The State of Learning Data and Analytics in L&D

The State of Learning Data and Analytics in L&D


Curious about the current state of data and analytics in learning & development (L&D)? In October 2023, the Learning Guild published a new interactive, data-driven format for this research report titled, "The State of Learning Data and Analytics in L&D."

While the ambition to measure and evaluate effectiveness and prove learning transfer / behavior change is an enduring goal in L&D, most status quo practices are focused on providing evidence of learning satisfaction by evaluating perception data from surveys or learning outcome data from course completions and assessments. Ideally, L&D practitioners should want to know if their learning, training, and performance improvement solutions are having an impact on business objectives, or at least providing insights that will help stakeholders make more informed decisions. Recent improvements and support for xAPI in authoring tools and learning environments has opened up new opportunities for measurement and advanced learning & performance analytics. However, what are L&D practioners really doing with their data and what is the current state of analytics? Some of the questions answered in this report include the following:

  1. What types of data do L&D practitioners collect the most?
  2. What types of measures do L&D practitioners use to support their evaluation goals?
  3. What learning data formats or standards do L&D practitioners use?
  4. What types of systems are software are used?
  5. What are organizations' most common intentions of the data?
  6. What are organizations' actual usage of the data?
  7. What are the biggest barriers to implementing learing analytics?

The research, design, and development of the report involved a collaborative effort that spanned over 8 months and included contributions from Jason Haag (Veracity), Megan Torrance (Torrance Learning), Meg Fairchild (Torrance Learning), John Costa (RePubIT), and several members from the Learning Guild Team (Jane Bozarth, David Kelly, Susan Jacobs, Cassandra Tu, and Tiffany Le Brun). Not only was this the first magazine-style, interactive report published with embedded videos, but it also collects data (using xAPI and other formats) about how the readers interact with report! Pretty cool, eh?

NOTE: You'll need to be registered (it's free) as a Guild Member to view the report. CHECK IT OUT!