5 Benefits of Assessments in E-Learning

Here’s how to use assessments to improve e-learning:

1. Benchmark employee skills
2. Ensure training is targeted and personalized
3. Improve information retention
4. Track how employees improve over time
5. Unlock the value of task-based mentors

Let’s explore these benefits of assessments to guide consistent improvement with your e-learning strategy.

Benchmark employee skills

A benchmark may be defined as setting a standard for a team, process, or the organization as a whole. Raising awareness around your benchmarking data will also drive a culture of constant improvement. Once the baseline has been determined you can set clear goals for the next milestone you want the team to reach.

With Pinnacle Series’ KnowledgeSmart integration, you can get access to valuable internal and external benchmarks and connect with this data via user and manager profile pages. These benchmarks can help guide targeted workgroups inside Pinnacle Series where users are connected with relevant, strategically guided learning material helping the organization continuously improve on its e-learning strategy.

Ensure training is targeted and personalized

E-learning shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. Every employee comes to your company with a different set of knowledge and skills they’ve already developed through education or during their work at other firms. If you assign everyone the same learning plans, some people will be out of their depth, while others will be repeating topics they already know.

Pinnacle Series makes it easy for your staff to “test out” of content they’re already familiar with. For example, when they take a KnowledgeSmart software skills assessment, the results are used to generate a custom learning path within Pinnacle Series that highlights the information employees need to learn or brush up on while skipping topics where they’ve shown proficiency. This saves valuable time and energy.

Improve information retention

One of the significant benefits of assessments in e-learning is that they help learners retain the information they’re being taught. Science backs up the idea that the process of retrieving information from the brain helps to reinforce memory.

That’s why it’s crucial to conduct formal skill assessments before learning and incorporate regular quizzes throughout the training itself. Users are also more motivated to pay attention when they know they’ll be evaluated later.

Track how employees improve over time

You cannot improve what you do not measure. Without assessments, you’re left in the dark about how effectively your staff is actually learning. Are they just watching the training videos to get them out of the way, or are they genuinely upskilling where they need to? When an employee is learning software skills on Pinnacle Series, it’s a good idea to have them take a mapped KnowledgeSmart assessment or skill audit before and after they go through the courses.

Assessments must be seen as a cyclical process rather than something the organization does once every couple of years. As described in a Manpower research study, “the life cycle of skills is shorter than ever, and change is happening at an unprecedented scale.” A skills assessment should be part of an ongoing process that drives a culture of learning.

Unlock the value of task-based mentors

Leveraging your KnowledgeSmart assessment results and Pinnacle Series learning data, you can pair high performers in skill with those having skill gaps to close the gaps quickly and effectively. Both mentees and mentors stand to gain value from this initiative.

Employees engaged with their work, either as a mentor or mentee, see their value and purpose grow within the organization—task-based mentoring breaks down silos between departments, improving cross-functional and collaboration skills and ultimately improving organizational efficiency.

The KnowledgeSmart platform will help you crunch the high volume of skill inventory data and create actionable data visualizations you can use in various ways.

Our team at Eagle Point is always brainstorming ways to make e-learning better for AEC & M organizations. That’s why we try to build as many useful features into Pinnacle Series as we can, from assessment tools to custom content creation and much more. Current subscribers can log in now to take advantage of all of these tools.

If you aren’t already a Pinnacle Series customer, Schedule a demo or pilot to see how we can help your organization take e-learning to the next level.