Data-Driven Training Metrics Are the Future of L&D: The Case for XR Analytics
Roundtable Learning
Your Partner for Smarter, More Engaging Corporate Training Programs | Custom Built XR Training, eLearning, ILT & more.
How XR Analytics REV UP L&D WITH Actionable Training Metrics
Everything is data now. And training metrics, a key element of L&D, are data.
But data is officially a trillion-dollar conversation, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research and Harvard Business Review. Our blood sugar can be data-pinpointed down to the microgram. In our pockets, even without Wi-Fi, we can store more data than an entire library could fifty years ago.?
Data is the new currency. When it comes to L&D training, RTL will help you invest it right.
(XR Analytics Brief Definition)
XR refers to the broadest sense of digitally enhanced or digitally represented content–whether visual, sonic or tactile. Extended Reality (XR) includes virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR) and augmented reality (AR). XR analytics are any figures measuring training effectiveness or otherwise recording performance and kinetic data produced by or through a device using AR, MR or VR.
Training Effectiveness: Solve for x, Show Your Work
For many jobs, projects and tasks, the process matters. Knowing how someone got the job done is important, if only to know that they can repeat the process.
Where most training will just tell you if someone got the job done, knowing how they got it done is essential. And Roundtable’s Mercury XRS meta-metrics software can help with that. Getting the job done doesn’t need referees, but it does need a stopwatch and a scoreboard – even if it’s just the trainer that sees it.
Making Gains Clipboard-Free: Two Examples of “Hands-Free” Training Metrics?
Physically taking notes with pen and paper is a great backup. But in the 21st century, someone’s ultimately going to be punching those employee training metrics into a spreadsheet. XR analytics eliminates this step.?
So, the manual task of transcribing field notes and ticking countless boxes is time-consuming and confined to that sheet of paper–unless it’s transmitted into some other digital format like a photograph or a file. XR analytics are already digital files, AND these numbers crunch themselves.
Roundtable Warehouse PIT Training Sessions
One example of successful XR analytics is PIT training.
A Powered Industrial Truck (PIT) is a modified forklift-style apparatus which is used for moving goods within a warehouse. And home delivery of goods is skyrocketing worldwide so this is an in-demand skill. There are a lot more “truck drivers,” one could say.
A Fortune 10 retailer got in touch with Roundtable. They asked if there are ways to up the safety and reduce training time and costs for their burgeoning squadron of warehouse personnel, including forklift and PIT operators. And there are ways to do both.
Proper training programs for PIT operations start with safety. The most important key performance indicators will be fastened securely to a commitment to safety. Using MR–Mixed Reality where the learner operates through digital shapes and images projected through spectacles or another digital medium–learners navigate a PIT around various virtually-represented shelves, gates and other objects.
When the only collisions are virtual, that’s a lot more safety. But with automated evaluation and tracking through XR data, there are fewer boxes to tick and fewer field notes for the trainer. One module of Roundtable’s training programs for the PIT learning process had numerous steps. It included 17 criteria to evaluate–which is a lot of stop-and-start if the only observation is the trainer’s 120 degrees of the human field of vision. Having a six-ounce pair of smart glasses recording the movements, sending them through the cloud and computing the learner’s performance is a lot faster, safer and less subjective than someone standing close by and marking things on a battered clipboard.
Dow Saves Six Figures in Five Months
Another famous example of automated data saving money was Dow Chemical’s investment in eLearning programs. The global blue chips company started that initiative in 2000. In a span of five months, with the help of digital training metrics, they saved $162,000 by removing the manual record-keeping needs.
Training Metrics: Measure Twice, Cut Once
There’s a lot that goes into getting a job done. Any job, really. While there are certain tasks, practices and aptitudes that just can’t be reduced to a number, there are many that can. These are XR stats you can track in Mercury XRS.
XR Analytics for Training and Development Programs, Examples
Learner Performance
Behavioral Data
Engagement Metrics
Skills Application
Training Effectiveness
What Do You Do with Training Metrics? Save Money!?
L&D professionals often find themselves balancing input from all directions. There’s those higher up in the organization who control budgets and those on the ground who participate in the training. To be sure, leadership has a focus that definitely includes on the bottom line, especially when it comes to the investment needed for XR training. The question of ROI comes up frequently. And key performance indicators tied to delivering meaningful business outcomes.
Data from XR training programs offers organizations insights to fine-tune training, boost performance, and cut costs. By tracking metrics like completion rates, time spent on tasks, and common mistakes, companies can identify exactly where training falls short and focus their efforts where it matters most. This eliminates inefficiencies, reduces redundant training, and speeds up how quickly employees reach full productivity. For example, a manufacturing team could use XR data to spot which employees struggle with machine operations. This effort provides tailored support to prevent costly errors on the production line or time spent in the classroom.
XR analytics also ensures employees are fully prepared before stepping into real-world scenarios, preventing expensive mistakes, rework, or safety incidents. Take healthcare, for instance—XR data can measure how accurately a trainee surgeon performs a virtual procedure, confirming they’re ready before handling real patients. These insights help organizations optimize training programs, leading to better outcomes while reducing material waste, safety risks, and employee turnover. With XR training, the ROI is clear: smarter training means smarter spending.
Roundtable Learning: Human Creativity and Data Driven Training Best Practices
Roundtable Learning knows some training objectives and key performance indicators are unique to a company or vertical. Other training metrics, like time and money, are a concern for any workplace of any size. The husbandry of training programs and measuring them is diverse yet has some foundational practices. Roundtable, a digital training company literally older than the word “eLearning,” knows that that harvest requires good data for training effectiveness.
Unlike nearly every other full-stack skills, job, learning and corporate training firm, Roundtable Learning has been doing this for decades and has adapted and thrived since dial-up modems were still common. That adaptation applies to clientele and industries: we’ve created and optimized training for some variegated tasks and companies. We’ve helped companies measure training effectiveness for the following tasks.
领英推荐
Roundtable’s Diverse C.V. of Employee Training Programs, Sampler
Data Agriculture: Roundtable Learning?
At Roundtable Learning, our adaptability, diverse expertise, and deep understanding of learning allow us to measure nearly anything and help companies empower their employees to improve. While data itself is powerful, its real value lies in interpretation—and that requires not just skilled data technicians but also experienced interpreters. Unlike one of our top competitors, one-in-six of Roundtable’s employees are learning specialists.
Our learning specialists understand that data isn’t just for computers—it’s for people. The insights we provide ultimately land in front of decision-makers who need to clearly understand what the numbers mean and how to act on them. While many firms can explain how machines process data, only a few, like Roundtable, truly excel at translating that data into actionable insights for humans.
With Objective Metrics and Predicting Business Outcomes, XR Analytics Are the Future
Objective data allows companies to target training more precisely. Knowing their employees and their employees’ strengths, interests, etc., allows for greater compatibility of training type, medium and more.
How Targeting Uses Data and Earns Trillions
The use of cookies and targeted ads–for better or worse–is one major secret behind Silicon Valley’s (latent) trillions: each piece of data reported by cookies whittles away something that a person is not interested in (and, in the case of advertisers, they know not to spend their money there). With objective data, an L&D trainer can whittle away something the learner has mastered, and the training course is expedited.
But we can only whittle away what we’re certain about. That is the brilliance of objective data, whether for training metrics or something else. It’s certain.?
Companies Accelerating to the Speed of Data
Even outside of training, the value of data is evidently high for companies.
Investing Big in Data
Whatever the use, internal or external, data is what’s going on.
And while the company-wide use of data for external-facing initiatives is a much bigger beast to tame, the data within, for internal training, is much more manageable, and RTL can help.
XR Training Data Is Objective
Two irreducible ways to measure things are time and distance. They are also very useful training metrics. Time is measured objectively, with each minute having 60 seconds. Everyone gets the same amount. Distance and direction are also two solid attributes.
Objective Data in Training Metrics: Going the Distance
Many XR devices are constantly performing innumerable calculations related to physical distance, and they’re doing so at the finest of degrees, down to a fraction of a millimeter. This measurement can be done for many things. Some examples are eye-tracking and tangible simulated instrumentation, such as a steering wheel or airplane yoke.
For eye-tracking, one example is when Roundtable used Magic Leap 2 (paired with Roundtable’s Mercury XRS) to help a Fortune 10 retail client train employees. The glasses track wherever the learner is focusing their gaze, significantly reducing subjective performance in focusing on the task-at-hand: a simple 20-degree change in rotation of the learner’s eyes can alter the success.
For external manually operated devices, measuring, calculating, rendering and recording the smallest of distances, a micrometer change in direction on a flight simulator yoke, for example, is vital. Measuring the change in position of a pilot’s yoke will calculate whether the learner is maintaining the right altitude – altitude being one of many indispensable training metrics for flight training.
Objective Data in Training: Time in XR Analytics
In 1967, the timespan of a second was actually physically defined at a conference in Paris. There are 60 of them in a minute, and they’re a very useful instrument to measure employee performance. It’s definitely one way to quantify key metrics for training programs.
Real Example of Training Saving Time
Kellanova, in addition to saving one million dollars off the top, reduced its training programs’ evaluation to just under a half hour. The learner engages in 15 different situations, cross-training style, in everything from persuasive agility with grocery store managers to spotting hazards like wet floors during a store walk.
Powerful Insights and Knowledge Gained WITH TRAINING METRICS
Planning ahead is the goal for any business or workplace. Formulating a business forecast is a basic task for any business or economics major. The same goes for redirection and adaptation to overcome roadblocks and challenges. For both of these practices, data is essential.
There are many intuitive ways that having data can help with predictive or directive enterprises.
XR Analytics Predictions and Solutions
If everyone makes the same mistake with the training material, it may be the design or the content. And that’s why there is beta testing. If there’s still a high margin of error, then that’s an even more important discovery: there’s a deeper problem with employee readiness, and thankfully, it was found early on.
There are also interpersonal considerations that data can reveal. When Roundtable designed training programs for in-home technicians of a Fortune 500 internet service provider, they found an interesting piece of data in their pre-trial employee surveys. The senior technicians were, understandably, hesitant about VR-based lessons and were suspicious of their efficacy. After the fact, almost all members of the sample group affirmed there was either some utility to the immersive training they received or that it could be useful in the future. This type of data metric indicates there are interpersonal criteria that can be optimized through things such as additional opportunities for communication. The hurdles to buy-in can be predicted and, therefore, possibly negotiated.
Learning and Development Moving at the Speed of Data
The future of Learning and Development (L&D) training involves data-driven metrics and XR analytics. By leveraging XR analytics, companies can gain unparalleled insights into employee performance, identify areas for improvement and adapt with unprecedented quickness.
Objective data, gained through the expert use of finely calibrated XR devices, enables trainers to make informed decisions and precisely target training initiatives. With the help of XR analytics many companies have already seen overall cost savings and improved training effectiveness.
By embracing this technology, companies can unlock powerful insights, predict potential challenges, enhance knowledge retention and drive business success through more effective employee training.
Schedule a free discovery chat with one of our experts today!?