Learner engagement: Is your existing platform plateauing?

Do you have an existing LMS? Once it was the bee’s knees—courses completed, NPS soared, and it was the heart of your people strategy. Or maybe it’s always been meh—a training portal that needs about 20 reminders for people to eventually log in and complete something. Either way, how do you reignite the spark?

1. Rapid and continuous discovery

Research – it can be a dirty word sometimes! Time-consuming, expensive, and delaying progress. But hold on, it doesn’t have to be all that! Let’s break it down:

• Regular research and hypothesis validation
• Quick tests, not endless surveys to hundreds of people
• Embrace ambiguity and avoid getting stuck in data limbo
• Mix it up; don’t rely solely on 20-question surveys

Why bother? Because things change…fast. Your platform setup from 1, 2, or 3 years ago might not cut it now. Organisations evolve, goals shift, and people’s needs change. Your platform can quickly lose its edge if you’re not on top of the challenges your users face.

Stale content, duplicates, and navigation woes can crop up in no time. How often should you test, talk to users, and tweak? Think weekly. It’s about knowing what you’re after—specific insights, not just vague feedback. By the way, we don’t mean to change your whole LMS weekly, but small incremental changes can make a big difference, or, sometimes, a complete overhaul might be needed if you’ve just never had the traction you need.

And hey, it doesn’t have to be lengthy interviews with 100 people to be confident in the data. Keep it focused, and if a trend emerges, then you’ve got enough. Break problems down into smaller manageable ones, and suddenly making rapid and constant discovery is much quicker, frequent, and sustainable – not months of work.

2. Be data-informed, not data-driven

Let’s clarify some terms here:

• Data-driven: Taking data at face value.
• Data-informed: There’s more to it than meets the eye.

Consider this example: After steady sales for 6 months, there’s a sudden dip. If you’re data-driven, panic sets in; you rush to add new content, training, and coaching. But if you’re data-informed, you dig deeper. Is it seasonal? Are certain products causing the drop? Maybe there are fewer employees due to the holiday?

If we bring this back to your LMS. Seeing a decline in content consumption or logins, a data-driven approach screams “engagement issue.” But being data-informed means exploring further. Maybe users have what they need and are excelling. If metrics align with business goals, that’s what counts, not that x% of people have logged in. If the metrics aren’t what they need to be then get investigating.

3. Do you actually have an issue?

Let’s talk adoption curves. Picture a rollercoaster ride through the market, but our market is our internal users. You’ll hit some highs with early adopters (the green zones) who dive in headfirst. But watch out for ‘the chasm’ between early adopters and the early majority. Smooth sailing through this gap means your platform rocks and delivers clear value. But if not, brace yourself for a ghost town situation. That’s why fixating on ‘engagement’ can be a red herring; not everyone’s going be on your platform 24/7 unless it’s an ‘in-the-flow’ knowledge base.

So, before you declare an engagement issue, make sure it’s not just a case of unrealistic expectations and think about where in the curve you are. If it’s making a splash where it counts, you’re golden. But if not, time for some tweaks.

Thinking it may be time for a change? If you are in the market for an LMS that ensures learner engagement, take a moment to look at Kallidus Learn LMS. Our customers say time and time again that we make learning easier and more engaging, Have a look for yourself.

Written by Phill Lord-David

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