In your educational domain, for example, K-12, higher ed, or corporate, what type of learning analytic data would be useful to enhance your instructional activity? Why?
In the domain of employee professional development, learning analytics is not currently utilized at my higher education institution. We conduct employee training opportunities in the form of live webinars, archived recorded sessions, and just-in-time training modules, and also offer training through paid providers such as LinkedIn Learning and Magna Commons. Employee tracking is only captured if they attend a live webinar, or if they partake in a LinkedIn Learning Course, but these two tracking systems do not speak to one another. Employee education tracking is siloed and not shared between program offerings, and therefore administration does not have a robust snapshot of what the employee is learning.
If learning analytics could be captured within the various learning platforms and then compiled into a database, we could get a clear snapshot of the employee’s learning interests and deficiencies, which would allow us to create new and relevant topics for the live webinar training offerings. Currently, live webinar topics are discussed through a subcommittee that considers recent news article topics or questions employees had over the last month. This subcommittee throws out ideas, at random, to guess which topics might be of interest to the employees. Yet, with live webinar registrations currently yielding an average of fewer than 10 participants of the more than 1,100 employees, it begs the question: Can we do better? With learning analytics, combined across platforms, and synced into a database system, can future professional development program events yield a higher attendance than 1%?
If user interest, and learner reporting, were captured within the various learning platforms provided by the institution, and then those reports were compiled into a combined database, the administration could pull relevant analytical data. That analytical feedback could help drive future programming by connecting to the employee’s interests and strengthing their learning efforts with relevant content.
Resources:
Dashboard Analytics Available for LinkedIn Learning Admins. Dashboard Analytics Available for LinkedIn Learning Admins | Learning Help. (n.d.). Retrieved September 18, 2022, from https://www.linkedin.com/help/learning/answer/a598935
Educational Partners International. (2022). Learning Analytics for Growth – Ask an Educator. YouTube. Retrieved September 18, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68bKAAWQm1E.
