Most organizations have some form of learning management system (LMS) in place to educate their employees, update skills, or change organizational behaviors. What you do with your LMS depends on what outcomes or changes in performance you desire. Let’s take a look into some aspects of this plan. Today’s workforce demands engaging, easily surmountable, learning modules. These modules need to be able to measure and improve their learning and provide the organization with ways to easily track and evaluate that learning.
What are learning outcomes?
Learning outcomes or objectives are the new knowledge or skills that the learners are supposed to acquire after completion of the learning modules. You can test how well you have established your learning outcomes as the learner progresses through the module via quizzes, assignments, or any other assessment that provides qualitative and quantitative feedback. If something is lacking in your MLS you can tweak it to produce the desired outcome. What metrics will you use to support this learning? If the learning is being given to a broad range of employees you can measure their performance by looking at the completion rates of the various modules, how much they are retaining from their learning, pass/fail ratios, time spent per lesson, what interactions they have with the learning
engagements, what new skills have they acquired from the module(s), and how they rate their learning once the course is completed. Next, you will need to analyze the data to see if it is working as anticipated. What does this require?
Analyzing the data from your LMS starts with collecting and analyzing the reports regarding the learner’s various activities, outcomes, and behaviors. You can glean what their strengths and weaknesses are from there and see where you need to place more or less emphasis. Remember this is not a one size fits all. Over time you can also see trends in learning or gaps where you can clearly improve. How do you improve?
Looking into the various data and analytics should help you to effectively communicate your findings and recommendations to the various stakeholders. Improvement hinges upon pinpointing your audience, selecting your purpose for the learning modules, outlining the scope, and setting your key metrics and indicators, designing the layout and features for learning more.
Organizations ought to update job descriptions and duties at least every five years to keep up with the evolving employment landscape. Learning must support and keep pace with those occupational updates in order to be effective. The benefits and impacts of this learning if productive are increased performance, job satisfaction, knowledge, updated skills, and more confidence.
