Case Study: How we've created the Learning Analytics Platform (LAP) from scratch

Every sector nowadays uses digital platforms to generate a lot of data that never lies. Data is considered to be the first resource that companies of any size need to pay particular attention to when evaluating learning performance and efficiency.. What’s more, it helps them determine which learning materials (courses, lessons, videos) are appropriate and useful for the users. Only by analyzing data can companies and organizations better understand the learning level and users’ abilities and tailor the learning experience for each of them.

However, some aspects of learning such as content engagement, learning preferences, course completion, or test pass rates are challenging to measure accurately and collect at scale. Fortunately, with innovative learning analytical tools, it’s not a problem anymore. Not only can you get access to summative assessment, ongoing formative and experience-based data, but you can also view it in well-structured graphs and grids and easily comprehend it. Sounds impressive, right? So let’s delve into the details and find out how to create a learning analytics platform from scratch.

What exactly is a LAP?

From its name, the learning analytics platform is used to calculate, accumulate and report on learners’ activities and learning materials which helps to identify whether the learning ecosystem ultimately serves the purpose of improving organizational performance. A LAP typically includes a learning record system (LRS) that receives and stores data coming from various sources such as eLearning courses, learning portals, simulations, but adds significant reporting and analytics capabilities that are not typically found in an LRS solution. This gives a better understanding of the specific person or group of people engaged in the learning activities.

How the Learning Record System (LRS) works

Here you can read and discover how the LRS works. Let’s dive into the details below!

1. xAPI sends learner’s experience data to LRS;

2. Data is stored in the LRS;

3. You can check the learner’s activities;

4. You can filter data and create reports;

5. You can perform other actions based on data stored in the LRS.

In addition to that, LAPs take advantage of xAPI to collect granular and real-time data across learning tools or activities to turn it into valuable insights. What’s more, LAP helps you optimize the learning situations to emphasize how learners learn and discover their responses that can lead to hypotheses that affect their success. Only by leveraging a learning analytics platform can you enhance the entire learning process, improve course outcomes and prevent data chaos that might cost the company both time and money.

What’s the idea of LAP software development?

We at DDI Development concentrate on developing and implementing a diversity of digital software solutions for logistics and booking, e-commerce and e-learning, fintech and recruiting business sectors. With customizable solutions such as TMS, LMS, LXP and CRM built on the specific requirements, we help companies drive their businesses and increase return on investments. In addition to that, the LAP opens up the following benefits:

• measurement, collection, analysis and reporting on learners data and their learning contexts;
• improved learning flow across the organization;
• better visualization of learners’ achievements and results;
• better decision making through increased insight into factors impacting learning achievement;
• timely insights throughout learning data pipelines.

Having that in mind, we have come up with a great concept of the learning analytics platform including all the features and functionality you need to run a business efficiently and hassle-free. Sounds interesting, right? So let’s dive into the details below!

Who needs Learning Analytics Software?

Generally, businesses are focusing on implementing analytics in sales and marketing, production and quality, etc. With technology innovation, they started to adopt analytics in training and learning regardless of the size of their organization. With sophisticated LAP software in hand, not only can you measure, collect, analyze and report on data about the learning experience of the learners, but you can also gain valuable insights into the learning or training process to effectively measure and validate whether it is worth the investments.

Moreover, you can keep track of the most relevant learning metrics that might give you insights on the outcome of the learning or training, such as user’s behavior and performance, user’s satisfaction and engagement, study time and time of completion, etc. That’s why any organization of any size, culture, or industry can benefit from the learning analytics solution if it has a clear understanding of the purposes for learning analytics.

What metrics can you track with the Learning Analytics Software?

The following metrics are a must-have for your business and they need to be utilized to reach the business goals easily and quickly!

• Volume: This metric can be used to track the number of users that are active compared to those that are inactive. Also, you can reveal how much time they spend on learning activities such as courses, quizzes, exams, and training exercises.
• Users’ Behaviour: With this metric, you can discover the most popular/unpopular courses, highlight the kind of courses that need your attention.
• Learners’ Performance: With this particular metric, you can find the most engaged users, know how many learners have been enrolled on the course, completed, or failed it. Moreover, you can identify whether it is hard to finish or takes a long time to complete a training module or lesson and discover their test pass rates.
• Average Test Score: thanks to this metric, you can reveal the degree of interest in training or learning. What’s more, this metric might point out whether the learning or training material is poorly understood.
• Gamification Metric: this metric will give you valuable insight into the effectiveness of your gamification strategy that allows you to make some changes.
• Certification Metrics: with these metrics, you can keep track of certificates awarded, re-certifications, etc. to help you motivate users to repeat a course or follow mandatory training or learning.
• Competency Increase Rate: this metric allows you to combine learning data, find out correlations between course completions/skills acquisition and productivity.
• Engagement Metric: with this metric, you can discover the number of engaged users and tailor your learning strategy towards the target learning groups.
• Cost-saving Metric: This metric can be used to measure the success of the e-learning solution and discover whether you achieve business goals.

Project Structure

Here you can discover what technologies our team utilized to develop a learning analytics platform.

User Roles

A learning analytics software offers three main types of users: Manager, Analyst, and Administrator. Moreover, you can extend roles to fine-tune their access. Below you can discover what privileges users have within the learning analytics platform (LAP):

• Manager: can manage the functionality and have access to all the features within the LAP system.
• Analyst: can handle data operations, generate reports, interpret data and share the results of the analysis with management to make strategic changes and improvements.
• Administrator: not only can an Administrator have visibility to all features and functionality of all LAP environments, but he/she can also perform all operations and manage every LAP aspect.

By inputting a login and password or via Google accounts, users can log in to the LAP and land on the Dashboard page that is a central hub for managing all the learning data, users’ activities, notifications, settings, etc. The menu bar on the left side contains the following menu options:

• Users
• Groups
• Activities
• Reports
• Notifications
• Settings

Manager Dashboard

Below is an overview of the key features presented in the Manager Dashboard.

Users

With this option, you will be able to see all the users enrolled in the course in the learning systems. Not only can you see their full names, phone numbers and emails, but you can also learn more about their locations, recent activities, etc. By clicking on the username in the user’s row, you will be redirected to the page with the detailed information about this very user.

Groups

This feature allows you to create groups of users who have similar permissions. Each group has a name, a group identification (ID) number and a list of usernames that belong to the group. Moreover, members of the groups inherit the group's permissions, and you can modify permissions to the user group.

Activities

With the Activities feature, you can capture and visualize traces of learning activities to better understand how successful learners are towards their goals. What’s more, all the information about their activities is presented in a well-structured table:

• Course ID
• Course Title
• First name
• Last name
• E-mail
• Enrollment date
• Last access date
• Time spent
• Actions

Reports

With this feature, you can get all the information about what has happened within the learning analytics platform. Not only can you see the number of learners who have completed a course, the set of scores, but you can also make a report on a much broader range of the learning activities or focus on a specific learning material or context.

Notifications

With the Notifications feature, you will be up-to-date about the learning activity on the learning analytics platform. Not only will you be notified about the course completion or certification, but this option will also keep you informed about things that need your attention and appropriate reaction. In addition to that, you can adjust your notification settings to control what information you receive and when.

Account Settings

From the corresponding option in your main menu, you can reach the Account Settings page. Not only can you view and edit the general settings and preferences once you access your Account Settings, but you can also manage general login settings, security and privacy settings, etc.

Analyst Dashboard

Let’s take a closer look at what can you find in the Analyst Dashboard.

Users

By clicking on the Users option in the main menu, you will be redirected to that page. In a well-structured table, you can see all users who have been enrolled in a course in the learning systems, learning portal, etc. The table includes columns such as full names, phone numbers, and emails, locations, recent activities, last access date, time spent, etc. Once you click on the user name, you will land on the user’s page where you can find all the essential information about the user.

Groups

This feature allows you to set up groups of users who have similar permissions and use them to your advantage. All the information about the groups is presented in the table that includes the following columns:

• ID number
• Group name
• User names

What’s more, users can inherit the group's permissions and belong to more than one group.

Activities

Activities such as lectures, tutorials and quizzes encourage users to participate, think and interact with you and with one another about aspects of the learning environment. With that feature, not only can you capture and visualize the learning paths, but you can also find out how successful the users are towards their goals. All the information about their activities is presented in a well-structured table:

• Course ID
• Course Title
• First name
• Last name
• E-mail
• Enrollment date
• Last access date
• Time spent
• Actions

Reports

With the Reports feature, you can receive all the information about active and inactive users, average test scores, find out where they excel or struggle, and what most engages them. Not only can you easily access all kinds of data, but you can also create actionable and data-driven insight reports to identify user activity and leap into action to make the needed changes.

Account Settings

You can find Account Settings from the corresponding option in your main menu. With this feature through which you can make profile changes, not only can you select profile and header images, and add a name and location, but you can also choose the theme color. Also, you can change your account password or security question with just a push of the button.

Admin Dashboard

By logging in to LAP as an Administrator, you will see a hub of main navigation that allows you to access different and important areas of the learning analytics system including Users, Groups, Activities, Reports, Notifications and System Settings. Below we’re going to take a closer look at the System Settings feature that is not presented in the Manager and Analyst dashboards.

System Settings

With the System Settings, an Administrator can manage the following tabs: Roles, Users, Groups, Actions, Configuration, etc. Let’s take a closer look at the Roles tab. It is used to segment or segregate various types of users in the learning analytics platform. Also, you can use the dropdown menu to filter by Role or set Start Dates, Activation Dates, Due Dates, Expiration Dates, or Renewal Dates.

Key features of the learning analytics platform

Here we have highlighted some “standard” or typical features of the learning analytics platforms, including:

• Analytics: This feature can make you go deeper to see the metrics behind the learning data. Not only can you compare and correlate data from different sources, but you can also find those connections and understand the impact of that action on the learner’s performance and on your business as well.
• Integration: Integration of multiple technology solutions to stay up-to-date is achievable with this feature. Not only can you accelerate your learning workflow by adding additional ready-to-use functionality, but you can also strengthen it.
• x-API compliant: This feature makes it easy to track any activity and capture precise data on any learner performance assessment situation.
• Multi-User: With this feature, you can apply the roles to users to further grant or restrict access within the learning analytics platform.
• Data Visualization: With this feature, not only can you consume data from many sources, but you can also create beautiful, interactive dashboards by turning data and metrics into charts and graphs to better understand performance and goals.
• Report Builder: With this feature, you can use a drag-and-drop report builder with the criteria, fields, filters, and charts you need to get the answers about the learning data.

Benefits of LAP for your business

Below are the benefits that can be derived from implementing LAP solutions into your business.

• Easy to implement: you can easily embed LAP directly into your existing e-learning solutions such as LMS, LXP, learning portals, MOOCs, etc. to deliver a seamless experience.
• Save time: with drag-and-drop functionality, you can reduce time and eliminate time-consuming steps of going through complex settings to get the view you want.
• Simplicity: with flexible dashboards, you can easily select what is important, create reports showing exactly what you need to see.
• Weak spot detection: With high-end analytics capabilities, you can generate real-time data and gain insights into user location, demographics, scores, satisfaction surveys, time logging, and more to discover weak points and make improvements.
• Improve efficiency: with data generated across the learning solutions, you can better understand the user journey and make adjustments to deliver an optimal experience to the users.
• Better tracking: not only can you evaluate the users’ progress, but you can also determine which activities are producing the best results.

Bottom line: Want to conquer the market?

Currently, analytics has taken over the business world and a great number of organizations have opted for the learning analytics solutions that fulfill a broad range of purposes. Not only can they help to use data to generate reports, but they also allow you to create actionable outcomes through learning analytics. What’s more, it is an essential tool that enables business leaders or owners to gain a new insight into how different e-learning solutions such as online portals, LMSs, LXPs, MOOCs are aligned with their organizational business goals by measuring, collecting, processing and reporting on various types of learning or training data. Looking for a development team to help you build a learning analytics platform? We at DDI Development have vast experience in delivering a variety of e-learning solutions that meet your business needs. Leave us a message if you have any idea and want to turn it into a potentially rewarding solution.