In the past few years, ATD has explored the role of learning management systems, e-learning authoring and delivery platforms, social learning tools, and virtual classroom platforms in separate research studies. These reports showed that learning technology has the potential to drive business and learning results.

This report represents ATD’s first research on complete learning technology ecosystems. A learning technology ecosystem was defined as the tools and platforms an organization uses to create, deliver, manage, and analyze its learning content. It also includes the people and processes for enabling those tools and platforms.

The report identifies practices related to learning technology ecosystems with statistically significant connections to high performance. For example, one practice associated with success was frequently doing formal reviews of the platforms and tools in the organization’s learning technology ecosystem to make sure they remain current with business needs.