Being able to measure and monitor learner progress is an important part of rolling out an online training programme. After all, if you can’t be sure it’s paying off, what’s the point? The Academy LMS is a Learning Management System that focuses on securing learner engagement - which is great for learners, great for the training ROI and great for you as an organisation. But we realise that you can’t simply take our word for it: how can you be sure that engagement really equates to results? Sure, learners may be taking a lot of eLearning units, gaining numerous badges and sharing them on social media, but how much of the training content are they really learning? And will this learning ever translate to real-life changes in behaviour? We know that understanding how well your training programme is working is key to establishing your return on investment. That’s why we’ve focused on creating a reporting suite that does exactly what it says on the tin - it provides great reports that allow you to truly monitor learner progress and ensure the online learning is a success. Our reporting suite is one of the most comprehensive in the industry, designed to give you unprecedented oversight into the inner workings of your learners. There’s no need to sift through enormous spreadsheets, print of reams of paper or manually work out individual progress. The Academy LMS gives you what you want to know, and only that. Here’s how: Filters You can filter your reports by country, region, division, or your own pre-defined groups. Want to conduct some A/B testing to see which eLearning units are most effective, or in which order the modules should be consumed? No problem - simply group your learners according to which learning method they used and then run the report; you’ll be able to compare the two to see which technique works best. This helps you to tailor your future training to gain the best results for your organisation - because no two organisations are alike in their training needs. Push reports Reporting on the Academy LMS is seriously low maintenance. The Academy can automatically push the right reports to the right people, freeing up time for the more important tasks and allowing managers and admins to become more efficient. Say you want a specific report run every week. All you’ll need to do is set up the report requirements (including when, to whom it should be sent, and other stipulations) and set it to repeat each week or month. Easy, right? Future-proofing As with all aspects of the Academy LMS, we’re passionate about continual improvements. We regularly update and innovate our reporting suite to reflect both client needs and trends that matter. That way you can be sure that if you need to know something, you’ll be able to find it out easily. The reporting suite on the Academy LMS truly is a remarkable feature. It makes monitoring the effectiveness of your online learning incredibly easy and straight-forward, which is vital when so much depends on the return on investment your training programme might secure. To find out more about the Academy LMS, its features, and what it can do for your organisation, get in touch using the button below and let us give you the grand tour!  The post Making Reporting Easy with the Academy LMS appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Social learning plays an important role in our Academy LMS. Our social learning features encourage learners to collaborate and share their knowledge, expanding their skillset, increasing learning and improving motivation. It’s all because learning, like a lot of things in life, is more fun when other people are involved! Fostering a social environment makes great learning journeys even more awesome, making the whole experience not only inspiring, enjoyable and engaging, but also collaborative and friendly, too. Traditional learning can be quite a lonely experience. In classrooms, learners are told not to talk, not to copy each other’s work and certainly not to sit near each other during tests. And traditional classroom training is similar - without next generation functionality, learners may as well be solo on their Learning Management System, since they don’t get the chance to interact with others or even know of their presence! Our Learning Management System, on the other hand, is a next gen LMS that revolves around social features and gamification functionality to make learning much more fun, engaging and sociable. Learners are able to chat with their peers about what they’ve been learning, share ideas, collaborate to solve problems and expand their knowledge in ways they could hardly have dreamt of when they embarked on their learning journey. Learning on the Academy LMS is never lonely! And because learners are happier, more engaged and chatting about the learning topics, they actually learn more, too. This is because a great proportion of our knowledge comes from ‘informal’ learning - around 90% - compared to 10% of knowledge which we gain via ‘formal’ learning, like classroom training and eLearning modules. So being able to continue recalling information and learning more about the topics after the initial formal training is very beneficial for learners; their knowledge increases far more than it would do if they simply took an eLearning unit (or attended a classroom training event) and then left it at that. Check out the video below, which explains some of the Academy LMS’s social features that will supercharge learning! Want to find out more? Sign up for a demo tour of the Academy LMS by clicking the button below!  The post Social Learning on the Academy LMS appeared first on Growth Engineering.

The experiences we have in school as children can often dictate how we feel about and approach learning as adult learners in later life. If we had negative classroom experiences as children, it’s far more likely that we’ll try to avoid adult training programmes, or at least enter them with a weary heart. But the thing is, we are not the same people we were at school. Adults have grown, matured and developed, and as such when they enter back into the world of learning they have a different set of requirements and require a different style of teaching. Tutors, trainers and those creating eLearning for adult learners can learn a thing or two about teaching adults by following Malcolm Knowles’ five principles of adult learning (check the link for a really in-depth explanation). Malcolm Knowles observed that adult learners learn best when: They understand why they’re being taught it (i.e. why it is important) They have the freedom to learn their own way Learning is experiential (i.e. they can try it out and put it into practice) The time is right for them to learn The process is positive and encouraging Let’s look at these in more detail: 1. Make sure your adult learners understand why they’re undergoing training Adult learners undertaking eLearning courses under their own steam - perhaps Open University courses - are likely to be naturally enthusiastic about their training. But when it comes to employees who might feel they are being ‘forced’ into workplace training, there can be a bit of push-back. That’s why it’s important to explain exactly how the training will benefit these employees. For instance, it may help to improve their job prospects; they might be worried about stagnating in their current role, so knowing that they have the ability to progress - once they’ve completed the training and gained the required skills - can be motivating for them. If an adult learner has been signed up to an eLearning course called ‘Improving Closing Skills in Sales’ then it’s a good idea to emphasise why closing skills are important and why they’re being required to learn about it: it’ll be easier to generate business, quicker to go through the sales process, and their performance will improve. 2. Learn their own way We’re all different and therefore we all learn differently. Learning styles vary from person to person and are as unique as fingerprints. What works for some people may either prove as ineffective as a paper umbrella or as infuriatingly painful as stinging nettle underpants for others. That’s why you should ensure all learning styles are catered for, both in the eLearning unit itself and as learning continues beyond. Here’s how: Visual learners need videos, diagrams and photos Auditory learners need a voiceover or video Kinaesthetic learners need to be able to put something into practice to reinforce the learning (so give them the opportunity to complete exercises to apply the knowledge) Most adult learners will use all of these learning styles, but ensuring that each style is included in every eLearning unit or online training program will ensure all adult learners are catered for. 3. Learning is experiential This principle emphasises the importance of encouraging activity within learning - whether that takes the form of working out problems, conducting tests and trials, imagining scenarios and planning solutions, or acting out roleplays. 4. The time is right for them to learn This principle is quite tricky to apply when it comes to adult learning in the workplace, because it’s not the individual who necessarily requests the training. Instead, it could be that the organisation requires all employees to undertake compliance training, or new product training. So it may be the ‘right time’ to learn about these things, but it’s not necessarily the adult learner who is making the decision. In this situation, it can be useful to look back to principle #1 and emphasise the importance of training to the learner - this way, they can see the benefits and begin to feel as though it was their choice to start the training. 5. The process is positive and encouraging As we hinted at in the beginning of this article, adult learners often have negative memories of learning in school environments. That’s why it’s vital that as adults they are encouraged, engaged and motivated, and that the learning journey is a positive and enjoyable one. After all, if a learner doesn’t really want to be there, they’ll automatically be starting off on a negative footing. You can make the learning journey engaging, encouraging and positive for adult learners by making sure the process is ‘gamified’ (i.e. gamification functionality is used to make learning fun) and social, in that adult learners are able to work together and share knowledge. This social, informal learning aspect is important because it’s how adult learners naturally work together in their daily jobs. You can find out more about how to make learning fun and engaging for adult learners by downloading the free white paper below:    The post Adult Learners: How to Engage & Motivate Them to Learn appeared first on Growth Engineering.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but over a quarter of organisations are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their Learning Management System, a Capterra LMS survey report has found. The report, published on 8 April 2015, surveyed over 100 users of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) to discover how people buy and use the software. You can read the full Capterra LMS report here, or carry on reading below for an overview of what we think are the most interesting findings. Satisfaction not guaranteed While it may seem that 63% of users being satisfied with their LMS is something to write home about, learning technologies companies can’t afford to overlook the 37% who strongly dislike or hate their LMS. Not only does it reflect poorly on a company if their LMS is detested by its clients, but knowing that there are some supremely dissatisfied LMS users out there can prove ripe for picking by other, more forward- and fast-thinking companies who are more passionate about impressing their clients and creating online learning solutions that truly knock socks off (hello!). Falling in and out of love Interestingly, the Capterra LMS survey found that satisfaction ratings were susceptible to a ‘honeymoon period’. Satisfaction was found to be at its highest (86%) from 6 months until the first year, after which it sharply fell to just 44% for year 1. Satisfaction then rose slowly in years 2 to 5 (52%) before jumping in years 5-10 (73%) and then levelling off at a respectable 80% after more than ten years. This would indicate that, much like a marriage, a relationship with an LMS is susceptible to peaks and troughs. After the initial gush of lust wears off, the adoration turns to ambivalence (with some contempt thrown in) until, after a few years, you become so fond of your Learning Management System that you begin to love it, warts and all, and can’t imagine your life without it. Feature failure The main reasons given for dissatisfaction with a Learning Management System were a lack of features (44%), difficulty of use (22%), a lack of support (19%) and a high price tag (11%). Clearly, at a time when technology is moving forward at a rapid pace and so many aspects of our lives are made easier by next generation solutions and applications, people expect the same kinds of functionality on their Learning Management System. And why shouldn’t they?! It’s reassuring to know that our Learning Management System, the Academy LMS, satisfies a lot of customer cravings for cool capability. Capterra’s survey found that 22% of respondents who have an LMS wished it had gamification features, and 18% wished there were social learning features. As the #1 Gamified LMS, #1 Next-Gen LMS and overall #1 LMS in the world, we’re confident that the Academy LMS has all bases covered in this regard! Teeming with talent A further feature that LMS users wished they had access to was integrated talent management functionality. 28% of respondents have this on their wishlist, and we don’t blame them. It simply makes sense to house all kinds of training, talent and performance management together and make everything easily accessible for learners. That’s why we’ve created the Performance Centre, an all-encompassing area of our LMS that allows for tracking objectives and KPIs, organising reviews, ensuring company values and principles are adhered to and planning for professional development. These features are just a drop in the ocean of our Learning Management System. The Academy has even more than this to offer - click the button below, fill in the form and we’ll get in touch to arrange a demo to show you just what the Academy is capable of. After all, as the Capterra LMS survey revealed, 57% of people will demo at least three Learning Management Systems before making their ultimate decision. Don’t you think it’s time to book yours in now?    The post Capterra LMS Survey - Our Key Takeaways appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We know, from both individual experience and empirical research, that in order to get other people to pay attention to what we’re saying, we need to make them curious. A sense of curiosity will keep people engaged and hanging on our every word, rather than zoning out and going through the recipe for tonight’s spaghetti bolognese in their heads! And the same is true when it comes to learning. Learners will only become motivated to learn and improve their knowledge if they are curious and invested in the topic. But making people curious is easier said than done! There is no switch to flip, magic word to say or spell to cast to make people curious. In fact, trying too hard to create curiosity can have the opposite effect - it can make us bored and disinterested! What makes us curious? In order to boost curiosity, we first need to know exactly what it is that makes people curious. It can help by looking at situations which elicit a feeling of curiosity. We get curious when we encounter something new, surprising or perplexing. That much is obvious. Think about stumbling across a new shop in the town centre: because it’s new, we feel curious about it - sometimes even enough to walk in and investigate ourselves! George Loewenstein, a professor and psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, looked at curiosity in depth in The Psychology of Curiosity: Review and Reinterpretation. According to George, curiosity comes from an ‘information gap’. This information gap theory states that curiosity begins when we become aware of a gap in our knowledge or understanding. We feel a gnawing hunger to fix this wrong, gain the knowledge we lack and bridge the gap of missing information. Highlighting the gap One of the ways to make people aware of a gap in their knowledge - and one which we utilise on the Academy LMS in the form of social learning - is when your peers appear to know something that you don’t. Don’t we all find it infuriating to hear from a friend, "Have you heard about XYZ? No? Oh, never mind then…" While we didn’t care about XYZ before, now we have been made aware of our lack of knowledge we can’t resist the urge to find out more and close the gap: we’ve been made curious! Social Learning To boost social learning on the Academy LMS (and therefore increase learner curiosity) we give learners numerous opportunities to prove their knowledge. Forums and Insight Groups allow them to share what they’ve just learnt, input their thoughts and ideas, and suggest further reading for each other. If someone logs on to find they don’t know half the things that their fellow learners are sharing and talking about, their curiosity will be sparked: they’ll be aware of a gap in their knowledge and will work to remedy it promptly, whether this is by going through an extra eLearning unit or two, checking out the suggested further reading or posting their own questions. In this way, social learning will boost curiosity, thereby helping to improve knowledge and getting learners more engaged and motivated in their training. Find out more about the importance of social learning by downloading our free white paper below!    The post Social Learning: Making People Curious appeared first on Growth Engineering.

On Valentine’s Day 2015, we thought we’d give all of our lovely readers, customers and learners a very special treat. We created an amorous V-Day themed comic to spread the love and show the world that romance isn’t dead! The comic was a huge success (who knew people loved a love story?) and, as we did with our previous comic, Night of the Learning Dead, we decided to transform There’s Something About Genie into a video! The comic opens with Al, an L&D manager, looking all googly-eyed at Jasmine, who works next door in the HR department. Al has been trying for months to get Jasmine to notice him, but nothing he does has worked - she has no idea he even exists, the poor chap. With time running out before Valentine’s Day and Al being a romantic at heart, Al knows he has to do something quickly if he is to win Jasmine’s heart before the big day. Then the perfect opportunity seems to present itself: the HR department needs a new piece of health and safety eLearning, and who better to create it than Al? "Here’s my chance!" thinks Al. "If I create an awesome piece of eLearning, Jasmine is bound to notice me and fall in love!" Oh, Al. If only creating jaw-dropping eLearning is as simple as you… Will Al succeed in his mission to win Jasmine over and have a Valentine’s Day to remember? Or will he fall at the first hurdle and torment Jasmine with a mind-numbingly boring piece of eLearning that sends her straight to sleep…? Check out the video below to see how Al’s plan pans out - and watch out for Genie’s magical arrival!   What do you think? If you want to find out more about Genie and what he can do for your eLearning, click the button below and we’ll show you what else he has up his sleeve!    The post There’s Something About Genie! - Watch the Video appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Each year the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) is held in Qatar. It’s the premier international platform that is dedicated to innovation and creative action in education. The theme of the 2014 WISE summit was ‘Imagine-Create-Learn: Creativity at the Heart of Education,’ and one of the topics on the agenda was the future of classroom training. It’s an issue which we are very interested in, as we have already pointed out some of the main changes happening to classroom learning here and now. To prepare for the event, WISE conducted a survey of over 600 experts - among whom were Professor Noam Chomsky and Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia - to establish what the future of classroom learning might look like. The survey, ‘School in 2030,’ found that almost half the respondents believed that online content will become the number 1 most important source of knowledge by 2030, rather than a ‘brick and mortar’ school, which came in second. It also suggested that when it comes to classroom learning, the role of teachers will change drastically from that delivering knowledge to learners, to guiding and mentoring students through their individual learning journeys. Interestingly, the survey also pointed out that most experts believe that classroom learning will evolve to encompass more personal, tailored learning content for learners, as opposed to the current standardised content. We couldn’t be happier to read these findings, as they are things that we’ve believed in for the past few years! In our white paper, ‘Classroom Training Goes Tech: Bringing Technology into the Classroom,’ we explain that tutors will move on from their role of disseminating information to guiding learners, and will act as facilitators of learning rather than strictly keeping to a syllabus. We explain the importance of utilising all technology available to us to boost classroom learning, and emphasise how vital it is that learners are able to tailor their learning to their particular needs, and do so while working in teams and sharing knowledge. Here’s an excerpt of the survey (click here to access the full document): "No more ‘teachers’, lectures or imposed curricula: henceforth, the brick-and-mortar school will no longer be a place where students are taught theoretical knowledge, but instead a social environment where they receive guidance, enabling them to interact with their peers and build a diverse toolkit that will better prepare them for professional life. Innovation, not only technological but also social and pedagogical, will help transform the traditional ‘classrooms’ into future ‘meeting rooms’ where cooperative learning takes place and students prepare for their working future." The use of online content as the main source of knowledge also fills us with joy: we’re passionate that online learning is the solution to a whole bunch of problems - a lack of learner engagement, poor recall, insufficient socialisation and accessibility problems to name but a few. Indeed, we suggest in the white paper that classroom learning needs to embrace technology in order to survive and flourish. There are ways to combine online and offline learning and encourage social learning to really boost understanding, engagement, enjoyment and overall learning, as you’ll see in our white paper - just click the button below to find out how we suggest the classroom learning revolution will occur!    The post The Future of Classroom Learning: Predictions for 2030 appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’re really excited to announce that we are Bronze sponsors of the 2015 AITD National Conference in Australia! The AITD (which stands for Australian Institute of Training and Development) National Conference will be held on 13 and 14 May 2015 at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney. It’s a premier training and development event and has earned a fab reputation for providing delegates with high-quality, dynamic presentations on an exciting range of innovative topics - which is right up our street! As well as being Bronze sponsors of the AITD National Conference 2015, we’ll also be exhibiting our exciting products on Stand 12. The event will give you the chance to test drive our new game-based authoring tool, Genie, and see for yourself just why our Learning Management System, the Academy LMS, has been ranked the #1 LMS in the entire universe for 2015. Speaking of the Academy LMS being the best thing since sliced bread, the #1 ranking was bestowed upon us by the all-knowledgeable eLearning expert Craig Weiss, CEO of E-Learning 24/7. Each year he reviews over 600 LMSs (what a saint, that must take a while!) and releases lists of the Top 50. This year, he ranked the Academy LMS the #1 in the world. AITD attendees will be overjoyed to hear that they’ll get to experience Craig’s knowledge first hand, as he’s hosting a not-to-be-missed talk at the event. His presentation, ‘No more LMS secrets,’ will give conference attendees the inside scoop on the LMS industry and show you what feature sets to look out for in the next few years, the latest LMS trends, and which LMSs to watch out for in 2015. The AITD National Conference will be our first foray into Australian training and development events, so we’re really looking forward to seeing what the land down under has to offer! If you’re going to the AITD National Conference this year, come and say hello! You can pre-book a meeting with one of our friendly team by emailing us or clicking the button below to fill out our Book a Meeting form: Here’s a bit information on the AITD: the Australian Institute of Training and Development membership allows training, learning and development professionals to join a body of likeminded people and provides numerous opportunities for professional development, networking, recognition and access to an extensive portfolio of magazines, journals and eBooks. More information is available via the website at www.aitd.com.au/the-australian-institute-of-training-and-development      The post AITD National Conference 2015 in Sydney, Australia - We’ll be there! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Making sure your eLearning actually engages your learners is vital to the success of the project. Without learner engagement, the eLearning won’t be effective. If learners aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing, going through the eLearning unit won’t lead to any real learning. It’s an issue that we come across time and again when talking to business owners, L&D professionals and training managers. They have the eLearning units, they have the Learning Management System, they have the desire to roll out their training programme: but their learner engagement is set to a big fat zero! We stumbled across this article on Business2Community today that lists 7 important things you can do to quickly and easily improve your eLearning and get learners more engaged with what they’re being taught. We wanted to add a few more thoughts to their list, and extend it to show you how to really supercharge your eLearning. Head to Business2Community to read the whole article: Make the eLearning units shorter: As the article states, our attention spans are mostly pretty rubbish these days (read more on that here). That’s why shorter, bite-sized eLearning is much more effective at securing learner engagement and therefore improving learning. But more than that, when eLearning units are short, we’re not only more likely to squeeze studying into our busy day, but we feel that sense of accomplishment at having finished a unit more often. And as we’ve said before, a feeling of accomplishment is important to motivate and engage learners in their activities. Sort the images out: How many times do we have to say it? Stock images are, by and large, pretty awful. They’re obviously posed, cheesy and often jar with your content. It’s far more effective to take the time to commission a set of photos or images that are relevant to your organisation, on-brand and not eye-wateringly cheesy! It’s also worth saying that images should complement the text - not try to distract from boring reams of content or overly-complicated language. Uncomplicate the complicated: As we said above, images shouldn’t be used to distract from confusing language or huge paragraphs. How should it be done, then? Well, the answer is not to have overly long or complicated text in the first place! Break up paragraphs with bullet points, split text over a few screens, use diagrams where possible, put information into tables, use voice-overs or videos instead… there are numerous ways to make on-screen text easier to read. Add assessments: As the article says, you need inbuilt tests or assessments to check that learners have actually been, you know, learning! We do this with a variety of tests and quizzes, in numerous formats - from scenario-based questions with free text answer boxes and multiple choice questions, to sudden death pop-up quizzes and experience-specific data entry to prove learners can apply the content to their own situation. Collect feedback: You won’t really know what your learners thought about the eLearning unit unless you ask them, or allow them the opportunity to tell you how super-duper-fantastic-smantastic they found the module (or not…). You can use in-depth surveys to do this, or a simple ‘rate this piece of content out of 5’ selection may be enough to give you an idea of what your learners thought. Beat the forgetting curve: This is split into two tips in the article (see ‘Follow up after training’ and ‘Create a few pieces of reminder content or post-training assessment questions’). We know from the ‘forgetting curve’ theory that we forget about half of what we learn after just a few days if we don’t work to recall it. That’s why it’s important to follow up with extra questions, assessments, projects or real-life applications to thoroughly cement the training content in learners’ noggins. One of the ways we achieve this (and beat the forgetting curve) is to encourage social learning on our Learning Management System, the Academy LMS. So once a learner has finished their eLearning, they’ll be able to join relevant groups and forums where they can discuss the things they learnt. By going over the content again, focusing on different aspects, asking and answering questions, and recommending further reading, learners remember what they’ve been taught - which results in much better return on investment on the training programme. Review your learning objectives: It’s important that each eLearning unit has an associated learning objective as it guides the training and helps to categorise failure and success. If the objective is to increase employees’ sales knowledge and you find that post-training they are selling 40% more, you can be assured that the eLearning unit is a success. If, on the other hand, the number of sales doesn’t change at all, you won’t have achieved the learning objective - a worrying situation to be in! Make eLearning fun: This isn’t one of Business2Community’s tips, but it’s something we believe in strongly. When things are fun, we enjoy them more, and if we enjoy something we will pay attention to it and be motivated to do said activity more. In the case of eLearning, this means that the more fun we find the unit, the more we’ll learn, and we’ll approach further eLearning units with a positive attitude. Securing learner engagement can sometimes seem like an impossible task. But as you’ve seen, there are a few tricks that can boost engagement and get learners to enjoy their eLearning. Click the button below to download our free white paper on learner engagement and see for yourself how easy it is to make learners happy and get them motivated!  The post Does Your eLearning Secure Learner Engagement? appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Whenever you roll out a training plan, you need to think about what ‘success’ looks like. In online learning terms, these metrics might include how many people are using your Learning Management System (LMS) on a daily or weekly basis, how long they’re spending on it, how much work they’re doing whilst there and what they think about their LMS. Good Learning Management Systems, by their very nature, capture a lot of data that can help to highlight whether learners are engaged or not. This data can map learner engagement and even pinpoint learners that are at risk of falling behind or failing. Here are 5 learner engagement metrics, available from your LMS, that will help you work out whether your learners are engaged or not: Learner Engagement Metric 1: Recency How recently have you seen your learners logging on to their LMS? Is this number stable, decreasing, or growing? If your LMS is new, perhaps you had an initial surge of learners logging on almost every minute in the early days, but you’re noticing this number tapering off now to one per hour or so. Should you be worried? Well, not always. There will always be an increase in interest when a new training programme is launched - learners are curious, so will naturally want to take a look. It’s the number after this point that will need to be monitored. If the recency is dropping from hourly, to daily, to weekly, it’s likely that there is an issue with your LMS - it might not be engaging your learners. Learner Engagement Metric 2: Frequency How often does each learner log on? You’ll be able to monitor the average frequency of learners, which can tell you whether you have a small number of learners logging on frequently, whether there are a couple of extremely dedicated learners logging on enough to skew the results, or if you’ve hit upon a comfortable, stable average. A stable average with a few outliers is what you should be aiming for - a small number of learners logging on frequently does not necessarily mean that they are adequately engaged. Indeed, the link between frequency and engagement is not entirely clear at all. If the trend shows that the most successful learners logged onto their LMS most frequently, does that mean they were the most engaged? Perhaps - but it’s not completely clear. Maybe they simply had to log on more times to complete training because they didn’t progress through the whole eLearning module in one go? This would actually imply they were less engaged than their fellow learners who logged on fewer times, but got more done during each session! Learner Engagement Metric 3: Duration The above problem is why it’s also important to monitor duration. How long are learners actually staying on their LMS, and what are they doing? Given that social learning is so important to actually cement training in learners’ minds, the duration data will need to be considered carefully. It’s actually not as useful for learners to spend 99% of their time in eLearning modules - we gain only 10% of our knowledge from ‘formal’ training, after all, so the ideal ratio of activity might be closer to that suggested by the ’70:20:10 problem’ (read: What is leaky knowledge costing your organisation?). Therefore an ideal duration split might be closer to spending 10% of their time in eLearning units, and 90% on forums, in groups, downloading extra reading materials and chatting with others. Learner Engagement Metric 4: Virility Has your LMS ‘gone viral’ within your organisation? Has word spread about how great it is, how fun it is to use and how useful it is in boosting performance and improving prospects? A solid marketing plan, both pre- and post-launch, can aid this. If employees are excited about the training, counting down the days until launch and can’t wait to try it out, the virility of the training will be significantly higher than if it suddenly appears in employees’ inboxes with no fanfare. Learner Engagement Metric 5: Rating When you ask learners what they think of their LMS, what do they say? Do they say it’s the best thing since sliced bread, or are they more reticent in revealing their thoughts? Don’t overlook the effect of reporter bias, which is the idea that respondents might only answer questions with answers they think you’ll want to hear. Also be wary of asking leading questions. The question, "This LMS is much better than the classroom training you had before, right?" won’t really tell you anything. Instead, asking learners to anonymously rank and rate their LMS will be more revealing. These metrics - and others - are useful in telling you how successful your LMS is and how engaged your learners might be. You’ll need to take them all into account, as you can’t rely on just one or two to give you a proper indication of learner engagement. After all, without knowing how your employees are rating the LMS, how can you be sure it’s going viral for the right reasons? And if you can’t monitor how long your learners are staying logged in, the number of logins is all but meaningless. Learner engagement metrics will be useful in working out the return on investment on your training programme. To make sure you’re achieving the right ROI for you, download our free white paper below:    The post 5 Learner Engagement Metrics to Delight Your Bosses appeared first on Growth Engineering.