Can Big Data Reform Your Learning and Development Program?

“Big data” is the latest buzzword among corporate leaders,who are trying to understand and explore how to use big data for the benefit oftheir organizations. Big data is a term that refers to the large volume of data—bothstructured and unstructured—available within or outside the organization.Organizations across industries are trying to gather and analyze this mass of datato understand business patterns and consumer behaviors and insights, and even tocreate their future business strategies. A study by IDG in 2015 stated that 80percent of enterprises and 63 percent of small businesses either had alreadydeployed or were about to deploy big-data initiatives.

While organizations are applying big-data analytics tomultiple areas of company operations, adding big-data analytics to learning anddevelopment (L&D) is also a rising phenomenon. If applied properly, big datacan take the traditional learning and development methods and strategies to anew level.

Here are some ways that big data can add tremendous value tocorporate learning and development programs.

Discover new types of learningmaterial

Big data not only refers to the volume of data present butalso describes the new types of data available and their unlimited sources.Learning resources are no longer restricted to organization boardrooms, contentdevelopment agencies, training instructors, and educational programs; they are beinggenerated on social media platforms, in online forums and communities, and inthe cloud. Big data is also available in the form of webinars, blogs, videos,podcasts, etc. Organizations can use big-data analytics to sort and gatherthese learning resources according to their training needs. The resourcesavailable are rich and creative in content. However, big data’s scatteredpresence makes it difficult for organizations to use it in the right way. Big-dataanalytics can source new learning types and help identify the right learningmaterials to suit your training requirements.

Learn the effectiveness of yourtraining program

Big-data analytics can present hidden facts on learneractivity, interaction, and learning patterns, and it can ultimately help you understandhow the learners are digesting the information. Organizations can also find outwhich learning material or training course is appealing to the most learners.For example, you might identify that a certain portion or module of a trainingprogram, consisting of a long video, is impacting the effectiveness of theoverall training course as learners are either skipping it or viewing it infast-forward mode. One can discover the exact reasons behind a particulartraining program’s scoring low among learners; such findings will be very useful.

Create targeted and personalizedtraining programs

Insight into training effectiveness, learner preferences, andusage patterns enables you to create personalized and adaptive learningstrategies and to create programs best suited for your learners. You can trackan individual or a learner group through the entire learning process and createthe subsequent training programs in a personalized and targeted way. Forexample, if everyone is scoring five out of five on an objective set ofquestions that provides hints and tips alongside the questions, it would be agood idea to create similar content.

Predict future training needs

Organizations can predict the upcoming trends of learning anddevelopment by using big-data insights. For example, if the insights indicatethat busy professionals or managers are doing better with on-the-go learning,new learning strategies can focus on more flexible options. The return oninvestment (ROI) for your training programs can also be predicted to a betterextent. In fact, educational institutions and colleges are using predictiveanalytics to predict the success rate of their new students. It is helping themto identify high-potential students before they even onboard them.