Within the world of Learning & Development (L&D), learning engagement is the ultimate stamp of approval. Creating a successful learning engagement strategy requires not only an in-depth understanding of how your employees prefer to learn, but also a strong understanding of your current learning engagement levels.
Before you can undertake a refresh of your learning engagement strategy, or perhaps the creation of your first one, it’s important to understand how your current management of workplace learning works, in terms of how effective it is and how engaged your learners currently are.
How can learning engagement be measured?
While learning engagement is frequently measured on the basis of completion rates, for a true insight into the effectiveness of your strategy, you need to broaden your view. Here are our top ways to measure learning engagement within your organisation.
1. Completion rates within your LMS
Laptop showing Learn LMS dashboard on a garden table
Although you will need to cast your net wider to get a full picture, completion rates are still the bread and butter of understanding your learning engagement levels. It is worth checking in on these stats on a team-by-team and organisational basis regularly. Using an LMS with advanced reporting is a fantastic way to manage this level of overview on a broad scale.
Particularly when deploying a new learning strategy, for example shifting to mobile-focused learning or a more blended approach, completion rates are your first stop to understand if and how your employees are engaging with your content. We would recommend reporting on completion rates across your different learning campaigns on a monthly or quarterly basis to gain a stronger understanding of how your learning engagement is progressing.
2. How many courses your learners choose to take independently
Young african businesswoman working on a laptop and taking notes
The next step in understanding your organisation’s current learning engagement levels is to assess how many additional courses your learners are choosing to take of their own accord. The pursuit of continuous learning in the workplace is on the rise within L&D, and this is perhaps the biggest indicator of how engaged your employees are with this culture.
Also known as self-directed learning, this culture of continuous learning is booming in and outside of the workplace. With many modern workers frequenting sites like YouTube to study up on everything from biochemistry to make up tutorials, there is a growing thirst among modern learners, particularly those under 30, to learn as much as possible. With the right learning engagement strategy, this is a culture that can flow over into the workplace.
3. Leaderboards and league tables
Person holding tablet showing Kallidus Learn LMS learner engagement leaderboards
Not only are leaderboards great for keeping up the competitive spirit within your workforce, they are also a really useful and easy-to-use way to measure learning engagement levels. Available within Kallidus Learn via Management Dashboards, these enable line managers to keep an eye on their teams as well as see who is the most and least engaged with their learning. Covering metrics such as time spent learning and number of courses completed, these enable both a quick overview and easy reporting based on engagement data.
Leaderboards that are visible to the workforce as a whole can also act as a great motivator for learning engagement. While this may be tricky to manage on an individual basis, we’ve seen customers have great success with team-based league tables (grouped by, for example, departments, locations, and clusters).
4. Participation in user generated content (UGC)
Cartoon showing two people taking a self-facing video on their phone with speech bubbles indicating comments likes and smiles
User generated content (UGC) is an up and coming feature within tech-savvy organisations keen to push learner engagement to the next level. You can take a look at our definitive guide to boosting learning engagement for an insight into how and why UGC works so effectively, but for now let’s look at how this can be used as a way to measure those all important engagement levels.
Focusing on factors such as how many training courses, videos, documents, images, and other forms of learning are posted onto your LMS are a great indicator of how actively engaged your learners are. If your LMS allows for discussion boards and comments about your eLearning resources, these can also be a great place to look for engagement. It’s worth considering which courses or materials are most and least engaged with in this way.
5. Evaluation forms and learner feedback
Laptop showing Kallidus Learn LMS course ratings
While there are a wide range of analytics, data, and metrics you can look at for insights into learner engagement, one of the clearest ways to measure learning engagement is to simply ask those who are undertaking your courses. Instant feedback, including things such as ratings, are a great way for everyone using your LMS to get a feel for how the course is going down among colleagues.
More valuable insights come from evaluation forms. In Kallidus Learn for example, learners are prompted to provide an evaluation once a piece of eLearning is competed, whether via a form or star rating. The evaluation forms allow your learners to provide more substantial feedback about an individual piece of learning. Although less efficient than observing data trends in your LMS’s reporting, reading through (or talking through) learner feedback is an incredibly valuable insight into engagement that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Conclusion
Learning engagement is one of the most vital parts of any L&D strategy. There are a wide range of metrics to assess, data to study, and people to talk to when assessing how effective your eLearning and classroom-based learning really is. It is worth a special mention as well that not all learning engagement happens within your LMS.
Written by Claire Moloney Claire is an enthusiastic and meticulous content writer whose passion is to support growth and continual learning for everyone.
