and, how the xAPI had helped them overcome these troubles.

For example, allowing for easier access to learning records, enabling learners and trainers to track progress and, teaching learners to use Journeys for compliance training.

Going forward, the team at Macy’s are now leveraging Learning Locker and the xAPI to help make better recommendations for their learners, encouraging them to participate in alternative content.

Below, we have produced a list of Bryan’s recommendations for starting out with the xAPI for those of you who are either soon-to-be facilitating the change or, seriously contemplating doing so:

1. Engage your tech team earlier in the process in order to minimise time constraints
2. Understand what data should be recorded in order to analyse a users journey/understand where improvements are needed
3. Be aware of how to produce reports of a learner’s journey more efficient

What Can We Learn From Week 3?

If you’ve been following our blog posts surrounding each week of our ‘Understanding Impact: The Final xAPI Frontier’ OLX, then you will know that I can’t let you go without providing you with some key learning points, followed by various resources where you can find more detailed accounts. Happy learning!

Key Learning: To recognise that, sometimes, there are pre-defined ‘Learner Journeys’ that you may want to track, analyse and/or, act upon

Resource: What Are Journeys?

Key Learning: To understand the concepts of Journeys, Waypoints and, Outcomes in Learning Locker.

Resource: Using Journeys in the Browser

Key Learning: To understand how to create and manage Journeys in Learning Locker’s UI and API.

Resource: Using Journeys via the API

Key Learning: To understand how to create a ‘Heatmap’ visualisation for a Journey in the UI

Resource: Using Journeys in the Browser

Key Learning: To understand how to retrieve a learner’s progress through a Journey via the API

Resource:  Using Journeys via the API

Key Learning: To understand how to trigger external actions with a Journeys outcomes

Resource: Using Journeys to Trigger External Actions

There is still plenty of time to join our ‘Understanding Impact: The Final xAPI Frontier’ OLX. Dive in from Week 1 and, make your way through the different levels at your own leisure.