Data & Analytics for Instructional Designers

  • 3h 12m
  • Megan Torrance
  • Association for Talent Development
  • 2023

Add Data and Analytics to Your TD Toolkit

With the advance of new learning technologies and data specifications, instructional designers have access to richer data sources than ever before. But with more data comes the question of what to do with it. Data and Analytics for Instructional Designers addresses what learning and performance data you need, how to design learning experiences with data collection in mind, and how to use the data to improve and evaluate those experiences.

Instructional design pro Megan Torrance delivers a compelling resource for those who want to get some data and use it to transform their organizations. This book is split in two parts: the foundations and designing for data. It starts out defining key data and analytics terms, data specifications, learning metrics, and statistical concepts. Then, it lays out a framework for using learning data, from planning how to gather data to building scale and maturity in your data operations.

This book takes a “If I can see it, I can be it” approach to learning data and analytics, blending practical what-is and how-to content and real-world examples and longer case studies from practitioners. Chapters conclude with opportunities for you to put these techniques to work right away, whether you are in a data-rich environment already, or whether you are just getting started and working on hypotheticals.

About the Author

Megan Torranceis CEO and founder of TorranceLearning, which helps organizations connect learning strategy to design, development, data, and ultimately performance. Megan has more than 25 years of experience in learning design, deployment, and consulting. Megan and the TorranceLearning team are passionate about sharing what works in learning, so they devote considerable time to teaching and sharing about Agile project management for learning experience design and the xAPI. TorranceLearning hosts the xAPI Learning Cohort, a free, virtual 12-week learning-by-doing opportunity where teams form on the fly and create proof-of-concept xAPI projects.

Megan is the author of Agile for Instructional Designers, The Quick Guide to LLAMA, and two ATD TD at Work publications: Agile and LLAMA for ISD Project Management and Making Sense of xAPI. She is a frequent speaker at conferences nationwide. TorranceLearning projects have won several Brandon Hall Group awards, the 2014 xAPI Hyperdrive contest at DevLearn, and back-to-back Learning Guild DemoFest Best-in-Show awards in 2016/2017 with xAPI projects. TorranceLearning is a 2018 Michigan 50 Companies to Watch.

A graduate of Cornell University with a degree in communication and an MBA, and an eCornell Facilitator in the Women’s leadership curriculum, Megan lives and works near Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In this Book

  • Introduction
  • Why Should Instructional Designers Care?
  • Getting Started With Definitions
  • Data Specifications in Workplace Learning
  • Unique Learning Metrics
  • A Little Bit of Statistics
  • A Framework for Using Workplace Learning Data
  • Make a Plan for Gathering and Using Data
  • Form Your Hypothesis and Specify Data Needs
  • Identify Data Sources
  • Build in Data Capture
  • Store the Data
  • Iterate on the Data and the Analysis
  • Communicate and Visualize the Data
  • Build Scale and Maturity
  • Further Reading
  • References
SHOW MORE
FREE ACCESS