How to track progress of learners in online learning

Tracking learners’ activity gives an opportunity to tune the e-learning programs and courses. The fine-tuning process provides invaluable insight into the behavior of the students. The following article explores the effective techniques in online learning platform that will be helpful in monitoring the activity of the student.

1. Integrated LMS

Virtually an integrated learning management system gives the ability to track the progress of the learners’ activity. For example, the automated LMS generates reports and sends automatically on a daily basis depending on the completion time and other essential data. A few of the management systems have limited tracking capabilities. However, most of the software applications have the ability to export reports in different formats such as PDF or CSV. The inbuilt features of the management system give the capacity to view the accurate data quickly and conveniently. Today, LMSs are present in different formats, which offer various options. If a company seeks the characteristics of advanced tracking options within the system, then choosing an integrated LMS is the solution. Many of the learning management systems follow a particular standard such as Experience API or SCORM. The information collected by the system includes the progress, the percentage of course completed, the number of times the learner clicked a particular page, and if the user passed the module. In regards to completion of the course, the learning management system considers two critical factors - content completion and assessments. For assessments, students will receive a minimum score on an exam or a quiz conducted at the end of the module. It is essential for the learner to visit every page of the course to trigger the course completion screen.

2. Manually

It is the primary tracking technique and will only provide a minimal amount of data. It is possible to integrate the tracking technology into the e-learning course and issuing course completion certificate to those who have completed the course successfully. It is possible to send the certificate to a facilitator or a moderator, who keeps a record of the number of learners who completed the course along with the scores. On the contrary, the tracking technique requires tremendous time. Nonetheless, the option is budget friendly as it eliminates the need for installing software.

3. Click

The tracking technique calculates the number of clicks registered by the learners in a particular e-learning course. It is possible to receive the data with the help of web analytics tool. Further information includes peak visiting times, and the total time that the learner spent on a particular page. The technique functions only for page views. The option is invalid if the course content has video presentation or a large flash file.

4. Custom

Custom tracking techniques include clickstream and database. It is possible to integrate the options with an existing learning management system to acquire additional data. The database solution seeks basic information such as name and the course beginning date. The clickstream uses modified web analytic tools that produce weblogs consisting of in-depth information about the learner.