Conducting a needs analysis: The case of missing learners

Engage learners by conducting a needs analysis

Meet Sadie, Director of Instructional Design at a large mobile retailer with 15,000 sales reps. In her annual review, she noticed that learners were not consuming the training content as much as she wanted. To understand why, I decided to conduct a needs analysis to determine what learners needed and what they were missing. She wants to fully engage learners, set them up for success, and help the company achieve its business goals.

Let’s follow Sadie as she tries to solve the case of the missing learners!

Preliminary research

First, Sadie comes up with a plan.

• State the goal of the work: Sadie will need to keep the topic front and center throughout her research so that she can refer to it regularly. Simply put, Sadie needs to increase course completion among her salespeople.
• Choose your search method: You will use surveys and interviews. On-the-job feedback would also be a good option, but it takes much longer, and you won’t get as much employee feedback.
• Write a research question(s) that align with the business objective: For example, why is the learner completion rate lower than the target measure?
• Write a problem statement: Such as “Learners are not completing enough training content.”
• Write your business proposal (or hypothesis): Sadie’s suggestion is that learners do not have enough time.

Once Sadie defines her hypothesis, she can begin her research methods starting with first-level surveys.

Surveys

Sadie first conducts the Level 1 survey to collect high-level information from a large number of participants. Online surveys make this process efficient, as well as easy to analyze raw data for trends.

Level 1 survey questions focus on learners’ reactions to the training using a rating system such as a Likert scale. For example, “How confident are you in your ability to sell? How likely are you to complete more of your assigned courses? How easy are you to access the courses in the learning system? Based on the courses you have completed, how engaged are you with the subject matter?” “

advice:

1. Send the questionnaire with a clear deadline.
2. Send reminder emails.
3. Incentives included!

Sadie knows that timing is important in surveys. Surveys sent out on Mondays and Tuesdays tend to get the most responses, so she sends her survey out early in the week and lets participants know it will be open for two weeks. You send email reminders one week after the initial invitation and again on the final day. Sadie also points out that each participant is entered to win a gift card, knowing that this will increase the number of responses.

Sadie’s Level 1 survey shows some interesting results. Many participants reported having trouble logging into the Learning Management System (LMS) to complete courses. Some said the content of the courses was too difficult.

Sadie expects to discuss these issues during focus groups, but Sadie will conduct empathy interviews next.

Empathy interviews

Sadie’s next step in the needs analysis process is empathy interviews, which help identify learners and create a learning persona. You will conduct these interviews individually with a representative sample. You select five participants who represent the typical learner and schedule 30-minute interviews. A transcription tool like Tactiq will help her by automatically transcribing the interviews, leaving Sadie free to take care of the participants. It also provides text data for reference.

During interviews, Sadie plans to get to know her learners on a personal level through the following questions:

• What do you like to do outside of work in your free time (hobbies, interests, etc.)?
• What is your greatest strength? weakness?
• What motivates you?
• What are your career goals?
• What frustrates you?
• How do you define success?
• If you could sell any product in the world, what would you sell and why?

These answers may be difficult to parse, but they help you build the personality of your learners, which helps when determining a creative learning strategy.

Sadie finds that her students enjoy listening to podcasts, watching streaming services, playing video games, and competing in sports. Using this information, she creates personas for her typical learner, which will help her write and design content with a specific audience in mind.

Focus groups

Sadie intends to use focus groups to ask job-related questions and gather more qualitative feedback about current training and job responsibilities.

Sadie plans to conduct three focus group interviews in small groups of five to eight people. Although she knew they could be conducted simultaneously with the empathy interviews, she scheduled them a week or two later and with different, randomly selected participants so that she would have time to carefully craft questions based on the personalities drawn from the empathy interviews.

Note about content validity: The purpose of needs analysis is to collect useful information; To avoid having unnecessary data to analyse, Sadie formulates her own interview questions and then goes back to her work purpose and research questions (remember the questions generated at the beginning of the needs analysis?) to check that the questions asked in the interview can be applicable. Related to one or more of these research questions.

Sadie’s questions include:

• how Help yourself Get job training?
• What are the biggest reasons why you do or don’t complete training?
• What do you like/dislike about the current training you are receiving?
• Did you receive enough relevant practice in the training you completed?
• If you were to receive training in a game format that allowed you to compete against your peers, would you be more likely to complete it?
• Think about the most successful interactions with customers. Why was he so successful?
• Think about the most difficult interaction with customers. Why was it so difficult?

Focus groups provide additional interesting and useful feedback. Learners appreciate the aesthetics of training, but it is often redundant and time-consuming. Their time is limited and they prefer job aids or microlearning. This is the most frequently cited reason for not completing the training provided. Their most successful interactions with customers occurred when they received training concurrent with an in-store event, and they were less successful when the training came after the event.

Now that Sadie had all this great data, it was time for her and her team to analyze the information and create a learning strategy.

analysis

To analyze the data, Sadie looks for trends not only in the numbers (quantitative data), but also in what participants said (qualitative data).

Sadie’s surveys provide plenty of quantitative data reflecting learners’ satisfaction with current training options. Overall, SADIE learners are satisfied, but their answers reflect SADIE’s hypothesis that the eLearning program can be improved. Sadie pays particular attention to areas with lower ratings when she analyzes qualitative data from interviews.

Analyzing interview data may be a bit more difficult. Sadie follows these steps:

1. Read texts carefully.
2. Color code and highlight recurring words and phrases.
3. Categorize and chart recurring phrases by placing each participant’s number identifier on the vertical axis and the categories on the horizontal axis. If a participant mentions the category, check the appropriate column.
4. Finally, revise the problem statement (created at the beginning of the needs analysis) based on quantitative data.

Sadie gathers her team and updates them on the results so far. Use an online whiteboard to conduct a divergent thinking session during which everyone thinks independently by posting virtual sticky notes on the board with ideas for solving the problem. This process is called “blue sky” because no idea is too great, too expensive, or too weird – everything is a good idea!

Some of the ideas the team came up with were overhauling the entire training catalog, using text messaging to push tidbits of information, and creating a simulation of practice.

Next, Sadie and her team ask “How can we…” questions to solve their problem. These thoughts should start by considering what is realistic for their situation.

For example, “How can we create content based on experience level without repeating all the courses?”

Finally, the team turns to convergent thinking, where they identify the best ideas to solve the problem that are most feasible. Some blue sky rules apply in this step as team members can only say “yes and…”. Saying “no” is not allowed. They use these insights to identify the most appropriate suggestions for new creative learning solutions.

When the team is finished, they have a solid learning strategy and plan to create better training that learners are more likely to engage with.

Conclusion

This comprehensive approach to needs analysis provides depth of research and allows instructional designers to make decisions on creative learning solutions for both content and delivery. For example, what is the training tone? Do learners prefer social or independent, synchronous or asynchronous learning? What metaphors or game mechanics might be relevant to them based on their hobbies/interests? What topics would they like to explore further based on their career goals, strengths and weaknesses?

Training is more personalized now than ever before. The more we know about our learners, and the more flexibility and customization we can provide, the more engaged they will be.