In the last few years, eLearning has gained immense popularity, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. The eLearning solutions are helping businesses to provide flexible, personalized, and on-the-go online training to their employees. The eLearning industry hence is continuously evolving to cater to the needs of both organizations and employees.
The eLearning is provided using a learning management system or an LMS that is equipped with various features that allow the online instructors to design, create and deliver informative and yet engaging eLearning content. It also helps employees to manage their training on their own and learn anytime and anywhere. You can use VelocityEHS to provide intuitive and engaging learning to employees.
As the eLearning industry is experiencing new shifts and turns, “Big Data” has emerged as the most trending topic among the eLearning community.
Let’s now discuss what exactly big data is and how is it going to shape the future of eLearning.
What Is Big Data?
In eLearning, big data is the data that is generated by learners while they’re taking eLearning courses or training. For example, if an employee has taken up an eLearning course on digital programming, then all the data revolving around his training is considered to be big data. This includes his scores in online training assessments, the kind of eLearning content accessed by him, the number of times he viewed files or documents, social interactions with colleagues, his daily training attendance, projects and assignments on which he worked, and so on.
All this data is mined, analyzed, and stored using an LMS. Such data can be structured, unstructured, or semi-structured.
Why Collect Big Data?
Today, many organizations are mining and collecting big data as it provides them with an opportunity to make their online training programs more successful. The following are some reasons why big data is gaining popularity.
- Big data allows the organization to know the progress and worth of their online training programs. For instance, big data can help them understand which eLearning courses are most accessed and which are least preferred by the employees.
- The organizations can get to know the movement and usability of their eLearning courses and content. For example, they can know which eLearning content links are being shared by the employees with their colleagues. They can also see what eLearning courses the employees are recommending to their new hires, colleagues, and friends on the social media platform.
- Big data allows the organization to evaluate the employee’s performance quickly and conveniently.
How Big Data Is Shaping The Future Of eLearning?
Many eLearning experts suggest that big data analytics will completely revolutionize the eLearning industry. Big data is not simply data, rather it’s the fuel that will run the eLearning industry in the near future. Soon, it is going to change the way in which eLearning courses are designed, created, and delivered.
The following are the ways in which big data is shaping the eLearning industry.
- Modifying eLearning strategy-
Big data enables the eLearning professionals to monitor and track the entire eLearning journey. For instance, it allows the eLearning professionals to look closely at the movements of the employees across the platform, as to where they got stuck and where they were able to move swiftly. Through this, they can understand which eLearning modules are more meaningful to employees and hence they can modify their eLearning strategy accordingly.
- Delivery of personalized eLearning courses-
It is being expected that soon, LMS and big data analytics will work in tandem to deliver personalized eLearning courses to employees. For instance, the eLearning courses or modules will be custom-tailored to meet individual learning needs.
- Making a priority list-
Big data analytics can aid eLearning professionals to make a priority list indicating which eLearning courses and content needs immediate attention. For instance, an eLearning module on product designing is making employees feel frustrated because they find it challenging to understand. This can bring down employees’ morale, confidence, and engagement considerably. Thus, employees will fail to complete their online training on time and this will directly affect the performance of the organization as well.
Hence, using big data analytics you can prioritize which eLearning module needs to be changed or replaced.
- Tracking the learning patterns-
Using big data analytics with an LMS, you can track the learning patterns of employees. For instance, you can compare the previous and present scores of the employees in the online training assessments. You can also see the variation in the projects undertaken by the employees.
Hence, you can see the training behaviors of the employees through such patterns.
Conclusion-
Big data has the potential to alter the learning and development approach of eLearning professionals. It has the capability to develop new monitoring standards that can give a complete picture of the learning progress of the employees.