Membership Associations: Measuring the Effect of Online Learning

Once you’ve launched your online learning programme it’s time to take the next step: actively monitoring it to make sure it meets the needs of your association and its members. You want to take into account how you’re going to gather data from your courses and how you’re going to use those insights to inform decision-making processes. 

This is the third and final part in our blog series exploring online learning readiness for membership associations.  

Blog one looked at the first of five stages: building a foundation. The second blog explored engaging and collaborating, evaluating and monitoring, and personalising the journey. Here, we examine the final stage: 

Analysing and Acting 

You should consider three things when planning the analysis and insights part of your online learning programme: 

1. Data access
2. Progress reporting 
3. Decision-making

Data Access 

You will need adoption data, such as the number of logins and course completions, from your online learning platform. That will give you an indication of how motivated members are and reassurance that the system is working. It won’t tell you, in anything more than a limited way, how well members are engaging with the courses.  

To know how well members are engaging with the courses, you’ll need engagement data to understand members’ progress, including who is excelling and who may need additional support. Comprehensive data supports action for the benefit of individual members and the learning programme as a whole. If a member begins a course but then disengages for example, the course leader can intervene to help that learner reconnect.  

Engagement data can also provide pointers for course owners on where updates may be required to content or navigation. In this way, your association can ensure that course material and design stay up-to-date and optimal for learner success.   

Progress Reporting 

You will want access to simple dashboards that help you make sense of the data that’s available. You’ll want to interact with the data to create custom data sets and visualisations that best support your reporting approach. 

Decision-making 

A wealth of data on learner insights is wasted if it isn’t used to inform decision-making. Quick and easy access to information on learning progress informs short-term decisions, while rolling trends provide a foundation for longer-term improvements. 

Written by:

Elisa Montes