Understanding impact: Putting your knowledge to practice

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Libby Cross, Senior Marketing Executive

In our last blog, ‘Understanding impact: Getting started with learning analytics’, we walked you through the basics of learning analytics within a given organization. We discussed why your organization might need learning analytics, the types of learning you could measure and track and the tools, for example, a Learning Record Store (LRS), your business realistically needs to implement to achieve its learning goals. 

Part of this ‘getting started’ process also includes realizing that factors such as company size, learner audience, revenue/company growth and L&D budget will all play a role in how far you take your business with data and analytics. It is unrealistic to think you’ll achieve the same levels of data analysis as an organization with a budget that’s £20k greater than yours but that also doesn’t mean you need to walk around in the dark. 

If you feel like your company is going in blind, Learning Pool’s Learning Analytics Maturity Model was designed to help companies just like yours discover where it is in its journey. Take the diagnostic now. 

Where are we with data?

If you’ve taken our diagnostic, you’ll have learned where you are in your learning analytics journey and where you need to go. But in determining how you get there, it’s worth considering where we are with data as a nation today. We are aware now, in ways we never were before, that everything we do generates data. Banking, exercising, liking things on Instagram – even sitting in a chair passively consuming TV. All these normal activities generate data that affects the world around us, whether we own and control it or not. 

The same can be said for learning analytics. Businesses typically aren’t complaining that they don’t know how to collect and store data; with the right tools in place, organizations have access to a whole variety of valuable and actionable learning data. The real challenge lies in identifying which aspects of this data is the most useful for the company’s goals – how can the data gathered be used to drive decision-making and determine future learning strategy? How do we go about understanding impact when it comes to a specific learning course, or more specifically, how can the results of a course indicate a return on investment?

You can read more on this in our recent whitepaper,  ‘Data and learning: A new common-sense approach’.

Gaining powerful analytics with a Learning Record Store

Our last blog walked you through what a Learning Record Store is and why you might need one. In short, if you want to know your learning strategy is resulting in business impact, an LRS is the best tool to help you do this. 

Learning Pool Learning Record Store is the world’s most widely installed Learning Record Store but with a whole host of applications available for Enterprise users, it can get a little confusing knowing what’s exactly right for your organization. 

In this Training Industry Product Showcase in partnership with Hubspot, we offer a guided walkthrough of the leading LRS. 

During the session, we demonstrated key Learning Locker functions, including:

• Creating custom dashboards to help you visualize data.
• User segmentation for improved reporting.
• One-click templates and rule-based journey visualizations.

Putting your understanding into practice

So, what are the next steps for you? Is your current view of learning analytics that you understand what you need to do, perhaps you even know how you should be doing it but you’re struggling to put that knowledge into practice? Let me start by saying this… Learning analytics isn’t purely about technology. It’s about the people and capabilities that you have in the company, it’s about how aware you are of what’s possible and why you would even bother doing it. 

Learning Pool’s Data Specialist Certification has been designed to help upskill those who work directly with workplace learning – either as administrators or designers – to help them get to grips with Learning Analytics and a Learning Record Store (LRS). 

The program is a blend of the practical and theoretical; challenging participants to understand how learning analytics can be used to bolster the business case for learning and get hands-on administering an LRS and looking for opportunities to use data to improve the learning experience. 

Get in touch today to find out more. 

If you’re only just starting out and don’t know where to begin, read our blog ‘Understanding impact: Getting started with learning analytics‘.