I just had a PR enquiry asking me to comment on more recent, technical and sophisticated learning analytics that are now available. In declining the opportunity to provide comment I had a quick rant. I guess that’s what a blog is for so I have decided to publish my knee-jerk first response:

Whilst I recognize that it’s important to evaluate process-based training against certain performance criterion, the false sense of security supplied by stats can seriously corrupt the learning manager into investing in what he/she can demonstrate and measure as a quantifiable result, rather than what’s really needed.

How do you evaluate an increase in confidence using an online tool? If someone improves their communication skills - where do you look for the measurable output? How can you be sure that what you are measuring is not affected by other factors? Whatever you choose to measure is where the attention will go so you had better be asking the right questions.

To draw a parallel - The reason that people are leaving the teaching profession in droves it that the futile admin in measuring the development of pupils against a rigid, prescriptive “levels” means that there is less time available for lesson planning and teaching in general.

Most teachers focus on high performers to get that their individual scores as high as possible; and low performers to minimize the number of pupils falling below the line of what is expected; everyone in the middle is ignored. The consequence of KPI’s and other leveling instruments is that the trainer will be paying attention to their overall score and focus at either end of the bell curve.

It’s no longer about incremental improvement of everyone, or what will be the most effective thing to address - it’s now about - have we hit this one specific KPI. This analytics stuff is yet another tool to drive business training down the road of what you can prove against what is deemed to be the outcome in advance rather than having the freedom to do whatever is actually needed.

We are living in a world of left-brained, process-driven thinking and many people would be delighted if we all behaved like robots - it would be far more controllable and measurable, but leaves no room for creativity or personal genius.