At Chatterbox, we have defined a constellation of metrics for measuring the quality of your learning experience: Impact, Retention and Completion. Our North Star in that constellation is impact. In this article, I explain why.

Some of the more popular metrics in the digital learning space for measuring the quality of a learning experience are retention and completion:

• Do learners keep coming back to continue their learning experience?

• Do learners complete their learning experience?

Indeed, retention and completion are important, and at Chatterbox we include both in our constellation of core metrics. However, we do not want to assume that high retention and high completion necessarily equal a maximally valuable learning experience for individual learners. Read on to find out why.

In the corporate language learning space, more learners enrol on language courses primarily because they are encouraged to do so by their employer, than do so due to personal, intrinsic motivations. Therefore as a corporate language learning provider, Chatterbox should not assume that retention and completion metrics of 100% necessarily mean that the learning experience is maximally valuable to individual learners.

We believe that successful learning experiences retain learners, not relying on extrinsic motivators, but through kindling and inspiring intrinsic motivation in learners themselves. So where does intrinsic motivation come from?

Well, fundamentally you engage in learning experiences because you want to be able to do something that you were not able to do before. Therefore, we believe that the most impactful factor for kindling and inspiring intrinsic motivation is learners’ confidence that indeed this learning experience is leading them towards their individual goals. We refer to this as impact: 

How impactful is your learning for your everyday life?

Now, the goals that individual learners have vary. Perhaps what you want to do is quite simple, like introducing yourself to your new Parisian colleagues in French. Perhaps it is more complex, like conducting a meeting in Arabic for your Lebanese clients. It is therefore natural that different learners with different goals on identical learning experiences will report differently. Some will report high impact, while others will report lower impact.

The ideal learning experience is one that adapts to individual goals. Therefore, we aim for all Chatterbox learners to report the highest possible impact, by providing a learning experience that is optimally adapted to each individual’s needs and goals.

To sum up, we want to deliver a truly valuable learning experience, no matter whether learners are motivated by themselves, or by their employer. We believe the ultimate measure for how valuable a learning experience is for a learner is the impact it has on that learner’s life.

Our North Star for measuring the quality of the learning experience at Chatterbox is impact. We believe that impact is the fundamental catalyst for kindling and inspiring the intrinsic motivation that drives retention and ultimately leads you towards completing your learning experience and achieving your goals.

Anne Aalund Sørensen
Copenhagen-based Anne is Chatterbox's Head of Learning. She leads our team of amazing language learning specialists as they create an impactful learning experience for every person who learns with Chatterbox. Apart from revelling in all things language learning Anne loves a good hike - once walking the length of Denmark in just 12 days!