Designing With Data: A Practical Start for Learning Professionals

Learning teams have access to more data than ever, but turning that information into meaningful action is not always straightforward.

This practical session with expert Megan Torrance will help you move beyond dashboards and surface-level reporting to understand what your data is really telling you. You will learn how to ask better business-focused questions, assess the credibility of your evidence, and shape clear data stories that build stakeholder confidence, influence decisions, and connect learning activity to wider organizational outcomes.

• Distinguish between reporting, analysis, and data storytelling and explain why dashboards alone rarely influence decisions or performance.

• Frame learning analytics around business questions and decisions rather than learning activity metrics alone.

• Evaluate the credibility and usefulness of learning data to build trust and confidence with stakeholders.

• Construct a compelling data story that connects learning evidence to organizational outcomes and recommended actions.

Megan Torrance is the CEO and founder of TorranceLearning, where she leads a team of learning experience designers & engineers in reimagining workplace learning. Her firm has served Fortune 1000 companies, major research universities, global professional associations, and federal agencies for over two decades. Megan brings a strategic vision that helps TorranceLearning bridge vision with execution—delivering innovative, data-informed, and learner-centered solutions. Megan is the author of Agile for Instructional Designers, Data & Analytics for Instructional Designers, Making Sense of xAPI and The AI Implementation Guide for L&D. She has facilitated at eCornell in women’s executive leadership, team dynamics and power relationships and taught in Penn State University's Learning Design & Technology Master's program.