Best Practices for Analytics: Learning Organization

Whatever you choose to measure, make sure it is available on a continuous basis. A snapshot only gives you information about a point in time, while a trend provides direction.
Keep the power of benchmarking in mind. Make sure a metric is consistent with how others measure for the benefit of comparison with peers and the industry.
Make sure what you measure is meaningful and, when analyzed, provides value to the organization. Meaningful analytics correlate to business impact.
Optimize existing systems and processes to gather analytics. Technology must be your partner in gathering, assessing, and managing learning analytics.
Realize that trended analytics will result in change. Manage the change process with the goal of improving the learning function.

Best Practices for Analytics: Learning Management System

Know where your learners access online training—intranet, learning management system, the Internet, and so on—and ensure that multiple points of entry are available where your audience browses. You can then track page accesses and dwell times to ascertain whether learners are interacting with the intended training.
Treat the system like a website and track activity on top-level pages, click streams, and drop-offs. Don't let the system drive away learners.
Index the top courses selected and consider additional content in high-demand subject areas. In addition, monitor key search terms to determine whether unmet content needs exist.
If your organization uses social media for collaborative learning, incorporate basic measures within your learning analytics. Informal learning will become the majority of your learning in the future. Don't wait to start measuring it.

Putting this information into action starts with assembling data, understanding the audience it represents, and correlating it to your organization's performance requirements. By tying these concepts together, a learning organization can offer important insights about what the business must do to train employees for better performance, ultimately bringing far greater value to the enterprise than data alone can provide.

Special Reports /

Learning Analytics: How Data Provides Direction

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