Measuring the impact on learners has become the key task for LearnScope project leaders in 2007.

This focus will enable organisations to truly evaluate the worthiness and return on investment of new or modified e-learning practices. It will certainly help to plan for the implementation process required in 2008 to make the best use of the learning and outcomes from LearnScope in 2007.

You may wish to consider the following strategies for measuring impact on your learners:

• surveys - capturing the formal feedback from the learners in a structured format
• blogs and wikis - capturing anecdotal feedback from the learners using social networking tools

From the business perspective here is a quote from this article:
http://www.neted.com/WhitePapers/eLearning.php

For most organizations, there are three critical benefits they can use to measure the success of their e-learning program: performance improvements, cost reductions, and mitigated risk.

Performance improvements - They can be measured in a number of ways, the most basic of which is by comparing pre eLearning performance against post eLearning performance. This is the largest potential component of benefit in an ROI evaluation--but also the most difficult and time consuming to research and prove.

Cost reductions - By reducing business costs, resources are freed up and can be reallocated. In addition, quality eLearning and training has been shown to reduce employee turn-over and thus, decrease the costs of new employee recruiting and training. This element of an ROI analysis is fairly straightforward to calculate since the components of cost are few and relatively easy to quantify.

Mitigated risk - Elearning solutions help managers assess employee competencies, giving managers a quick and real-time snapshot of the corporation's strengths and weaknesses. By identifying and proactively training against the company's weak points, a company can reduce its risk exposure in the market and further build its human capital competitive advantage.

What strategy will you use to measure the impact of e-learning innovative practices on your learners?
Measuring skill development is another process altogether, but it may also be necessary in your process of capturing the feedback on the impact of e-learning. E-learning readiness skills checks can be useful in gauging the entry level skills of your learner cohort prior to their undertaking e-learning pilot projects; then the same E-learning readiness skills check could be used once again at the end of their experiences. From the results of these, individuals may be better able to comment on the impact of their e-learning experiences.

Have you seen and/or used the E-learning Readiness Check at the TAFE VC?
http://www.tafevc.com.au/kbt_elearning/

Are you planning to measure the development of E-learning Readiness for your learner cohort?