Beyond course completion: Choosing a learning platform for business outcomes

Learning platforms often tout their extensive content libraries. And when you’re looking for a learning solution for your team, thousands upon thousands of courses sounds great. You’re basically guaranteed to find what you need.

But learning is a process, and your people need more than courses to make skills stick. After all, course completion is only a means to an end. You don’t want your people to just complete courses—you want them to be able to apply new skills to push business initiatives forward.

In other words, course catalogs and completion rates aren’t everything. In this article, we explain what you really need in a learning platform to close skills gaps and drive measurable business results.

When it comes to tech skill development platforms, more isn’t always better. In fact, overwhelmingly large content catalogs can actually detract from the learning process. Here’s how.

When catalogs contain thousands upon thousands of courses, the quality may vary widely from one to another, especially if there’s no clear vetting process. Some courses might be amazing. Some might have poor production value or contain confusing, outdated, or inaccurate information.

When users encounter these courses, they’re encouraged to find a different course by a different instructor on the same topic. After all, there are thousands to choose from. But this hunt for “the right course” quickly creates a new challenge: decision fatigue.

25% of technologists aren’t sure which upskilling resources to use. As tech professionals sift through extensive course catalogs, they can quickly experience decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue is feeling physically, mentally, and/or emotionally drained after making decisions. Essentially, the more decisions someone has to make, the more fatigued they feel.

If learners are using their limited energy to find the right courses, that leaves them with less brainpower to focus on actually learning new skills. Add in cognitive overload, and learning during the busy workday becomes even more of an uphill battle.

Mitigating decision fatigue requires structure and guidance. But course catalogs often lack the direction they need, with 30% of technologists not knowing where to focus their skill development.

Without tailored learning paths or content recommendations based on unique roles, skills, and goals, employees struggle to learn relevant information. 

As a leader, you also don’t know if what they’re focusing on aligns with your critical projects and business needs—until it’s too late.

Instead of learning platforms that advertise the quantity of courses they have, look for platforms that will help you drive your L&D and business goals forward.

Rather than rely on open platforms where anyone can upload content, look for platforms that vet their instructors and offer content only from industry experts with real-world experience in their field.

You and your learners won’t have to sift through courses to find the high-quality options, and you can trust that teams are learning accurate information they can apply in real-world scenarios.

Overcome decision fatigue with guided learning experiences that direct technologists to the right upskilling content at the right time. This might take the form of custom learning paths you can design for your unique needs or pre-built paths for technical certifications, specific roles, or technologies. 

Platforms with AI learning assistants are also helpful. These tools can lead learners to relevant content, labs, and assessments, offer in-course knowledge checks, and empower leaders to create custom learning plans with a single click.

With structured paths and personalized recommendations to follow, employees aren’t overwhelmed by choice—they know exactly what to learn to achieve their goals.

Most course catalogs prioritize video content. And while this format works to learn theory and principles, most technologists need hands-on experiences to really understand new concepts and how to use them in their day-to-day roles.

Hands-on and immersive learning experiences allow tech professionals to practice, experiment, and build confidence in their new skills without impacting live environments or creating undue security risks.

Learning platforms that provide hands-on labs, sandbox environments, and even instructor-led training are great ways to provide those immersive experiences. If you’re looking for other tech skill development strategies, get your free copy of the Tech Upskilling Playbook.

Usage-based metrics can tell you how many people are actively learning, how much time they’ve spent learning, how many courses they’ve completed, and which content is popular.

But they can’t tell you if people are ready to take on new projects, assist cloud migrations, implement new AI solutions, or generally apply the skills they’ve learned to help your customers. 

You need more advanced analytics, in addition to user engagement metrics. When you’re able to see trends, role proficiency, and skill gains over time, you can make data-driven decisions to improve skill development, and show how L&D directly impacts business outcomes.

Learn more about how to choose an online learning platform for tech skills.

When you’re searching for the right learning platform for your tech professionals, look beyond course quantity and completion rates. Instead, prioritize learning partners that help you tie learning to workforce readiness and business outcomes.

When you do, you’ll be able to show that teams aren’t just engaging with learning resources—they’re building the skills they need to deliver.

Learn more about what makes Pluralsight different from other learning platforms.