What Are KPIs and Why Are They Important in Tracking Course Completion Rates?
Hey everybody, today we’re going to talk about KPIs or Key Performance Indicators and why they are important in online learning. KPIs are specific metrics or data that we use to reveal the strengths and areas for improvement in our online learning courses. They’re actually a simple and super useful tool that can give you a quick glance at the overall health of your education and training program.
Data Reliability When Tracking Course Completion Rates
One example of a vital KPI in the realm of online learning that everybody should be tracking is student attrition rates, or how many students are actually completing your online courses. This seems like a very simple and straightforward metric—we just need to look at the final data reports of how many students passed, failed, or received an incomplete in their course, right?
Not so much! In many education systems, school leaders and directors do not have a reliable view of what their actual learner incomplete rates are in their overall online learning program. Now, why is this? Well, in many education systems, if a student drops their course before a specific withdrawal date in a semester, there is no record of their attempt or of them ever having been in the course.
It’s as if they never existed. And this can create a huge problem for KPI metrics when measuring online course completion rates. Why is this important?
Data for Classroom Learners vs Online Learners
In the traditional classroom, learners are still going to attend their class every day…hopefully 😊. Even if they haven’t done the readings and the homework, they’ll go ahead and take a test on test day even if they’re not ready or they haven’t studied. So, classroom learners are going to show up in the final database reports as having taken the course but just not successfully achieving the outcomes for it. If a principal sees that 70 percent of students in a classroom course are failing it, this sets off a huge flag!
Conversely, in an elearning course, students tend to complete one concept before proceeding to the next. And if they’re struggling in the course and they aren’t engaged, they often simply give up, stop logging in, and they don’t even reach the test in their course. So unlike a face-to-face classroom, where we might see very low marks or high failure rates in a problematic course, in an online setting, Students who are disengaged tend to quietly drop out or just leave their courses incomplete.
That’s why when we see a high percentage of drop rates versus failure rates in an elearning program, it is a strong signal that something is wrong, and we need to investigate. Is it the content? Is it the technology? Is it the level of engagement of the instructor?
What KPI Data Can Your Team Use to Track Course Completion Rates?
After viewing today’s video, what important KPI measures can you track in your eLearning program to be able to accurately analyze the completion rates for your courses?
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