Your school, college or university has spent the last several years investing in various learning management systems in order to promote student engagement and increase retention rates, but how do you know if it’s working? What metrics are most important to measure? And once you’ve measured them, what do you do with that information? The following five ways educators can measure the ROI of learning will answer all of these questions and more.
While educational institutions have long used tools such as rubrics and standardized tests to measure student learning, there are several digital marketing strategies that can also help determine whether students are grasping key concepts. Digital marketing trends suggest that institutions looking to evaluate their own effectiveness should be on the lookout for three areas in particular:
All three factors will play a role in helping educators create an effective digital strategy. More specifically, a simple way for educators to start measuring ROI is by gathering ideas from experts through social media communities like Twitter chats and LinkedIn groups, which offer a wealth of data about online learning industry hot topics.
The rise of technology and digital marketing trends are influencing how many businesses, including education institutions, market their products. As a result, educators have begun to incorporate formative assessments into their practices. The term refers to any kind of assessment that evaluates learning while it’s taking place and is administered frequently throughout a lesson. Formative assessments are quickly proving to be more efficient than traditional homework or grading because they allow teachers to keep tabs on students’ progress in real time and adapt accordingly as needed. If you’re an educator interested in learning more about how technology can help measure your impact on student learning, then we’d love to help! Our digital marketing agency offers an array of web development services for small businesses and nonprofit organizations, including web design and graphic design.
Connected learning is all about learning in context, which has a few things to do with analytics. Connected learners understand their learning path and how it relates to real-world experiences. The educator can then use digital marketing strategies and digital marketing trends to enhance their efforts at measurement by making sure that teaching methods are optimized for effective ROI. This is where digital marketing agencies come into play: they help companies manage online reputation, drive traffic and even measure returns on social media engagement through analytics data. Digital marketing agencies also maintain a deep understanding of what is involved in developing an ongoing connected learning strategy – including educators using various technology devices and services like digital classrooms, interactive whiteboards, computer software platforms etc. to tailor a connected learning environment for their students.
In a 2011 study by Forbes Insights, 21 percent of executives say collaboration is more important than strategic planning in determining competitive advantage. They’re absolutely right: Collaboration can help you enhance your effectiveness at every level—and reduce costs in many areas, from travel to talent acquisition. In today’s marketplace, it’s more important than ever for organizations to collaborate with external stakeholders and customers in order to get feedback on new ideas. But collaboration isn’t just about crowdsourcing; with technology facilitating remote communication, companies are increasingly realizing that they need not be constrained by geography when connecting with other players in their industry. To develop your business, make sure you partner with outside stakeholders as much as possible—customers included.
While many educators focus their energies on measuring a student’s performance against his or her peers, it’s just as important to measure a student’s individual progress. If a student learns in an environment where she is graded against a set of metrics aligned with specific learning goals and content standards, not only can educators measure her performance against her own work, but they can also compare that progress over time. This sort of measuring is known as adaptive learning. The goal is to provide students with feedback that allows them to change how they learn in order to achieve what had previously been an unachievable goal.
Conclusion
Despite education leaders’ desire to measure the ROI of learning, current methods are not yielding the results that are needed for a measurable business case. Education leaders need to make sure they have identified the highest-impact opportunities, set clear goals and metrics to track improvement, and apply appropriate analytical tools to measure expected outcomes.