5 Fresh Ideas for Measuring Training Results

If you’re like me, you absolutely love the thrill of setting goals. There is a certain inherent optimism in noting what you consider to be your ideal performance. Deciding what you want to achieve is the rosy, fun part. Even the journey towards your goal can feel rewarding in its own right. There’s only one downside to goal setting: the tedious, laborious task of measuring your progress.

It can be stressful trying to even decide what to measure, let alone how you’re going to get your hands on that data. Don’t let the fear of measuring progress keep you from playing the game though. Learner Management Systems (LMS) like the Learning Portal at AllenComm can do all the heavy lifting. Getting some good input, plus considering the five tips below will have your training practically drafting your results report for you.

5 Tips for Measuring Training Results

1. Narrow Down Your Goals

Before you get carried away in the sea of data, think of what you’d like to measure training results in the narrowest of terms. It’s likely that your learning goals will intersect with your overall business objectives, so determine how this training course will impact your business. Do you want your sales team to have a deeper knowledge of your product? Do you want to improve sales interactions with customers? You can translate business goals into sales enablement training goals that you will be able to measure with a little creativity.

2. Customize Your User Data

Once you have a specific goal, you’ll need to quantify the goal into something measurable like time, number of new client accounts, number of good online reviews, or number of employees with 90% competency in your training course. An LMS like Learning Portal allows you to customize what data you want to track, so think of different measurements that might reflect a confluence with your business objectives.

3. Pin Point Usage Patterns

Most people are naturally going to gravitate towards data on completion rates or performance but including a few other creative datasets can reveal pain points during the course. How long are learners spending on your course before they stop or take a break? Natural usage patterns can indicate the places in the course where learners feel stuck or bored and signal the need for more attention.

Another valuable bit of information is location data. See if you can track when and where people are taking your course. Is it during office hours? Or is it at home on a tablet? Knowing what platforms or internet browsers your learners are using can help you modify future courses.

4. Combine Data with Other Reports

A great way to get new insights is to pair the data you get from your LMS with other reports or data available to you. For instance, what other information do you have about your learners’ experience with the onboarding course? How are managers assigning or advertising the course? You may be able to uncover a method or manager that has the highest rate of course completion among their team members and borrow some of their tactics.

5. Build in Valuable Assessments

Adding an assessment or test is one of the clearest ways to demonstrate knowledge gained. Assessments can give you a comparison of learners’ time spent with the source material and their overall understanding. Do people who spend longer with the course score better in the assessment? If not, you may want to consider revising either the course material to include richer information, or revising the assessment so that it’s more engaging.

Trying these five different approaches can help you measure the effectiveness of your training course, ultimately getting you closer to achieving your business objectives.