{"id":1700,"date":"2019-04-20T14:26:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-20T14:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mohammadhassam.com\/blog\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2019-05-01T15:17:12","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T15:17:12","slug":"identify-the-skill-gap-via-xapi-and-boost-learners-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mohammadhassam.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/20\/identify-the-skill-gap-via-xapi-and-boost-learners-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Identify the Skill GAP via xAPI and Boost Learner\u2019s Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

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According to ATD\u2019s State of the Industry report, organizations spent $1,296 per employee on learning in 2017. Yet many companies are not happy with the return of investment they receive from training expenditures. Organizations aren\u2019t happy with the ROI because current courses are not driving the results they\u2019re supposed to be achieving.<\/p>\n

According to eLearning Gurus, one of the biggest challenge is the content, which is not driving performance in the company.<\/p>\n

There are so many delivery methods in training but let\u2019s focus on the most common delivery method for now \u2013 eLearning.<\/p>\n

Are your e-learning courses impactful? If you are a training or LMS administrator, you would know that when learner finishes the course, it shows completed in the LMS with the scores of end of course assessment. Either of them will not help you to identify the skill gap.<\/p>\n

For companies, it\u2019s imperative to know how performance is measured and how eLearning courses could help. Finding a common denominator between performance and learning would help instructional designers to analyze the gap.<\/p>\n

Existing Evaluation is Broken<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The customer support department is one of those departments where you can see the rapid impact of your e-learning courses. It could be either scenario-based learning or microlearning.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the existing evaluation criteria are broken. Courses are connected with completion rather than skills. Key performance indicators can help you to identify the skills. But e-learning courses that are published via SCORM can only report \u201ccompletion\u201d in the LMS. How would you make a connection between eLearning courses versus the agent\u2019s performance?<\/p>\n

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How to Solve the Mystery?<\/h2>\n

The best solution is to design e-learning courses that follow skill-based learning. Each course will help learners classify the skill gaps, along with course recommendations. Depending on the nature of the business, finding the best KPIs that will measure performance and identify key skills learner would need.<\/p>\n

Once the skills are identified, create a pre-assessment to measure the employee\u2019s abilities in those skill areas. Each ability must be tracked separately, which is impossible in SCORM courses. For that, xAPI plays a vital role to report scores as statements. Once gaps are identified, recommend courses you think will fill those gaps.<\/p>\n

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Scenario<\/h2>\n

In this article, I have designed a scenario using xAPI to demonstrate how skill-based evaluation looks like.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s meet Bob. Bob is an instructional designer for ABC company. Recently, he found out that too many customer support agents lacked the necessary communication skills to do their jobs effectively. Sherin asked Bob to design a pre-assessment course for agents on Communication Skills. The course will help agents to identify the abilities to improve such as listening, body language, nonverbal cues, and writing skills. The course will also recommend the courses that will help agents to improve their skills.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bob\u2019s organization has an in-house learning management system (LMS) integrated with the SCORM Cloud.<\/span><\/p>\n

Challenge<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s obvious that skill-based learning is the best approach to overcoming the skills gaps of these customer support agents. But Bob ran into several challenges:<\/p>\n