New Approaches to Digital Learning can Prove that Learning Matters

Feb 14, 2019 by New Approaches to Digital Learning can Prove that Learning Matters

Learning professionals—whether they’re in the HR department of a company, or part of a learning content and platform provider like Nomadic—are constantly under pressure to prove the impact of the money spent on learning initiatives. The question of ROI in learning is immensely complex and can change substantially, especially as new measures of data and analytics become available.

We think that if a learning experience hasn’t changed the way someone thinks, acts, or sees the world, it didn’t work. For the kind of digital learning Nomadic does, the desired outcome is usually less about particular skill development or small behavior change, and more about shifts in mindset and ways of approaching work.

Introducing this approach to an organization’s learning ecosystem requires new metrics to measure success. Success is measured not just by engagement and completion (which are still important), but by the quantity and quality of conversation, and the impact that conversation has on the organization. So does this mean out with the old, and in with the new? Not entirely. Here are four traditional learning metrics that we still need to pay attention to, and four new metrics that can help you prove the value of learning:

TRADITIONAL METRICS
1. Enrolled users: number of users who have enrolled in the learning experience.
2. Active users: number of users who are active learners in any given time frame.
3. Average completion rates: percentage of learning that users have completed.
4. Quiz scores: how well users are understanding learning content.

NEW METRICS
1. Attention: measures things like learning time, scroll depth, and bounce rates and tells us which content is earning and keeping users attention.
2. Interactions: measures all the interactions between learners (likes, mentions, replies) and helps us to understand how well teams are collaborating.
3. Influence: measures which users are generating the most attention for their social activity and what they are doing to earn that attention.
4. Ideas & Opinion: measures what our users are thinking and helps us to capture solutions to real-world problems through learning.

Learning experiences that can provide exceptional results that highlight these new, powerful data points will solve real business problems like driving alignment, identifying talent, measuring team performance, and more. And a strategy that includes the right mix of learning mindset, delivery, content, and metrics will yield positive business impact in the form of increased engagement, motivation, innovation, and ultimately company performance. All of that will make it a whole lot easier to boast an impressive ROI on learning.

Looking to implement your own Collaborative Learning strategy? Get in touch to find out more about how Nomadic can help you engage, connect, align and measure the success of your collaborative learning programs.

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