LMS Analytics: A Complete Guide to Assess Learning Effectiveness and ROI

Are you spending countless hours going over spreadsheets and reports to know your L&D efforts are making the right impact?

If you are, we know that you surely are wishing for a way to do this faster so that you can spend these hours better in planning the next training program than with these data piles.

What if we told you that you can actually save a lot of your time with LMS analytics? That’s right. Learning management system analytics saves you time, all the while bringing you unique insights about your learning programs, learner experience, L&D ROI, and more.

LMS analytics help you make informed decisions regarding training programs, what kind of training works for employees, and who needs help with what.

Sounds exciting?

Let’s dive deeper into what LMS analytics is, its role in L&D, and how it can benefit your business

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What is LMS Analytics?

LMS Analytics is a process where learning-related data is collected, analyzed, and reported within Learning Management Systems (LMS). The analysis offers deeper insights into the performance of the learning efforts, courses, employees, and L&D investments. As you know what’s working and what’s not, you can build better L&D strategies and drive better outcomes.

LMS analytics has different components that help learning managers understand the data even better within different contexts. 

Like this there are four different types of LMS analytics.

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Types of LMS Analytics

📊 Descriptive analytics

Descriptive analytics tells you what's happening with your courses. It helps you pick up learning patterns, trends, and behaviors.

For example, a descriptive analysis would tell you that only 87% of the last batch finished the training program. It will not tell you why 13% did not finish the course.

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🕵️♂ Diagnostic analytics

With diagnostic analytics, you can find out why something happened. For example, a diagnostic analysis can tell you why 13% did not complete the course.

Using this type of analytics, you can understand that all those who stopped the training had done so in Module 5.

The diagnosis is that something is off in module 5.

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🔮 Predictive analytics

Now, predictive analytics is a little more exciting. It helps you predict the future. Let’s continue with the same example. With the analysis of the data available, predictive analysis will tell you that the course completion rate may continue to stay at 87% if you do not work on module 5.

Predictive analysis looks at the past behavior and pattern of the learners to predict how they will most probably behave.

But it may not be 100% accurate

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🛠️ Prescriptive analytics

In prescriptive analytics, you use the learning data to find a solution to the problem you face. Let's take the same example. You know that the average completion rate will remain 87% if you do nothing about Module 5.

Prescriptive analysis tells you what you need to do to improve your course completion rate, such as:

• Split Module 5 into micro-learning courses
• Add a new module to prepare learners for Module 5
• Make Module 5 an instructor-led learning experience

And you know what? All these are made possible by LMS analytics. Let’s explore the top benefits of learning management system analytics next.

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💡Did you know?

Nearly 89% of organizations use data analytics applications to improve their decision-making processes. Companies that leverage data analytics are 2.5 times more likely to make better decisions compared to those that do not use these tools.

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Benefits of Using LMS Analytics for Employee Training

Using LMS analytics, you can get insights into how employees are responding to your L&D programs. It also tells you what programs are making the most impact and how businesses are benefiting from these training efforts.

Here are a few crucial benefits of using LMS analytics for employee training.

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🚀 Improved learning outcomes

LMS analytics can help you measure your employees’ learning outcomes. It tells you how the employees are using the courses. You can also use LMS analytics to discover what type of learning courses engage learners the most. Based on these insights, you can create similar programs to encourage everyone to take up the programs.

For example, you have created an instructor-led e-learning course on sales enablement for your sales team. And analysis proves that it has a 100% complete rate among your employees.

With such an insight, you can modify your other training programs, as well, to improve their completion rate.

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🎯 Personalized learning experiences

Every employee has unique learning requirements. You can't offer a course designed for experienced sales reps to new hires, as their learning goals are different. With LMS analytics, you can understand the type of course each of your employees prefers.

For example, some of your employees may prefer to watch courses on their mobile phones. So, create courses that work well on mobile phones. Some others may prefer blended or narrative-style or blended courses and create courses that complement their styles.

Your focus must be on creating courses that meet the individual learning needs and styles of your employees. It enables you to cater to the ultimate objective--upskilling and improving your employees.

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📈 Increased engagement and retention

LMS analytics help you create courses and learning experiences tailored to your employees’ preferences and requirements. You can use LMS analytics to explore how employees engage with diverse training materials. Check the common attributes of courses with high completion and engagement rates. And based on your findings, tweak your remaining courses for better engagement and retention.

For example, if one of your customer service agents struggles with listening to customers on call, offer them a micro-courses and micro-certifictions on the art of listening. As they need the skill, they will take the course and complete it for sure.

When you offer relevant courses to your employees the way they like to use them, the chances of the employees engaging with and finishing the learning modules are higher.

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📊 Enhanced reporting and compliance

LMS analytics also help you streamline your reporting processes. You have dashboards on employee engagement, retention rates, and course effectiveness. Besides these reports, you can also pull in reports from your ERP system to compare employee performances before and after training.

You can also track course completion rates, assessment scores, and participation levels to monitor learner progress and performance in real time.

This allows you to create insightful reports for your reporting managers and leaders to show them that the L&D investments are worth the effort.

But what metrics should you track to enjoy these benefits? Let’s explore them next in depth.

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💡Did you know?

In ancient times, data was recorded on clay tablets. Fast forward to the 20th century, a bunch of engineers developed structured query language (SQL) in the 1970s to facilitate data manipulation and retrieval. It leads to the creation of the data analyst role, who is an integral part of every business now.

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Key Metrics to Track in LMS Analytics

Your learning management system analytics offers data on numerous metrics. But not all of them are relevant to you. Let’s explore the most vital metrics you must track in LMS analytics.

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🎓 Course completion rates

Course completion rate tells you the number of employees who have completed a course. It helps you understand the effectiveness and appeal of that course to the learners. You can also look at the completion rate of different courses to refine your existing content and its delivery to improve its completion rates.

An AI-powered LMS platform like Thriving Springs can help you monitor completion rates and improve your e-learning content. And you can access this from your Admin Dashboard under Courses on Thriving Springs.

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With Thriving Springs’ Insight Engine, you have complete and real-time access to the course completion rates of different teams and individual learners.

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⏳ Time spent on learning

Time spent on learning is a crucial metric that explains how much time the teams are spending on e-learning courses. It allows you to get deeper insights into the performance of the courses and how the employees are receiving them. Based on these insights, you can further analyze the courses for their flaws and improve them.

Thriving Springs enables you to create a custom analytics dashboard and track the average time spent on learning for different users, courses, etc.

You can access this report from your LMS platform under the Analytics section on the Admin Dashboard.

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✍️ Assessment scores and progress tracking

Assessment scores help you understand the knowledge retention and comprehension of your learners. You can also track the progress of each course to see how many employees complete the same.

Both these details enable you to understand the gaps in knowledge and where the courses do not align with your training objectives.

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Thriving Springs allows you to track these details right from the Admin Dashboard under Courses. You can explore these details for a team, an employee, a course, etc. on Thriving Springs with custom dashboards in real time, as well.

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✨ User engagement metrics

How much your employees engage with the courses also helps you understand if your training efforts are on the right track. For example, your learner engagement data tells you that the sales team actively interacts with a course on how to improve sales techniques and objection handling. It means that the course perfectly meets the sales team's learning requirements.

On the other hand, if the feedback is unexciting and employees are not interacting with the course, it tells that something is amiss with the course.

You can use an LMS like Thriving Springs to track these metrics to understand why some cf our e-learning courses perform better while others don’t. Thriving Springs also has the option to create custom dashboards to get data on metrics precisely as you need.

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You can track this metric from your Admin Dashboard on Thriving Springs from the Assessments section under Courses.

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★Pro Tip

Tools like Tableau and Power BI have revolutionized how insights are presented. Use custom tools for data visualization to makes complex datasets easier to understand and communicate. It can quickly tell you trends, patterns, and learner behavior and facilitate better decision-making across your organization.

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Use Thriving Springs Insights Engine to Improve Training Effectiveness

With its in-depth learning insights and ROI analyses, LMS analytics transforms your employee training programs by paving ways for continuous improvement and customization.

It enables you to track metrics like course completion rates, time spent on modules, assessment scores, engagement levels, etc., and helps you identify strengths and gaps in training programs. Using these insights, you can tailor content to individual needs or focus on areas that need improvements all the while determining how training impacts overall skill development, productivity, and business outcomes.

Therefore, along with creating and delivering e-learning courses for employees, using LMS analytics to constantly improve training effectiveness is also crucial. However, you need a robust LMS platform like Thriving Springs with essential analytical capabilities to accurately measure your efforts.

Sign up for a free trial to explore Thriving Springs in action.