How Adaptive Technology Can Improve Your Training Game Plan

Adaptive learning is on the rise in corporate L&D departments. In fact, a survey conducted by ATD Research indicates that within the next two years, respondents expect a majority of their learning mix will leverage adaptive technology.

And they won’t just be using it as a learning tool.

In fact, adaptive learning’s distinctive features – like its ability to drill into the depth and degree of mastery and its powerful analytics – have opened the door for alternative uses of the technology within L&D.

One of the most profound ways that companies are expanding their use of adaptive technology is as an evaluation tool. Adaptive platforms have the ability to collect and assess a wealth of data for analyzing and refining existing training and informing what training to build next. Used in this way, adaptive learning technology can help you:

Assess employee knowledge gaps

What do your employees really know? What skills will they be able to accurately apply on the job? Can you easily and effectively pinpoint what each individual knows down to a single competency or skill? Answering these questions will help you identify topics that need additional focus and plan future training initiatives to deliver application-level mastery.

Assess content strengths and weaknesses

How well is your current content working? Can your employees apply your content when it counts? Could it be fine-tuned to be even more effective? Identifying content and curriculum gaps and weaknesses will help you establish a strong foundation from which to execute future learning programs. Fine-tuning your content will ensure that your programs remediate knowledge gaps, enhance skills and improve knowledge application. And it will also enable you to deliver a better user experience, which is key to fostering credibility and buy-in for current and future training.

Assess efficacy of learning systems

Are your eLearning tools and live training sessions as helpful as they could be? Are they delivering on perceived value, or failing to achieve your KPIs and hindering your strategic objectives? How effective was the pilot training course you just ran? Is your new AR/VR-enabled training solving your training needs? Evaluating the performance of your existing eLearning mix (everything from basic online tools to algorithm-based adaptive platforms) will help you determine what’s working and where your organization would experience the most impact from AI-enabled adaptive technology.

When used as an evaluation tool, adaptive technology helps organizations analyze the efficacy of their systems, content and methodologies so they can build programs that achieve application-level mastery.

If you find that answering the questions above is challenging (aka: you don’t have this kind of learning data at your fingertips), we can help. Our new assessment tool, Snapshot, lets you to harness the power of our AI-driven predictive analytics technology to inform the development and/or the results of a comprehensive learning program. By taking a “snapshot” assessment of all your employees, you’ll be able to:

• Predict Knowledge and Application – Fulcrum Snapshot pinpoints employee mastery and confidence gaps – on both the individual and group levels. And, most importantly, it predicts whether employees will be able to apply their training on the job. For example, Snapshot’s individual user report (below) details the performance if each individual employee. Here green indicates “all-star” areas – learning objectives that the employee has mastered and has a high probability of accurately applying on the job. Employees with high levels of green are prime candidates for peer-to-peer mentors. Blue indicates a “good” application-level understanding of the content/proficiency. Red indicates risk – highlighting where the employee needs more targeted training and remediation. Using this report, you can begin to formulate the topic areas and skills that would be ideal for training and development.

 

 

• Fine Tune Content – Snapshot provides insights that enable you to evaluate current content to identify content gaps and ineffective learning materials. For example, the course report (below) demonstrates the performance of the group within the course. Red indicates where employees are struggling most. You can then drill down into each section to determine exactly which learning objectives are most challenging – uncovering instances of content gaps that can be remediated in future learning initiatives.

 

 

 

• Evaluate L&D Delivery Systems – Snapshot also helps you understand how your learning delivery methods are performing. It shows you the degree and depth of mastery and predicts knowledge application, so you can:
  • Determine if employees respond better to your digital or in-person training
  • Evaluate if your recent foray into gamification or AR/VR-enabled training has been worth the investment
  • Assess your eLearning tools- including other adaptive platforms – to see if they’re delivering promised results
  • Analyze the efficacy of pilot studies and new programs (even other adaptive ones)

For example, in the Snapshot course tab (below) significant amounts of red indicate that there’s a content problem – either in the content itself or the delivery of the content. This would be seen in the course tab where people are looking at the performance of the assessment.

Evaluating training efficacy, curriculum gaps and delivery systems can be a challenge, and our Snapshot assessment product acts like a compass – helping you always know the direction you’re headed. In just 10-20 minutes, employees can cycle through a variety of interactive assessments – everything from multiple choice to drag phrase, hot-spot, order and fill-in-the-blank – and provide you with an insightful snapshot of their knowledge. Whether you’ve just completed a new training program or are looking to plan the most in-need training program, Fulcrum Snapshot can help with relevant, insightful data. Contact us directly to set up a demo of this assessment tool and how it might help you.