Written by Steve Lowenthal, Kineo’s Chief Product & Marketing Officer
Data is the fuel that makes modern businesses go. From marketing campaigns to jet engines, data enables more transparency. We can now use data effectively to highlight successes and create improvement opportunities. Learning should be no different from these other areas.
If we have a better understanding of how learners engage, perform and feel about learning experiences, then we have the potential to significantly improve the quality of learning across an organization. Which in turn drives performance individually and collectively.
Introducing Kineo Analytics for Learning Content
You may have seen some of our recent promotions about the launch of Kineo Analytics. As Kineo’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer, I wanted to take this opportunity to shine some additional light on the service, why we are launching it and our ambition.
A little more than ten years ago, xAPI (aka Tin Can or the Experience API) was launched to usher in a new era of data transparency for learning. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of organizations capturing and using data still remains elusive.
Kineo has been an advocate for xAPI since it launched, and we’ve had some interesting successes. However, like the rest of the industry, we see the opportunity for so much more. This prompted us to reflect on why the use of data remains elusive across L&D and to explore what we could do about it.
What we uncovered
We found most organizations are still wildly enthusiastic about capturing and understanding data. However, there are some practical reasons why organizations haven’t matured their L&D data strategy.
Kineo Analytics is our response to what we found. It's is a value-add service built on a robust technology infrastructure. We launched it at the end of 2022 with the goal of ushering in a new era of data use and insight - in partnership with our customers.
We have worked closely and extensively with organizations to realize their problems regarding data analysis and insights. We know that this isn’t an easy journey going forward for many organizations. However, we are here to help you navigate the blockers and realize that data can be your solution rather than your enemy (or worse, an afterthought).
The 4 most common blockers and how we tackled them
All the organizations we worked closely with had ambitions to expand their data use and create meaningful and relevant solutions for their colleagues. Throughout our analysis, there were recurring themes and issues that were being experienced by organizations.
We have created Kineo Analytics in direct response to the issues you and your teams are facing. Here’s how these blockers informed our approach to Kineo Analytics:
Blocker 1: Resources
We struggle to secure the incremental investment for technology and infrastructure to support data analytics. And what’s more, we struggle to secure the time and additional budget for consulting to include data analytics.
The biggest blocker we hear from clients is investment and time in infrastructure for data analytics. This is the investment in a Learning Record Store (LRS) that is above and beyond the investment in a Learning Management System or Learning Experience Platform already being made. And ensuring when these systems are in place that they are being used regularly and in the most effective and efficient way.
Our solution:
- We made the decision to engineer the ability to capture, analyze and visualize data into our infrastructure and include it at no additional cost to customers.
- We have excellent processes in place. Identifying data to be captured is integrated into our course authoring process and environment, anonymized data is exported as the course is used and that data is sent to a powerful business intelligence (BI) tool to make it easy to manipulate, analyze and visualize.
- When considering both investment struggles and time struggles, we updated our process and retrained our learning design team on what data to capture and how to design and write content with this in mind. We are now able to do this in the flow of a project without adding additional time and budget for consulting.
Blocker 2: Practical knowledge
We don’t have the technical know-how to implement data analytics.
Implementing xAPI requires a diverse set of skills, including instructional design (what data to capture and how do we write content to capture it) to JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) (writing an xAPI statement) to data analytics (analyzing, summarizing and visualizing the data). Most organizations have a gap in one or more of these capabilities that stops them from maturing their L&D data strategy.
Our solution:
- Kineo has embraced the idea that data analytics is more than technology and infrastructure. We are expanding our service model to include a data lens for the design and development of content and to include regular reviews of data.
- We now ensure we are identifying important insights both at the course level and across courses. This will ultimately improve user experience and the impact of learning.
Blocker 3: Choosing between xAPI and SCORM
We don’t know how to choose between systems.
Most Learning Management Systems require you to choose between launching and initiating sessions via xAPI or SCORM. You can’t use both (at least not without some technical wizardry).
Our solution:
Kineo Analytics works in parallel with SCORM. With Kineo Analytics, you can launch a course via SCORM, so the completion and other traditional data are written to the Learning Management System database. At the same time, more granular data is captured via Kineo Analytics.
Blocker 4: Confusing and unstructured data
We can’t navigate the data we have, let alone future or unseen data.
Even if we have data, the data is often unstructured and hard to understand. xAPI enables us to collect data on just about anything in a course, but all that data can be overwhelming and difficult to analyze.
Our solution:
- The foundation of Kineo Analytics is a simple framework that captures data around four dimensions: competence, perception, engagement and reaction.
- We felt this was a solid foundation of data that would benefit all organizations. This is a great starting point to grow and mature the model over time based on customer feedback.
Looking forward
We’re proud of the investment and capability we’re bringing to market with Kineo Analytics. And we are excited to go on this journey with our customers.
Our vision is for learning and development teams, armed with data, to engage with stakeholders across their organization as trusted advisors on how to make the greatest impact with their learning and development investments.
Many people think we are crazy for not charging for this service. At the end of the day, we want to create the best learning solutions possible and we know that data is essential to be able to do that. We want to create meaningful solutions for our current and future customers. We are excited about the opportunities and insights this will bring.
Curious? Get in touch
If data is on your 2023 list of “to-dos” get in touch with the team at Kineo to find out more.