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Learning Guild
The Learning Guild is a community of practice for those supporting the design, development, strategy, and management of organizational learning. As a member-driven organization, we aim to create a place where learning professionals can share their knowledge, expertise, and ideas to build a better industry—and better learning experiences—for everyone.
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Sessions in Management and Strategy Track
102 LMS, LRS, LXP, and More: Exploring the Learning Platforms Landscape
Concurrent Session
For decades, there was only one dominant learning platform that most training departments used: the learning management system (LMS). However, in recent years the learning platforms landscape has expanded. Not only have LMSs evolved over time, but additional platforms—such as LRSs, LXPs, and more—are also growing in functionality and popularity for learning and performance. This makes an organization’s decision on learning platforms much more complex, as it’s no longer a discussion of which platform, but which suite of platforms will meet an organization’s needs.
Read MoreToo often when you’re rushed or don’t have time, you may put your next project out to bid without including the critical information to help your outside resources provide an accurate estimate for what is actually needed. This may lead to misunderstandings, changes in scope, and higher costs.
Read More105 The New Role Your Company Needs: Digital Adoption Manager
Concurrent Session
Technology is advancing faster than humans can keep pace. Organizations are investing in hundreds of technologies to transform their business, leaving employees overwhelmed and unengaged. Despite heavy investment in training solutions to bridge the gap, the cost to produce these materials is high, speed to market is low, and the impact is suboptimal. Learning practitioners passionate about effective digital adoption can seize this challenge to elevate into a new role.
Read More111 Transforming Employee Orientation to an Onboarding Journey Experience
Concurrent Session
Imagine you’re a new hire. From applying for your job to your first day it feels like you’ve interacted with 100 people. Learning and development is preparing to host an orientation, and so is your new team, both groups delivering different messages and experiences. At Booz Allen, L&D was delivering orientation, not onboarding, and the business was experiencing an unacceptable level of attrition. A new approach was needed.
Read MoreYou’re charged with a high-stakes, high-visibility learning challenge. Perhaps you need to prepare an entire hospital staff to work effectively on day one of a move to a new hospital building, or you need to get a salesforce ready to sell a new product line. How do you do it? There’s no quick fix, no single method that will get full impact. You need to create an integrated learning strategy.
Read MoreLearners are only as good as the environments they operate within. Their access to learning, the level of support from managers and executives, and the quality of the training they receive all impact performance and results.
Read MoreSTRS102 5 Activities that Maximize Impact for Instructor-Led Training
Strategic Solutions
Instructor-led training is where over 50 percent of employee development happens. But it’s difficult to achieve employees’ buy-in if their direct managers aren’t sold on its importance. It can also be hard to capture and measure employee engagement in the session—especially when there are hundreds of instructors running sessions. It’s even more difficult to ensure behavioral changes stick long after the session ends. This session will introduce five practical tactics you can incorporate today—fast activities that increase manager buy-in before training, maximize engagement and learning during training, and magically transform into employee-created job aids after training.
Read MoreSalespeople are learning organizations’ problem children: often remote and on the go, “too busy” for training, and quick to dismiss anything that doesn’t immediately help them. Yet constant product and sales tool releases, nonstop market evolution, and rapid competitive moves mean sales teams stand to benefit from effective learning more than any other function! And moving the needle on sales effectiveness yields enormous ROI.
Read MoreSTRS104 Frictionless Learning Ecosystems: What Are They, and How Do You Create One?
Strategic Solutions
Companies spend billions of dollars trying to understand consumer behavior, but the L&D groups in these same organizations may not be leveraging those insights and strategies to reach their learners. If you look at your learning solutions as a product that you want your learners to consume, where are you creating friction that discourages those learning consumers? And what can you do about it?
Read MoreSMNX104 Get Organized and Prosper: Project Planning for the Instructional Designer
Management Xchange
It’s the job within the job—in addition to designing and developing amazing training solutions, instructional designers often must also plan, organize, and manage their projects. This can be a daunting task, as projects have many components and moving pieces to stay on top of in addition to the actual design and development work.
Read MoreMany organizations struggle through the LMS RFP process, suffer low user adoption rates, and are at a loss for how to correct the situation or how to have prevented it. What if there was a way to simplify the RFP and demo process and increase user adoption? To align your LMS with your organization’s culture and learning environment, and to ultimately learn to love and understand your LMS?
Read MoreFirst it was a curiosity. The curiosity grew into a fad, and then into a genuine trend. Now it’s a necessity. eLearning long ago left the experimental or pilot stage and is now a mainstream method of training and education. Everyone is doing it. But are they doing it well?
Read MoreConcurrent Session
1:15 PM Wed, October 24
Track: Management and Strategy
In this session, The eLearning Guild’s director of research, Jane Bozarth, along with writers of recent research, reviews the Guild’s most recent reports on learning styles, learning platforms, and blended learning. We’ll look at what’s happening—or not happening—industry-wide, with an emphasis on what works, such as what factors support success and what content lends itself best to particular approaches.
Read MoreSTRS105 Is a Learning Content Management System Right for You?
Strategic Solutions
Modern learning and development (L&D) organizations make it a priority to improve employees’ skills and enhance knowledge—not yearly or monthly, but continuously. These successful organizations have moved away from disconnected, rigid courses and instead enabled flexible, multipurpose, agile learning content. By ensuring their learning content is rich, dynamic, and personalized, they provide their teams with the tools to drive their own learning. As a result, the value of every content asset is maximized and production is streamlined. But many organizations have struggled for years to find a way to enable this dynamic learning. Often, learning content is stored in silos, making it difficult to find and reuse. Reviewing and updating courses is time-consuming, creating derivative courses is problematic, and version control is a nightmare. Distributing learning content in multiple formats (SCORM, PDF, EPUB, HTML, XML, etc.) requires painstaking rework. Sound familiar?
Read MoreLMS, move over. LRS, you are so last year. LXPs, or learning experience platforms, are the new kids on the block. This session will highlight an emerging category of digital learning tools, the learning experience platforms, and help you to draw your own conclusions about what an LXP really is and how it could be useful in your context.
Read More304 Designing Actionable Learning for Leadership Development
Concurrent Session
In 2017, 73 percent of L&D respondents to a client survey cited “application to real work” as an important characteristic of leadership development programs, particularly as related to mid-level management. And yet many L&D practitioners do not have a clear path to providing ways for their learners to apply their new knowledge and skills on the job. This session will share best practices for integrating learning with real work.
Read MoreTraining alone does not drive performance—it contributes only to potential. Performance does not manifest until learners become performers at their point-of-work (PoW). This means that learning needs to converge with work, and doing this effectively requires holistic learning and performance assessments at the PoW. These evolved discovery methods then require enhanced performance consulting skills and tactics to enable L&D solutions that are agile and responsive.
Read More314 Scaling Personalized Learning for 1 Million Users
Concurrent Session
It is no secret that personalized content is more relevant and engaging. Engaging a network of different people in a world saturated with content requires organizations to deliver relevant and personalized information at the right time, in the right place. Travel technology behemoth Amadeus needed to engage and connect a network of 1 million people. The team needed to renew their learning and development strategy and get everyone onboard.
Read MoreFor an enormous number of organizations, training requirements are still driven by urgency, the need for rapid development and deployment, and the need to meet regulatory and management compliance requirements. Many organizations are still in transition from face-to-face training and manual tracking systems. This session will describe the simple procedures and best practices you can enact that will work with any training platform while reducing your risk of failure.
Read MoreWhat is innovation? How do you recognize it? Most importantly, how do you continuously innovate in your training design and pedagogy? Come find answers to these questions and more, and walk away with new ideas that will help you drive innovation in your training and development programs.
Read MoreSMNX201 Give Your Organization the Freedom to Innovate
Management Xchange
Highly customized learning platforms may sound like an inherently good thing. But what if those customizations are patching holes rather than tailoring the performance of your learning solution to your organization’s needs? These kinds of patches and workarounds can hinder a learning professional’s ability to innovate. In the rapidly evolving world of digital learning, the freedom to innovate is essential for a sustainable, scalable, and efficient learning program.
Read More10:00 AM Thu, October 25
Track: Management and Strategy
The eLearning industry is constantly changing. It can be difficult to keep an eye on what advancements are coming while also trying to manage current budgets and technology restraints.
Read MoreThe world is gripped by accelerated change, and the need to learn and adapt is taking center stage; yet ironically, L&D professionals continue to struggle for relevance and impact. Instead of being sought-after business partners, practitioners are often marginalized as order-takers for narrow training solutions. The challenge is one of urgent relevance as L&D must quickly learn and adapt to better enable the future of work.
Read MoreYou’ve signed the contract for your new LMS, but the hard work is only beginning. It’s time to think like a marketer. How can you get everyone at your company to adopt this new software? How can you help employees to think of learning as happening outside of the classroom?
Read More410 Learning Technology’s Past, Present, and Future: A Guild Master Panel
Concurrent Session
David Kelly, Jane Bozarth, Joe Ganci, Julie Dirksen, Marc Rosenberg, Michael Allen, Nick Floro, Robert Gadd
10:45 AM Thu, October 25
Track: Management and Strategy
Technology has shaped much of the world of education and training for decades. Understanding the role technology plays in our work is critical as technology continues to advance and become even more embedded into our work. Being prepared for this emerging world won’t be easy and will require an understanding of where we’ve been, where we are, and where we are headed.
Read MoreChoosing the right learning technology is a daunting task. A bad decision could cost an organization immeasurable time and money, not to mention the negative impact on talent development. Research shows that nearly half of organizations are looking to choose another technology provider. Whether the system is lacking features, is hard to use, or simply appears outdated, companies want a change.
Read MoreSMNX202 Perception to Reality: Proving Your Training’s Value
Management Xchange
In a world of perpetually shifting priorities and uncertain outlooks, it’s important to prove the value of your work to your clients and stakeholders. We rarely have the resources we need to do effective analysis before and after training, which leads many in management to view training as just an expendable expense rather than an investment. How can we, as learning professionals, change that reality?
Read MoreSTRS202 Successfully Implementing an LCMS: eXact and Merck Case Study
Strategic Solutions
One of the most challenging issues for organizations is how to undertake digital transformation successfully. Adopting new technology to address content and learning challenges can be high on internal agendas, and therefore it is imperative that the enabling technology is able to deliver successful outcomes to an organization. It is essential to anticipate the challenges that might lie ahead, in order to optimize potential efficiencies and measurable benefits. This session will provide a guide for those who might consider embarking on such an internal transformation—and you will be given the background on how Merck progressed on its innovation journey.
Read MoreWith more than one million new crew members hired every year in the US alone, it is imperative for McDonald’s to onboard new hires efficiently and effectively. However, new hires were spending more than twelve hours studying processes and procedures in back rooms with printed binders that could double as doorstops before learning in the restaurant with peers and managers. McDonald’s recognized the need for a new approach to their training program.
Read MoreFor thousands of years, knowledge has been the catalyst for growth, providing organized groups of individuals a competitive advantage. Awareness, insight, and discernment became essential for groups to progress and lead, and that same principle shapes today’s successful organizations. One of the main challenges that organizations face is aligning business objectives with employees’ ambitions. Clustering individuals and calling them a group doesn’t necessarily guarantee they’ll meet learning goals or the company’s expectations. The assimilation of knowledge depends on many factors, and even when you can granularly customize training, you still need to make it applicable to the collective goal.
Read MoreThis session will look at the eight big challenges that gomo’s global customers have highlighted when developing and delivering eLearning at scale.
Read MoreDo you find that the pressures of rapidly changing technology and the need to support a nontraditional, remote workforce require rethinking how work is done in your organization? Is it challenging for your organization to keep up with the needs of your audience due to restrictive, outdated procedures, tools, and skill sets? For the talent development function, emerging workforce needs raise important questions when it comes to strategic planning.
Read MoreDigital transformation is the push for most L&D organizations. But what does it really mean? Just because you are leveraging digital technology to develop learning assets doesn’t necessarily mean you are working in a digital way. In many ways, today’s L&D is still “analog,” leveraging the latest technology but traditional methodologies and working culture. You may need to not only transform your tool set, but also your mindset and how you work.
Read More505 Project Management Tips for Learning Professionals
Concurrent Session
1:15 PM Thu, October 25
Track: Management and Strategy
Managing learning projects, even small ones, can be a complex endeavor for learning professionals attempting to bring their courses to life. By incorporating appropriate project management principles, instructional designers can create a smooth process for all stakeholders involved in designing and developing learning products to submit project deliverables on time.
Read MoreEducation, training, and even learning itself is changing. As technology advances, the shift towards learning and development initiatives that require engineering support is growing at an ever-increasing speed. The increased need for engineering skills within learning and development will be a major disruption in the near future, one filled with both challenges and opportunities.
Read MoreEveryone’s talking about microlearning, but what does it really mean to your organization? Is microlearning destined to simply mean sub-10-minute videos, or is there more to it?
Read MoreSMNX205 Keeping an Agile Workforce in the Digital Age
Management Xchange
2:15 PM Thu, October 25
Track: Management and Strategy
Digital transformation is accelerating at an exponential pace. While it disrupts old ways of doing things, it also opens up new avenues of innovation, efficiency, and connectivity. As complexity increases, you have the opportunity to use tech to support your performance, to learn, share ideas, and innovate. This requires thinking differently about how you digitally design your learning and interactions. Agility depends on it.
Read More604 Case Study: Starting an Online Community—from Ideation to Launch
Concurrent Session
Morningstar is built around serving individuals—both by helping them reach great financial outcomes and by providing outstanding customer service. Morningstar partnered with an online community platform to modernize the support experience, provide greater transparency around product development, and enable its customers to connect with each other. This session shares that journey with you, so you can know what’s ahead if you choose this option for surfacing and supplementing more traditional eLearning.
Read More605 CANCELLED: Building a Culture of Feedback with Your Digital Learning Strategy
Concurrent Session
While organizations have started to recognize the importance of including practice in their learning programs, one of the most critical aspects of practice—feedback—has been an overlooked aspect of performance improvement. Feedback is challenging, as most feedback depends on critique, and an organization’s culture can impact how comfortable employees are in providing and receiving feedback.
Read MoreTighter budgets, smaller L&D teams, and an increasing number of learning requests. You can’t do more with less. Or can you? L&D needs a new approach—and one that can be built in-house by leveraging internal expertise. What if there were an option for L&D to put the employees at the center of the learning ecosystem and enable them to drive and self-serve their training needs?
Read MoreAs a training manager or instructional designer, have you found yourself on the outside looking in when business decisions are made? Do you have a seat at the table when business strategy is discussed within your organization? Are you in the unenviable position of reacting to others’ decisions regarding employee training rather than influencing or leading the conversation? That doesn’t have to stop you from changing the situation and becoming a true business partner who can help drive strategy.
Read More804 Selecting Innovative eLearning Technologies: A Practical Guide
Concurrent Session
With an ever-expanding number of teaching and learning technologies available, it can be challenging to pick the ones that fit the needs of your learners and organization. All of these technologies claim to solve your problems, so how do you know you are making the right choice? Without a sound strategy, it may be difficult to select appropriate, innovative, and institutionally sustainable technologies.
Read More