LMS reporting and learning analytics are often seen as tasks performed by LMS administrators, trainers, and instructors—tactical tools and methods used only to illustrate the performance and outcomes of training and blended learning programs. Increasingly, however, organizations are using learning data to show how improved learning performance impacts corporate performance at the highest level. Today, any LMS should be able to quantify the cost savings and resource efficiencies—KPIs for which everyone on the management team is held accountable. In this session, learn how reporting and analytics can demonstrate the value of your learning program to the entire organization.

Your access to learning-related data has grown dramatically over recent years. But just because you have a large volume of data doesn’t mean it necessarily provides value. While tools like the xAPI make it increasingly easy to acquire data about learners’ activities, this information provides little benefit if you don’t know how to design to acquire meaningful data, interpret that data, or improve your learning design based on what you’ve discovered.

In this session, you’ll dive deep into how data should shape your learning systems design, including exploring the basic principles of how to use data effectively and how to design to provide meaningful feedback. To do this, you’ll look at outside inspiration from fields that are already doing this well: user experience design (UXD), web analytics, and business intelligence. You’ll also uncover some of the pitfalls of data collection and analysis, discuss using both qualitative and quantitative data, and address the difficulties inherent in finding valid measurements of learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use your data analytics to improve course design
• How to design to gather meaningful data
• About the potential pitfalls of data interpretation
• Lessons, from fields like business intelligence and web analytics, about how to apply data principles to learning design

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, and managers.

During the past two years while leading Learning Locker, an open-source learning record store (LRS), xAPI innovators from HT2 Labs have seen a whole host of wonderful ways in which an LRS and the xAPI have been used by organizations looking to do more with their learning and performance data. Think sales data, social network analysis, and real-time sentiment data. Find out about the top six things you didn’t know you could do with an LRS!

Every revolution requires both dreamers and pragmatists. The xAPI dreamers have been painting a beautiful picture of what is becoming possible. To realize its full potential, the pragmatists need to catch up. The xAPI needs a very specific set of work completed to be successful, and it needs organizations to participate in making the next generation of learning systems and impacts possible.

In this session, you will learn how LRPs (learning record providers, formerly known as “activity providers”) can best ramp up their development teams to start realizing the full potential of the xAPI. Learn about the current status of the official xAPI Conformance Suite. You will learn which questions to ask in order to tell if a vendor is really xAPI conformant. And finally, see how you can contribute to the xAPI community.

In this session, you will learn:

• How LRPs can best ramp up their development teams
• About the xAPI Conformance Suite
• How to identify conformant vendors
• What the US Department of Defense considered regarding xAPI products
• About the growing xAPI community and how to contribute

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
The xAPI Conformance Suite.

To deliver personalized learning experiences for employees, Visa needed to better understand what its employees were interested in learning. However, because Visa uses various content types and providers, tracking and analyzing learner behavior was difficult. As a result, creating and delivering tailored learning approaches was also challenging.

In this session, you will learn how Visa built an xAPI-enabled ecosystem for Visa University Online that allows it to customize and track learning experiences. Explore how this program delivers value to the learners and insights to the training department through the following capabilities: curation and aggregation of content, giving learners freedom to be curious; standardized tracking of data across all delivery methods without disrupting learners; real-time dashboard reporting and analytics without manual work; and single sign-on for learners, allowing access to content from a variety of sources including LMSs, survey tools, experience learning platforms, etc.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the fundamentals of an xAPI-centric learning ecosystem
• How to deliver and track formal, informal, and social learning
• How to validate the investment in social learning
• How to bring data together from disparate sources without spreadsheets and manual work
• How to position your organization for learning-data success

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Pathgather, Watershed LRS, Plateau by SuccessFactors, SurveyMonkey, Zapier, Adobe Experience Manager, Pluralsight, getAbstract, Lynda.com, Harvard ManageMentor, and Salesforce Chatter.

This interactive presentation will feature Bob, who leads two lives. Bob is a new hire who recently completed onboarding. At other times, Bob is an L&D employee who designs training for evolving IT applications. His day includes data masking, content creation, maintenance, and localization of courseware. Gain insight on how to overcome Bob’s daily challenges, including significant time-saving methods for developing, maintaining, deploying, and tracking eLearning, ILT, and ongoing performance support. Learn about in-application assistance, as well as innovative cloning technology that eliminates the need for training environments with single capture content generation, all while reducing data breach risk.

Good courseware will use multiple elements such as video, audio, interaction, and good old-fashioned reading. You struggle to balance all of it until it’s a finely harmonized symphony of information, waiting for a student to take it all in. But are any of those activities or videos you’ve worked on actually helping anyone learn? How can you show the relationship between the activities and performance?

This session will show how you can use the xAPI to capture data from different activities into a single uniform format in the learning record store (LRS). Then, by looking at a real-world example page with video and test questions, you can start analyzing results to see which activities contribute most to learner success and which test questions need work. And by knowing how to leverage your data, you can begin to see how to design your content to make sure that data is where you need it, when you need it!

In this session, you will learn:

• How the xAPI can help you collect user data
• How activity data can be combined to see if your test questions are good
• How activity data can be combined to make sure your activities are accomplishing their goals
• How to use the xAPI to compare consumption to performance
• How to make sure your content does what you need it to

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
HTML5, JavaScript, the xAPI, and LRSs.

Much has been made about the astounding dropout rates for massive open online courses (MOOCs): typically 85 percent or more. While it may be misleading to apply the traditional metrics of higher education to MOOCs, there are ways to dramatically improve the numbers.

In this session, you will learn the challenges IBM faced with its online MOOCs and how its IBM Open Badge program solved the problem. Through this case study, learn how IBM wanted to increase new subscribers and increase course completions for its “big data” MOOCs. See how, after introducing Open Badges, every metric—from new attendees to course completions to the average number of courses taken—increased well beyond expectations. You will see exactly how IBM achieved impressive results, and you’ll leave with an action list to show you how to marry MOOCs to digital credentials and improve your numbers.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Open Badges can be used to attract new audiences
• How Open Badges increase course completions
• How to incorporate gamification elements
• How to improve uptake with simple email language
• How and what to measure
• How to sell the value to your stakeholders

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
MOOCs and digital Open Badge platforms.

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Years of momentum have resulted in a collection of use cases for teams seeking to leverage the xAPI to better track, measure, and manage their learning efforts. The time is now; the xAPI can improve the ways you create and deliver content and classes, track interactions, communicate, and measure performance. Armed with knowledge and the proverbial Swiss Army Knife of xAPI functions, begin to “slice, saw, tweeze and pick” your way through training obstacles.

This session will cover what the xAPI really is, how statements are structured, and how it is being operationalized. You will explore how progressive teams leverage the xAPI to improve the learning experience, streamline tracking, perform common tasks, and drive engagement via modern authoring tools and an LRS. You will see how LMSs are undergoing transformations to support the trend. This session will help you understand the basic challenges teams face in implementing the xAPI on a limited budget. Finally, learn how authoring tools, LMS platforms, mobile apps, and IoT endpoints are being connected to leverage the power of the xAPI.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the best current authoring tools and learning platforms to take advantage of the xAPI
• About new use cases to apply tracking to nontraditional learning assignments and interactions
• About the challenges to overcome with LMS integration, security, mobile access (especially when offline), and more
• About the basic structural and design tenets of an xAPI-based solution and the best-practice approach to implementing those solutions
• When to use the xAPI over SCORM for tracking, and when “all of the above” is better than one or the other

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
The xAPI, learning record stores, and authoring tools.

Finding a learning management system (LMS) that best fits your company’s design, business goals, and budget can be a daunting task. While choosing the right LMS can help your organization define, deliver, and manage training to drive ongoing success, the countless options when it comes to product selection can make determining which LMS best fits your company’s needs overwhelmingly difficult. Before making a decision, it’s important to find out what exactly you should consider when evaluating your options.

In this session, you’ll learn about aspects to evaluate when selecting an LMS, including integration with existing IT infrastructure; ease of use and accessibility; scalability and adaptability; vendor support and service quality; tracking and reporting capabilities; and collaboration or social learning features. To make sure you’re considering all the important elements of this choice, you’ll find out how to have a meaningful discussion with your IT department, whose members should be key stakeholders in the selection process. You’ll also receive practical tools for helping you make your decision—a sample LMS request for proposals and checklist.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to identify the LMS features that your organization must have
• About resources and research that are available to help inform your decision
• How to talk to IT about integrating your LMS with the existing infrastructure
• How to demonstrate the value of your preferred solution to stakeholders

Audience:
Novice and intermediate developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning management systems.