I mentioned recently that your users are the people who should be your guide to your design.

I saw a post by Rich Millington a couple of days ago where he describes community design issues:

The more research we do, the more I’m convinced most community professionals completely misunderstand how members use their sites and what they feel about them.

Rich Millington

Let’s look at that first sentence and imagine it said learning instead of community. Let’s focus on the phrase ‘the more research we do’.

• How much research do you do about how people use learning?
• How much data do you collect on what people are using, when, how, and where?
• Where do people go after using one element in your offer?
• How do you track what the most successful people learn?
• When do you report the usage in detail to the sponsors to demonstrate what hasn’t worked?

We shouldn’t have to be saying this, but ‘learner metrics’ are limited unless you are able to track them to this level and can demonstrate how they impact the organisation.

Collect the right data when you’ve worked out what the right data is. It’s probably not the dots you’re connecting right now.