How To Analyze LMS Reports To Pinpoint Pain Points
We all know reporting is an important part of any business, but the act of reporting on your business isn’t enough – you need to know what you’re reporting on and you need to analyze the data you collect in a way that’s helpful for your training measurement.
If you offer eLearning to your students and run reports on your Learning Management System (LMS) activity, it can be hard to know which data to focus on, and what to do with that data once you have it.
We’re here to show you what points you need to look at a little more closely, and how you can use your findings to help pinpoint pain points with your eLearning offering.
1. Assessment Scores
Assessment scores are not only important to your students – they are something you should be watching very closely as well. They can be a key indicator that something is going on in your course, that you may not have found out about otherwise.
Whether it’s an assessment which takes place part of the way through a course, or a final assessment which will give a student their final grade, assessments are a very clear indicator of how well your students understand the course material, and how well they are able to put that into practice.
However, if you have lots of students failing or getting low marks in your course, this should be a cause for concern. While there will always be some students who struggle or who don’t put in the work to get a good grade, a high number of students getting lower than expected results could highlight a problem with your content rather than the blame falling on the students. The course material could be too difficult or confusing in places, or it could be that parts of the course don’t translate very well in an eLearning environment, and students could use the additional support of a classroom-based session.
On the other hand, if all your students are flying through a course with no issues, it could mean that your course content isn’t challenging enough. You may want to look at including additional information or topics so your students have the chance to be pushed a little bit.
Either way, taking a look at your assessment scores can help you see if your eLearning content needs reworking, as you want to make sure you are providing your students with the best learning experience possible.
2. Sticking Points
Reporting on the progress your students are making through your eLearning courses can let you see where students are getting stuck. Are there points where they don’t progress for a long period of time? Or is there a particular topic or unit which keeps getting skipped over?
Being able to see how all your students are getting on, and being able to spot a pattern emerging, could mean that your content needs to be reworked.
If lots of students are getting stuck on a particular topic, as we mentioned above, it could be because it’s too difficult or it’s badly explained. It could even be something as simple as your Learning Management System not displaying the content correctly, which is making it difficult for students to progress.
Pay attention to points like this, as they can bring an issue to your attention before it turns into a larger problem, and will give you plenty of time to review your content and make changes where needed.
3. Stopping Points
Similar to sticking points, we have stopping points. Is there a point where lots of students are giving up with a course altogether? Circumstances may come up where not all the students who sign up to training with you will be able to complete it, but if lots of people are dropping out of the same course, and at the same point, then this could be a larger issue!
Again, use your student progress reports to see at what point your students were at when they decided not to continue with their learning. As we said above, it could be difficult or poorly explained content.
While you can tackle problems like this by adjusting your content, you could also do things like allocate additional in-person teaching time for that course, surrounding that particular topic. This will allow students to have some face-to-face time with a tutor, who may be able to talk them through any problems they have.
Sometimes learning can be frustrating, and with eLearning students not getting the same daily support in person as classroom-based students are getting, it can be easy to think about giving up! Think about what extra support system you can put in place to keep your students on track and happy on their learning journey.
4. Total Attendance Numbers
The last thing you can report on directly from your LMS which can help you pinpoint pain points in your training business is the total attendance numbers for each of your classes.
This can be a good idea for a couple of reasons:
- If a class has consistently low numbers, you may decide to stop running it. It may not be worth the effort and cost of the administration, teaching time, and the course content to keep the course running, and therefore it may be a better business decision to just get rid of it.
- If a class had high attendance numbers in the past, and they have started dropping off recently, it may be an indicator that something has gone wrong recently. Perhaps you’re not offering up-to-date information on that topic as your competitors, or maybe you are being outpriced! A warning sign like this will give you time to do a little research and see if there’s anything you can do to stay ahead of the competition.
