Actionable Reporting on your LMS – Key Moodle™ Course Reports for Higher Learner Engagement
Do you know what separates highly successful eLearning businesses from moderately successful or failed businesses?
Data. ?
It’s data and data-driven decision-making that separates thriving eLearning businesses from thousands of other eLearning websites that are launched every year and makes them successful. That’s why data analytics and reporting features matter a lot for any eLearning business.
And when we talk about analytics and reporting features, it’s not just any type of reporting.
We are talking about actionable data and reporting. It’s that kind of reporting which can make or break your eLearning business.
In fact, once you’ve selected your LMS and built your eLearning website it’s one of the first things that you should get right.
How to get it right? That’s what we shall explore in this article. We shall take a look at why actionable reporting is important, what should you track in your reporting to derive actionable insights, and an extension that you can use easily for the purpose.
As you can see, there’s a lot to cover. So without taking any more time, let’s jump straight into the meat of the matter. ?
What’s actionable reporting in Moodle™?
The first thing you may be wondering right now is… what this actionable reporting thing is? How is it defined?
So let’s briefly see what it means:
As suggested by the term itself, actionable reporting is the kind of reporting that provides you insights with practical value instead of mere data and statistics. It provides you with a better understanding of why some numbers are the way they are for your eLearning business. Plus it tells you what they suggest, what you can learn from them, and how you can take the required action on your LMS based on your learnings from them.
Moodle™ by itself doesn’t come with any major reporting functionality. If you want actionable reporting in Moodle™, you need to depend on 3d party integrations that have been developed for the purpose.
And although there are many blocks and plugins available for advanced reporting, the thing is that either they are not easy to use or they don’t track all of the actionable reporting metrics. So you need to use multiple plugins to track different things, and that makes the whole setup much more complex than it needs to be, and choosing a Moodle™ reporting solution becomes difficult! ?
Having said that, there are some actionable reporting solutions that track all the important actionable reporting metrics and are also quite easy to use at the same time.
But before we can learn about them, let’s understand why actionable reporting is important.
Why is actionable reporting important?
Actionable reporting helps you make data-driven decisions that are critical for the success of your eLearning business. You can pinpoint things that you’re not doing well to improve them, and things that you have done properly to avoid overspending time and resources on them with help of actionable reporting.
Some of the things that actionable reporting can help you decide include:
- Identify areas where your course content may be lacking;
- Establish performance benchmarks based on the amount of time your students need to complete a course or an activity;
- Identify and reward star performers;
- Identify learners who need extra assistance from your end;
- Identify the type of content that does well among your learners;
- Identify the areas of user experience that can be improved;
- Design interactive experiences that make learning more engaging and fun.
So many benefits, right?
But these are just a few of the many things that can be done with help of actionable reporting to improve your eLearning website.
Having said that, now let’s take a look at some of the important metrics that should be tracked in actionable reporting to improve your Moodle™-based eLearning website.
What to track for higher learner engagement in Moodle™
There are mainly 5 types of actionable reporting metrics that should be tracked in any Moodle™-based eLearning website, and supported by any Moodle™ reporting tool. They include:
#1. Course Progress of students
How your students are performing in the courses is one of the first things that should be measured. This information should be made available to the students themselves so they can track how they’re doing in the courses that they are taking.
Fortunately, measuring it is not a difficult task. Learner reports of Edwiser Reports Pro allow you to provide a dashboard to your learners where they can see how they are doing in the courses they’re taking. Here is how it can help your students:
- They will have a better understanding of which activities or lessons are taking their time;
- They will be more motivated by seeing how much time and effort they are putting into their learning;
- They will have an idea of how they are performing in comparison to average students, and;
- They will be able to ensure that they’re committing a set amount of time to their learning on regular basis.
#2. Overall learner engagement
The next thing to measure is the overall engagement of your students. This tells you how engaging and good your course content is for your learners. Also, you need to have a way to identify and reward the most active learners, to create an incentive for other learners.
The student engagement report functionality of Edwiser Reports provides you with a dashboard to take an overall look at your Moodle™ Course Reports for learners. This gives you an idea about how your course content is performing among students. It also allows you to see the top and worst performers of your courses. Here’s how it can help you:
- You can identify which of your students are performing well and which ones need your help;
- You can also understand how your content is performing among the students;
- You can figure out engagement level on a deeper level between your various exams, activities, and assignments;
- You can also provide an incentive for your learners by rewarding the best performers, thus boosting student engagement.
#3. Time spent on LMS
Having overall user engagement data is good, but you can benefit even more from detailed data and analytics regarding the time your learners are spending in the LMS. Because as they say, time is important! 🙂
It can allow you to calculate your ROI more effectively, and find out the issues that your learners may be having with certain parts of your LMS.
The good news is that you can track time spent by your students in an easy manner with help of Edwiser Reports Pro extension. It can generate very detailed reports regarding how much time your learners are spending and in which part of the LMS they are spending it.
How can it help you? Well, here’s how:
- You can identify the parts of your LMS that need improvement for a better UX;
- You can understand customer behavior in more detail;
- You can plan the maintenance of your website at a time that doesn’t disrupt the learning of your learners;
- You can also plan better ad positions to monetize your site in an effective way when you know where your learners are spending their time.
#4. Time spent on courses
Just like time spent on LMS, the details about time spent on individual courses can be another major metric to know about the course content that you have created.
It can provide you an overview of how much time on average your students need in order to complete a particular course. It can also allow you to identify the courses that are working well among your learners, and courses that are not working at all.
The good part of the story is that Time Tracking functionality included in Edwiser Reports allows you to track this particular metric too. Here is how it can serve to your advantage:
- You can identify the most popular courses among your students, and develop more similar or related courses;
- You can identify the courses that are not doing too well, so you can develop less content around those subjects;
- You can also develop your courses better when you understand how much time it takes on average to complete the course;
- You can also avoid the issue of struggling with the idea of what content to create for marketing your courses, because when you know which courses are being popular among your learners you can focus more o your marketing resources.
Bonus: Number of visits on LMS
While the 5 metrics given above can provide you a complete picture of your eLearning business, if you can track the number of visits your LMS is receiving it can be cherry on the top.
This information can allow you to understand your user experience in a better way, so you can improve it for good.
Edwiser Reports does a terrific job of actionable Moodle™ reporting by generating a report on this particular metric too. The report allows you to view the total number of visits your LMS is receiving, and the sections of LMS that are getting those visits. You can analyze the data provided in the report to identify which parts of your LMS are providing a good user experience and which ones need improvement.
Bonus Read – Free vs paid Moodle™ reporting
Conclusion
So that was an overview of why actionable reporting is important in Moodle™, what all it includes, and how can it be added to your Moodle™ installation. Not only it can help you boost learner engagement, but also it can help you develop an eLearning business that is data-driven instead of being driven by assumptions or guesswork.
All you need is a premium solution that can integrate actionable reporting functionality with your Moodle™ LMS. And based on the explanations given above, Edwiser Reports Pro is one such solution to add this functionality to your LMS. Give it a try, and also share your thoughts on the information provided in this article in the comments section.
