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How To Measure Skill Improvement

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November 1, 2019

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Measure Skill Improvement

It’s essential to measure skill improvement to stay informed of the progress of your organization. When measuring skills, only short-term knowledge retention is often assessed, not long-term. Here’s where microlearning comes in.

In this article, we’ll discuss possible solutions for this exact problem.

1. Improve Skills with Peer Learning

Peer learning is a unique feature offered by a good authoring tool, such as that of EdApp. It refers to the ability for learners to add videos and visuals to existing lessons for their colleagues to see. This allows for employees to learn from each other, encouraging their participation and boosting their productivity. By watching videos of employees’ putting their learnt skills into practice, their competencies can be seen by all, highlighting areas of strength or potential gaps in learning. This ability is an example of visual confirmation, whereby role play is enhanced by technology.

2. Practical Application of Skills to Improve

Microlearning provides on-the-job-like training as microlessons can be progressed through at anytime, anywhere. This means that valuable work hours are not jeopardised for time set aside for training. The interactivity of microlearning requires learners to physically apply skills that they will need to successfully perform in their roles. Due to these exercises replicating real-life scenarios, skills competency can be recognised and assessed by employers.

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3. Build Skills with Gamification

Gamification encompasses the incorporation of gaming elements into serious course content. These include point scores, leader boards, star bars and real prizes. The strategy is widely-employed and, if successfully executed, significantly boosts employee engagement in learning and productivity in the workplace. The interactive nature of gamification forces employees to willingly participate, gaining a sense of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation along the way.

4. Skills Assessments

Skills assessments are essential for measuring skill for improvement when executed effectively. Spaced repetition is a strategy utilised by various authoring tools, used to deliver repeats of content in calculated intervals. EdApp’s spaced repetition approach is called Brain Boost, used to counter Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve. The Forgetting Curve is a visual representation of the rate the human brain forgets new information. It is a known fact that the average human brain cannot withhold more than 3 new pieces of information at any given time, which is why it is pivotal to feed the brain only what it is able to remember.

5. Enhance Skills with Social Learning

The ability of learners to teach others is one of the most effective ways for people to learn. They are able to share real-world examples of what they are explaining, meaning that they are actively applying their learned skills to their daily roles and responsibilities. Skill improvement and competencies can be assessed in instances of social learning, examining what employees are strong in, and where they need some extra learning.

There are a number of ways to measure skills improvement. If you don’t know where to start, the best way to get a clearer picture of your employees’ current skill level is with assessments like quizzes or practical exams. Through these tests, you’ll be able to determine what skills they need to work on through training and goals they need to reach. As you start training your employees more regularly, you can look at training results from completed courses and get a clearer picture of the learning trends and knowledge gaps that need to be addressed. By using tools like EdApp’s user analytics page, which includes an activity feed, content drill down, and course progress reports, you’ll get an overview of all relevant information from your learners’ training sessions. These stats can include the number of visits to the app, lessons or courses completed, and passing rates. As mentioned earlier, you can also give out assessments and quizzes to determine knowledge retention and measure skill improvement. One great tool that you can use to deploy these tests is Rapid Refresh by EdApp. Through this intuitive online quiz maker, you’ll be able to create, schedule, and deploy quizzes in just a few minutes. To start making your own test, you just need to prepare your questions and fill out the tool’s easy-to-use spreadsheet template and decide whether you’ll send out the assessments daily, weekly, or in one sitting. With powerful tools like these, it’s easier for learning and development professionals to extract data and evaluate their employees’ performance.

Conclusion

Microlearning provides users with an alternative option to absorb as much information they are exposed to as possible. It works by breaking down course content into small, bite-sized chunks where modules are between 3-5 minutes. Information is released in strategic bursts, known as spaced repetition, whereby knowledge is exposed to learners in intervals, in order for them to absorb and retain more knowledge in a shorter amount of time.

Author

Guest Author Daniel Brown

Daniel Brown is a senior technical editor and writer that has worked in the education and technology sectors for two decades. Their background experience includes curriculum development and course book creation.