What Does Learning Analytics Mean for Businesses?

The presentation must be concise and meaningful, given the vast amount of data accessible from learning analytics and corporate executives’ time pressures.

FREMONT, CA : Learning professionals are increasingly attempting to integrate learning analytics into their work. But, to do so effectively, they must be aware of the difficulties in delivering an evidence-based learning story to time-pressed executive stakeholders.Understanding the organizational context in which learning data will be received and acted upon and the larger arena of business analytics is essential for effective communication about learning data.

What Does Learning Analytics Mean for Business?

It helps to have a clear-eyed picture of how firms use their operating data, the Management Information (MI) that gets reported at meetings where decisions are made to understand where learning analytics ‘fits’ in the organizational framework.

The rhythm may fluctuate depending on the size, ownership, geographic spread, seasonality, and other considerations, but firms generally operate from one tax year to the next, quarter to quarter, and most have a monthly reporting cycle. The higher the business climbs the corporate ladder, the more data-driven the meetings where these reports are debated and reacted to become.

Some of this information is vital to the company’s operations (and therefore often confidential). Some information is not as important as others. The more business-critical, confidential, and threat- or opportunity-laden the data is, the more intriguing it appears to executives. There is a hierarchy of importance when it comes to time and attention. Financials are usually prioritized first, followed by sales. Marketing is the foundation of most businesses. HR has turnover and other people metrics data and a subset of that data could be training data. And so forth.

The presentation must be concise and meaningful, given the vast amount of data accessible from learning analytics and corporate executives’ time pressures. Data is thoroughly delved into when there is an outlier, an exceptional result, either good or poor.

Well-run businesses do not lurch from one crisis to the next. Even the best-run companies can be caught off guard and have to adapt to unforeseen occurrences (for example, the Covid-19 pandemic). They frequently deal with long-term, macro changes in the external environment, such as climate change or the reduction of physical retail traffic, which will creep along quietly in the background for years until abruptly exploding and rapidly increasing in prominence due to some unexpected event.