Learning management systems (LMS) play a significant role in the development of organizations by empowering people to further their knowledge and abilities. However, this process is bounded by the learning content itself, making it essential to ensure that the content is the best it can be.

Delivering the best quality content is difficult and time consuming as, like with many other things, it is inherently an iterative process. Auditing—or carefully critiquing the learning content—is the best way to go about this, but with a topic as complicated as learning, how do you go about this?

Tips for Auditing Essentials

Data

Data is the most important item to any auditing process. Imagine trying to replace a part in the pitch dark, it’s possible, but you’re more likely to make the whole system worse. Your guide is data, it’ll help you identify and then isolate problems rather than flailing until the right one is found. Unfortunately, sometimes getting this data is more difficult than it needs to be.

The data that you can get depends on your LMS. Some don’t have any form of reporting, some will charge you extra for reporting, others, like CoreAchieve, offer automatic, in-depth reporting regardless of the amount you spend (even for free users). Given how vital data is, it may be harmful in the long-term to let it slip by.

Metrics

Data is very important, but it can only do so much in terms of goals. That’s why you need to develop metrics that convert data into measurable goals. Making metrics is a game of details: trying to measure “learning more” is too contrived compared to “how many questions did they get right on their first time.” Think of the goals of the audit and how they can be put into data.

Specificity and Purpose

Being specific and purposeful sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s not. Whenever it comes to learning you must be infinitely more granular, as there are so many moving parts.

If you look at a learner whose failed a quiz, many people will assume either the content or the learner is at fault. However, this is not always the case. For example, what if the question was phrased awkwardly or the environment was distracting? To properly iterate over content, every possibility needs to be considered.

CoreAchieve’s reporting helps you with this as well, as it includes granular reports with statistics on specific questions. This type of reporting can immediately flag any issues without need for much speculation.

Conducting Surveys

By surveying learners, you can find other insights that cannot be gleamed from just data. Experiences play an important role in learning and finding out how someone felt while interacting with content can only be done by asking them directly. The surveys should not only consist of open-ended questions, however, as it is very difficult to implement useful changes from them.

Take the Course Yourself

Well, it doesn’t have to be just you, but there’s a trend at organizations where people in higher positions don’t engage at all with the learning content. “They already know everything” is exactly the reason why they should be engaging with it. How much can one person claim that this content accurately represents the needs or goals of the organization? By delving into the content, or by having other knowledgeable people take it, you could be able to identify the weaknesses far before they show themselves in the learners.

Performing Focus Groups

Focus groups allow an organization to gage the effectiveness of two (or more) possible courses and this can be made easier with LMS software. To perform a focus group split a group of learners evenly by how ever many things you want to test, have them follow the course to completion normally, and record the results.

One of the benefits of a LMS is its ability to teach people anywhere and it can perform focus groups anywhere too. Just assign the learners to each group to their respective course and observe the outcomes.

One-on-ones

Conducting surveys and focus groups are useful but do pose challenges. Namely, they’re not reactive—you can’t dissect someone’s reasoning. If you have the opportunity, conduct interviews with learners and question why they believe what they do. Remember, you won’t get the answers from them, but they’ll put you on the right direction.

Turning These Results into Action

This audit is only important if it results in realistic steps for development. The process depends on every audit, but most of them will need at least two things: prioritization and identification.

Identification

For this, look over all the data you’ve gathered and identify the biggest weaknesses revealed by them. You then should sub-divide these weaknesses further, identify if and how they can be changed.

Prioritization

After you’ve identified which weaknesses can be changed, you’ll want to rank them by time and effect. Essentially, how much time will this change take and what’ll be the effect of it. If something has a low amount of time but a big effect, it should be a top priority, and so on, until the lowest effect but highest time costs.

Be Flexible

These tips are meant to be guides, not a map. Everyone’s audit will look slightly different because everyone has different goals or needs. The biggest thing to remember is data and metrics, if you can measure where you’re going, you’ll be able to find out if it’s right or wrong.