standards
A slow drive Hatching a plan to go to the next level Fiona Leteney T
he Experience API (xAPI aka Tin Can API) specification is now over two years old. There are many good use cases being piloted but driving adoption of the
xAPI is still proving quite difficult. Understandably, the majority of L&D professionals don’t want to leap into the unknown while tackling a project that might have tight deadlines from the business. We need to start thinking out of the box so I’m on a mission to come up with some use cases (to borrow a technical term) that would take us to the next level. The use case I’m going to tackle today is ‘onboarding’. Many organisations are realising the need to engage their new hires even before they have stepped though to front door. Online learning is a good option but some find it impractical to get a learner onto the in house Learning Management System (LMS) when they are not yet an employee. The xAPI is ideal in this situation because the activities do not need to be launched from an LMS. However before we get carried away with collecting all this potential data we ought to ask the question “Why bother tracking”; “What do I want to know?”; and so “What data shall I collect?” Here is what I would want to know; but I’m sure you could think of more. n How quickly did it take to engage the new hire, i.e. make them enjoy being part of the company?
n How long did it take for the new hire to become productive?
n How long did the new hire last? Did the new hire stay 45 or 90 days or longer? Research says 22% tend to leave within the first 45 days. The answer to that last question should be a
statistic that is easy to find in HR. But what about the data that helps us answer the question why did
Tweaking the resources based on the lessons learnt in the background from the data is also good for the learner and therefore the company too.
they leave or stay? Initially, let’s agree that using the current SCORM LMS and its content is not going to collect enough of the right sort of data to tackle these questions. But how could the xAPI and a Learning Record Store (LRS) help us? Imagine, following the job acceptance, instructions
to download a ‘Company App’ are sent to the new hire. The app contains welcome videos of congratulations from the CEO and the new hire’s head of department. It also has further content/video/ infographics on what the company does, the benefits of working there and some things that bring the company values to life. Goals can be set which might include paperwork required on their first day. The xAPI statements collected would be in the
format “I did this”, and there are two ways in which this data can be useful.
1. For the learner it can provide n a check list and progress on achievement against the goals
n Encouraging rewards and badges can be awarded n connections socially with other new hires or even the team they are about to join
2. For the company In the background and anonymously, the mass of
data collected over time can help n Improve the content (see how many people watched all the CEO’s video, whether they paused
Many organisations are realising the need to engage their new hires even before they have stepped though to front door.
e.learning age june 2015 or rewound it)
n Establish if those who connected socially ‘engaged’ quicker; stayed longer?
Tweaking the resources based on the lessons learnt in the background from the data is also good for the learner and therefore the company too. The use of the app can continue once the new hire gets through front door; further goals could be set e.g. pick up your company ID; car park pass; have breakfast with the new team.
Some sceptics might say why track this data? A spreadsheet or a check list could achieve the same level of engagement and success for the individual, couldn’t it? True, however my argument is that the company will never really know what worked and what didn’t, except anecdotally. Big Data collected via the xAPI over time could show the different approaches needed to engage an IT consultant compared with a sales rep or a care assistant. Throw a person’s age and gender into the analysis and it might change the picture again so in time a personalised onboarding programme could be send out that will provide the best results. All this xAPI data generated through the mobile
app can be tracked in the LRS. There may be compliance courses completed during this induction that must be recorded in the LMS. The LRS could filter just the completion statements and transfer the required data, leaving the rest in the background to be used only for detailed analytics.
Fiona Leteney is an e-learning implementation consultant @fionaleteney
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