Measuring Success: How to Use Learning Analytics in Instructional Design

How can learning analytics support instructional designers?

Imagine you're a chef. If you want to whip up a delicious meal, you need to know more than just the recipe. You need to understand your diners' preferences, the freshness of your ingredients, and the correct oven temperature–and having the right tools at hand lets you do everything more quickly and effectively.

Similarly, instructional design is not just about creating L&D programs; it's about understanding the learners, the effectiveness of your content, and the impact of your training. That's where learning analytics comes into play.

L&D data and learning analytics support instructional designers by providing insights that inform and enhance learning and performance programs’ design, delivery, and evaluation. Here’s how:

1. Identify learning needs: Pinpoint gaps in current training programs by analyzing performance data, learner feedback, and engagement metrics. This information enables a data-informed approach to pinpoint specific areas where learners struggle and tailor content to meet those needs.
2. Personalize learning experiences: Use data on learner behaviors, preferences, and performance to create more personalized learning experiences. This personalization can lead to increased engagement, better learning outcomes, and a more efficient learning process that's tailored to each learner’s individual needs. By analyzing how different types of learners interact with various content and learning modalities, you can optimize the content to cater to diverse learner needs and preferences.
3. Enhance training content quality: See which parts of a course are most and least effective to refine and improve course content—making it more relevant, engaging, and effective. These insights can also allow the organization to surface really good existing content to more learners, and since many orgs have content on multiple platforms, they can also highlight the most helpful content based on learner feedback.
4. Optimize learning paths: Map out the most effective learning paths for different roles. Perhaps one piece of content on a topic is great for managers, but another piece provides the right level of technical detail for engineers–or maybe engineers still appreciate the first piece as an introduction before diving into the second! In learning analytics, slicing your data by role or group can provide deep insights into when and for whom learning is useful.
5. Measure and prove organizational impact: Link training programs to performance improvements, productivity gains, and other key business outcomes so you can show the value of L&D programs to stakeholders and secure further investment in learning initiatives.
6. Predict future learner needs: Use search analytics to anticipate the skills and knowledge that people want to learn, ensuring the organization remains competitive and that its workforce is prepared.
7. Facilitate continuous improvement: By regularly analyzing data, you can make iterative improvements to learning programs—ensuring they remain effective, relevant, and aligned with organizational goals.

Now, let’s examine some of these areas in more detail.

The magic of personalized learning

Learning analytics enables you to tailor learning experiences. Think about a time when you had to sit through a one-size-fits-all training session that barely held your attention. Paying attention was a struggle, let alone actually remembering or applying any of the subject matter.

Now, imagine a learning experience that adapts to your pace, preferences, and performance. Sounds great, right?

You can use L&D data to analyze learner behaviors, preferences, and needs to create learning options, which cater to a diverse group of learners. This approach boosts learner engagement and ensures everyone gets the support they need for success.

Quality training content that resonates with learners

Does your training content hit the mark? Learning analytics provides insights into which parts of your course are engaging and which are not.

So, if data shows learners consistently skip a particular module, it might be time for a revamp. On the flip side, if a video tutorial has high engagement, you know you're on the right track. This feedback loop means you can continuously refine and improve your L&D content, making it more relevant and impactful.

For example, Caterpillar used content analytics to identify popular training videos on CAT’s Kaltura video platform. Comparing several months of data, they discovered that about five or six videos had significantly more views than the hundreds of other videos on the platform.

By looking at these videos in more detail, they explored the reasons for their popularity. Then, they used these insights to inform their strategy for releasing and promoting new video content.

Proving your worth as an instructional designer

One of L&D’s biggest challenges is demonstrating the value of training programs. With learning analytics, you can link training to performance improvements and business outcomes.

Let's say you've rolled out a new sales training program. By analyzing sales performance before and after the training, you can measure its impact. This evidence-based approach proves your work's value and helps secure further investment in learning initiatives.

This following example sales dashboard provides an overview of learning and performance data relating to a sales team—including a report showing a correlation between sales training and calls made by the team.

This example report shows how coaching interventions improve and shore up sales performance, using Watershed’s line report and event lines feature:

Predicting future L&D trends with search analytics

What if you could predict the skills your organization will need in the future? With search analytics, you can.

By analyzing content search analytics trends and patterns, you can pinpoint emerging skill trends and patterns to anticipate future learning needs. For instance, if you see a steady increase in people searching for UI/UX design training, you can ensure your existing UI/UX design content is relevant, highlight or promote existing resources that learners might not be taking advantage of, and expand or enhance your content library as needed.

This forward-thinking approach ensures that your organization stays ahead of the curve, preparing your workforce for what's next.

Turning lukewarm feedback into positive results

Let's look at an example. Imagine a company that introduced a new safety training program. Initially, completion rates were low, and the feedback was lukewarm. The instructional design team used learning analytics to discover the training was too long and some topics were difficult to understand.

The team revamped the program, breaking it down into shorter, more engaging modules. The result? Completion rates soared, and feedback turned overwhelmingly positive. This is the power of data-informed decision-making.

The following example report shows which questions need to be reassessed to ensure learners understand the training and can successfully apply what they’ve learned:

Knowledge isn't just power—it's progress

Staying ahead of the game is crucial. Capturing L&D data and applying learning analytics offers instructional designers a treasure trove of insights to create more effective, personalized, and impactful learning experiences.

Remember, learning analytics isn't a one-and-done deal. It's about continuous improvement. Regularly analyzing L&D data allows you to make iterative improvements to your programs. And as a result, your training remains effective, relevant, and aligned with organizational goals.

In other words, it’s about more than designing content, it’s also about improving people. We can make a real difference in learners' lives and drive organizational success. So, let's embrace these tools and transform how we design learning.

If you’d like to find out more about how learning analytics can enhance the design of your training programs or discuss your L&D data strategy, get in touch.