Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Kick-start your day with Morning Buzz, the ever-popular “Early Bird” discussions. This is your chance to grab a cup of coffee and meet other conference attendees in a relaxed, casual environment, so you can share your best practices, insights, and tips while learning from one another’s experiences.

Learning professionals have a number of difficult goals to achieve relative to the creation and management of online learning. We need to ensure consistent quality, visual identity, and education outcomes of effective learning objects that are reusable between programs and delivery methods. As many challenges as we face, sometimes the solution itself presents its own new set of issues. In the case of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, massive open online courses (MOOCs) were both a challenge and a solution.

In this session you will explore how the MOOC creation process served as a catalyst for the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing to improve course quality and production standards and promote innovative teaching. You will discover how the process of creating and deploying MOOCs can help teams focus attention on keys issues. You will learn how this process led to institution-wide changes in the way the school conducts all of its eLearning activities. You will leave this session with an understanding of both the changes possible when attempting to build and implement MOOCs, as well as methods for structuring the MOOC-building experience to maximize opportunities for organizational growth and improvement.

In this session, you will learn:

• How MOOCs can be a catalyst for improving eLearning across multiple online learning paradigms
• How to improve production and use of eLearning components across platforms based on MOOC best practices
• How to promote best practices that can be embraced by the institution, encouraging compliance
• How to develop workflows to ensure consistent application of branding and copyright review in the production of eLearning

Audience:
Novice and intermediate managers and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
MOOCs (Coursera), self-paced module (Storyline), online courses (Blackboard), video production (green screen/Vimeo), presentation tools (PowerPoint/Keynote).

As learning and development professionals, we often spend a significant amount of our time trying to put together the pieces of a giant organizational puzzle so we can do our jobs. We are, in many ways, the middlemen between those who know and those who need to learn. L&D must reposition itself away from its current role as an information conveyor and leverage its unique skills to help people find and use information to improve their performance.

In this session participants will discuss the value of user-generated content as a way to overcome many modern L&D challenges. You will review the collaboration principles and tools Kaplan continues to use to break through common barriers to curating and sharing user-generated content, including technical limitations, regulatory concerns, and employee motivation. You will also discuss ways this content can be used to create powerful on-demand and targeted learning experiences that scale. Participants will leave this session with actionable ideas on how to transform valuable tacit information into meaningful, crowd-sourced, well-curated, user-generated content.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to shift the focus of your organization’s information culture from consumption to contribution
• Four proven methods for motivating users to share what they know all the time
• Collaborative principles Kaplan used to build its enterprise social network and knowledge curation platform
• How to use simple video to add context to traditional online reference materials
• How user-generated content can help L&D focus its resources on more meaningful and timely learning experiences

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and VPs with a basic understanding of the concepts of user-generated content, online video, and enterprise social networking tools.

Technology discussed in this session:
Confluence, JIRA, webcams, iMovie, Axonify, Kaltura, online discussion forums, Salesforce.

Learning professionals are increasingly losing a battle against short attention spans and increased competition for learners’ attention. We need to adapt our approaches to accommodate the changing needs and desires of our audiences that want training in highly visually formats, and in short doses.

In this session you will explore the concept of screencasting and how it can provide an audience with the information they need in ways that traditional eLearning often fails to do. You will learn why screencasting is a valuable deliverable for eLearning developers to have in their skill set. You will examine how screencasting complements traditional eLearning-development skills in a way that will make your overall services more valuable. You will leave this session understanding the niche screencasting fits into for efficient and effective content delivery.

In this session, you will learn:

• What screencasting is
• How it can complement other eLearning deliverables
• How screencasting can fit into overall training strategy
• An overview of screencasting development process
• The types of training for which screencasting should be considered as a solution

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors with some familiarity with instructional design methodology and eLearning as a training solution.

Technology discussed in this session:
Screencasting output—videos.

Your course looks fantastic, but how does it sound? Learning is most effective when it takes advantage of both audio and visual pathways into the brain. Adding quality voiceovers to your eLearning program can greatly enhance knowledge transfer. But hiring professional voiceover talent can be expensive, and subject-matter experts may not always be available. That leaves just one person: you!

In this interactive and engaging session, you will learn what to do once you receive an eLearning script. You will receive a small portion of a script on which to practice mark-up techniques. You will make minor modifications to the script to make it as natural as possible to read. You will also learn which words or phrases to emphasize to match the instructional content, and to clarify any issues with the SME or content provider. You will explore four simple audio editing techniques for reducing background noise, improving the quality of the narration, removing unwanted portions of the audio, and optimizing the audio for playback. Participants will also learn how to set up an inexpensive recording studio to further improve the quality of voiceovers.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to review, prepare, and modify a voiceover script to ensure narration quality while maintaining instructional integrity
• Techniques you can immediately use to sound your best during the recording phase
• Four easy steps to enhance the quality of your narration and remove unwanted sounds and noise with audio editing software
• How to optimize your audio for playback and make post-production changes
• How to create a very inexpensive recording studio

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, and project managers with an elementary knowledge of instructional design principles and the courseware development process.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Audition or Audacity.

Narrating our work—also known in some circles as “working out loud”—is getting a lot of attention lately as it offers great potential for connecting talent pools and capturing tacit knowledge, reducing rework and duplication of effort and maybe even meetings. While there is a lot of discussion around the value showing your work provides in the context of learning, there’s less clarity around how showing your work provides value to a business or organization.

In this session you will explore the value of narrating work from the point of view of management. You will discuss what it means to narrate your work in an organizational context. You will discover why this is critical to business outcomes and how organizations can encourage more people to narrate their work. You will leave this session understanding when to support showing work in the ever-challenging quest for surfacing organizational knowledge.

In this session, you will learn:

• A clearer view of what “showing work” means
• Ideas for choosing what to share and when
• Tips for identifying the most appropriate tools for narrating work
• Strategies for ensuring success at helping workers successfully show their work—and avoiding mistakes and pitfalls

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.      

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Everyone’s talking about Big Data, but learning systems already generate piles of data and it’s a mess. How can we move on to a more in-depth analysis of learner behavior if we can’t even straighten out the basics? Our technicians roll their eyes and complain about poor data quality in the upstream feeds. The report designers complain that the stakeholders keep changing their requirements, and our teams are burning precious hours managing unwieldy Excel spreadsheets. We don’t need a new technology. We need a new approach.

In this session participants will examine a framework for understanding how to efficiently work with learning data. You will explore an overarching approach that you can use to communicate to both technical staff and business stakeholders. Using humor and visualization, this session will introduce you to techniques, tools, and concepts that are not usually thought of by database professionals outside of the learning industry. 

In this session, you will learn:

• How to clarify the business drivers for gathering data and use them to inform your strategy
• To look at learning data holistically so that you can find solutions to data problems
• To discover techniques to use existing data to generate the data needed for reporting
• How to put data limitations into a perspective that business stakeholders understand
• How to create low-effort, repeatable, and flexible processes for collecting, cleaning, and reporting on learning data

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Learning has been and always will be social. However, in a world of increasing use of eLearning and mobile-learning courses, we run the risk of coming full circle back to stale, unengaging “click-here”-based learning. People naturally collect in communities of practice outside of work (Facebook, Google+, reddit, Tumblr, etc.) to share and collaborate. How do we create an ecosystem of learning that engages learners both within and outside our eLearning content?

In this session you will learn how to develop communities of practice through an online-learning ecosystem. You will explore best practices for how to engage learners and keep them engaged. You will discuss ways to facilitate large-scale communities of practice (15,000+) down to smaller, more intimate, communities (50+). You will gain tips and tricks on how to use curation for user-submitted content, communication portals (blogs, forums, etc.), and direct discussion linked to specific learning modules.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why social learning is vital for training
• Ways to implement social learning ranging from small to enterprise
• Best practices for engagement with learning through social tools
• How other companies are utilizing social learning

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Wisetail LE, Adobe Captivate plugins, JavaScript, and LMSs.

Organizations often need to communicate critical knowledge and motivate learners of varying proficiency to achieve specific performance levels. This commonly requires delivering a range of content across disciplines. It can be challenging to design impactful learning that goes beyond transmitting information that results in consistent performance.  

In this case-study session you will discuss how these design challenges were addressed in an online game simulation for respiratory care. You will learn how gamifying a course allows adapting content and remediation to the learner, reducing the training time for those needing positive reinforcement, while promoting a behavior change that sticks for others. You will explore when incorporating game-like elements is beneficial to promoting individualized learning in order to achieve performance objectives and content retention. You will discuss the course-design process, learn tips for game-simulation development, and discover how they designed branching to capture learner-performance data for performance coaching.

In this session, you will learn:

• A procedure for converting content into a game simulation with branching based on individual learner proficiency
• A strategy for selecting gaming elements most conducive to the course objectives and motivating to the target audience
• How to design and track branching and provide immediate feedback and remediation within a game-simulation course
• A process for receiving SME-review feedback and content development approval for a branching game
• How to use LMS tracking and a SCORM report for additional personalized performance coaching and course evaluation

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, and project managers with basic instructional-design knowledge. While a general understanding of SCORM or learning management systems may be helpful, this knowledge is not required to benefit from the session.

Technology discussed in this session:
Flash programming, SCORM, and LMS tracking and reporting.

Many organizations have significant investments in SharePoint. If you are already using SharePoint as a corporate intranet portal, it makes sense to consider an LMS with strong integration points with SharePoint. CorVel has a well-developed intranet portal in SharePoint and had previously implemented a home-grown LMS. However, after a few years, some additional requirements led the company to evaluate the LMS market for SharePoint.

In this case-study session, you will review the success factors CorVel considered, get information about its current eLearning efforts, and learn how it made its ShareKnowledge LMS implementation a success. You will explore how companies that are already invested in SharePoint can realize significant savings in infrastructure, IT staff resources, and implementation by leveraging an LMS that is integrated with SharePoint. You will examine how this project enabled the company to better serve the needs of its 3,000 member workforce distributed across the country.

In this session, you will learn:

• How CorVel implemented an LMS fully integrated with SharePoint
• How CorVel developed and rolled out a CEU program for sales associates
• How CorVel offers weekly training events over WebEx and tracks attendance automatically through the LMS
• The significant ROI CorVel achieves through its training offerings

Audience:
Novice and intermediate project managers, managers, directors, VPs, and CLOs with knowledge of the basic features of an LMS and familiarity with SCORM.

Technology discussed in this session:
SharePoint 2013 and ShareKnowledge.

Salespeople make up 70 to 80 percent of Hilti’s 21,000 team members worldwide. Those employees only make money if they are closing sales. Training is an important support tool for salespeople, but it is often looked at as an interruption of the sales process by both the salespeople and organizational management. Trainers needed to find a way to motivate salespeople to complete training.

In this session participants will explore the biggest constraint salespeople face related to training—time—and the biggest motivator for them to become engaged in training: a link to financial success. You will examine a series of blended learning solutions that make the most of a salesperson’s limited time and are clearly linked to helping them achieve financial success. You will discover the key design approaches that can have the greatest impact in the smallest amount of time.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to develop motivating eLearning courses
• How to understand your employees’ motivations
• How to link eLearning to your business needs
• How to create the biggest impact in the smallest amount of time

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers with business acumen and eLearning development technical knowledge.

Technology discussed in this session:
Skillport LMS, Articulate software, video editing software, image creation tools, iStockphoto, Adobe Creative Suite, and Sharepoint.

Technology is constantly evolving and changing the ways we live, work, and learn. The ways we approach learning are very different than they were even a decade ago. In order to keep our practices current, we must stay ahead of this technological evolution—and that starts with getting the most out of today’s technology.

In this session you will explore how to use systems you already have to provide on-the-job support for learning, examine the impact of cloud technologies on learning platforms, and discuss how learning platforms can integrate with other enterprise systems. You will examine the increasing role of social media as a means of enhancing informal and social learning and how to use today’s cutting-edge technologies to paint a picture of how technology will shape how we learn tomorrow.

In this session, you will learn:

• How and when to use social and informal learning tools to assist in learning and knowledge transfer
• The differences between cloud-based platforms and traditional internally hosted systems
• How learning programs have evolved in tandem with technology
• How to prepare yourself for continued technological evolution

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, and managers with a basic knowledge of adult learning theory.

Technology discussed in this session:
Web-based and cloud-based products, Lync, SharePoint, Yammer, Internet sites, Blackboard, etc.

When learners are geographically dispersed, and the training is completed, it is difficult to know if the skills were transferred back on the job. In addition, it is difficult to observe the learner performing a new task, and to provide feedback for improvement and/or reinforcement of what was done well. We need to find ways to use technology to enable us to effectively evaluate learners’ ability to apply what they learn in training.

In this session participants will explore two real-world case studies, demonstrating the design and technology considerations applied to implement two 360-degree practicums. You will discuss key considerations for getting buy-in from evaluators. You will examine the communications used, review examples of templates and how-to aids on using software applications, and see samples of the resources provided to both learners and evaluators.

In this session, you will learn:

• Creative ways to leverage technology in order to implement remote skill assessment
• Considerations for getting buy-in and involvement from the evaluators
• A framework to give to the evaluators so they are confident with how and what to assess
• Planning steps for how to support the knowledge needed by the learners for them to be successful in the assessment
• How to measure success

Audience:
Intermediate designers and developers with some experience with online survey tools, HTML coding, and awareness of Kirkpatrick levels of evaluation.

Technology discussed in this session:
SurveyGizmo, video conferencing (Lync), mobile phones, LMS.

The Experience API is still an emerging technology. While the specification has matured over the last few years, most organizations approach xAPI conversation with more questions than answers.

In this session you will join a no-holds-barred Q&A exploring all aspects of the past, present, and future of the Experience API. You will learn about the IEEE group that is taking the xAPI into international industry standardization. You will discuss who’s doing what with the technology and what the roadmap looks like for the next several years. The greatest value of the session comes from the questions that are asked from the audience, so be sure to bring your questions with you to the session.

In this session, you will learn:

• How the xAPI is evolving
• How organizations are adding the xAPI to their strategy
• What the future of the xAPI holds
• Answers to your burning xAPI questions

Audience:
Novice to advanced project managers, managers, directors, and VPs.

Technology discussed in this session:
The xAPI.

Complex online learning platforms usually mean complex visual styles. Maybe your platform has different skins for different groups of learners. Or maybe the styles change depending on the learning context, e.g., in a practice exercise versus a learning evaluation. All that visual complexity transfers to complex, often messy, stylesheet code.

In this session you will explore Less.js, a CSS preprocessor, which extends the CSS language to allow for variables, functions, and reusable sets of style declarations called mixins. You will learn how these features can help you create stylesheets that are more themable, reusable, and better organized. You will gain an overview of the concepts and advantages of Less, and walk through the process of creating your own Less stylesheets.

In this session, you will learn:

• What a CSS preprocessor is, and why you would use one
• The features of Less.js that make it easier to manage and use stylesheets
• How to write stylesheets in Less
• How to compile Less for deployment

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers, developers, and project managers with a good practical understanding of CSS and how it is used to style HTML pages.

Technology discussed in this session:
CSS, Less.js, HTML.

Participant technology requirements:
Participants will need to install Crunch (Less editor and compiler), available free from http://crunchapp.net/. Participants are invited to bring their own CSS stylesheet files to rework during the session and show as examples.

Scenario-based eLearning is a proven effective method for learning using complex real-life situations. All too often, designers and developers shy away from this effective method because it seems too complex, expensive, and time-consuming. Because of improvements to authoring tools this is no longer the case.

In this session, you will build a scenario-based template that you can reuse, saving time, money, and frustration. You will use advanced actions and variables to create decision-based branching and complex interactions. You will leave this session able to build templates for scenario-based learning courses that will increase learner engagement while drastically cutting development time.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to build a template
• How to set up a scenario
• How to create complex interactions
• How to save and reuse advanced actions

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers and developers with a basic understanding of Captivate.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Captivate.

Participant technology requirements:
A laptop with Adobe Captivate—either full or trial version.

The use of learning videos has been widely employed for many years and for good reason. Video-based learning can be more engaging and has been proven to increase learner retention. It is fast becoming an essential learning tool. Advancements in technology have triggered an explosion of innovation in the usage of video for learning. As always, with change comes challenges.

In this session participants will learn how the IBM research and product labs are creating innovations in video learning that are going to revolutionize the way organizations leverage video for learning. You will discuss video transcript creation that automatically creates a transcription of the video, and can even perform translations. You will explore video delivery technology that synchronizes the transcription with the video as it plays, and allows the learner to navigate to any point in the video by clicking on the transcription. You will learn how these and other innovations are creating new ways for learners to interact with video and for the video curators to analyze the effectiveness of the videos.

In this session, you will learn:

• How video learning is becoming a collaborative event, allowing learners to socialize and expand the learning experience
• How the automation of video transcription simplifies the publishing process and improves learner search capabilities
• How image analysis can automate the tagging and curation process
• How advanced analytics can be applied to gauge video effectiveness

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Various video learning components of the IBM Smarter Workforce technologies.

Instructional designers are seeking more than just knowledge retention from learners; we are seeking positive, quantifiable, and repeatable changes in behavior—the gold standard of eLearning results in the business world. However, these behavior changes are challenging to facilitate, and even more challenging to track.

In this session you will learn how to credibly answer the age-old measurement question: Do retail salespeople who complete online training on specific brands sell more than those who don’t complete the training? You will examine the creation and results of a study comparing point-of-sale data to sales associates’ engagement with eLearning courses in the categories and brands they sell. You will discuss the factors that were used to isolate the effects of the eLearning courses from other factors that affect sales. You will explore how you can adapt this case study in your own organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• How eLearning really can make a difference in business
• How leveraging common goals with your partners can advance your business
• How creative problem-solving can help you find data that will help drive your business
• Why successful people thrive on training that can help them do their job more effectively

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
HTML5.

Maybe you’ve heard some of the following in your workplace learning discussions about mobile: Mobile learning just means HTML5, right? Mobile really isn’t that important to me because I’m an instructional designer. I let the developers worry about that part. I have XYZ rapid development tool and it works with mobile devices, so I feel pretty good about mobile. If any of these comments sound familiar, then this session is for you.

In this session you will learn what you need to know about the current state of mobile learning and how to begin taking steps to prepare for the future. You will explore what mobile learning truly is and what it isn’t. You will separate the terminology from the buzzwords. You will discuss the key strategic considerations you need to think about before making the move to mobile. You will leave this session with a basic foundation for understanding the mobile space, and what you need to do to get started.

In this session, you will learn:

• What mobile is, and what it isn’t
• Mobile terminology and buzzwords
• Strategic considerations for making the move to mobile
• Mobile design and development principles, practices, and tools
• Considerations for implementation and security

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Content management systems, mobile design tools, mobile prototype tools, mobile development tools, mobile security services.

At the request of the Quebec Ministry, innovative technology was developed to support a first-of-its-kind distance learning program launched in Quebec to encourage potential immigrants to perfect their knowledge of the French language prior to arriving in Quebec. This was an important goal to help accelerate immigrants’ access to the job market as well as facilitate their integration into their new home.

In this case-study session, you will gain insights into how they implemented the technology to create a tool that is one of the most significant innovations in online training in Canada. You will discuss best practices for developing and implementing technology to support distance learning programs with measurable success. You will understand the framework from which a successful solution was developed and implemented so that you can adapt it for your organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• How innovative technology was implemented to ensure integration
• Best practices for developing and implementing technology to support distance learning programs
• The framework from which a successful solution was developed and implemented
• How this new training delivery method offers a success rate comparable to that of a classroom-based course

Audience:
Advanced designers knowledgeable in distance learning.

Technology discussed in this session:
The Technomedia Learning and Development module.

There was a time, not that long ago, where the lowly training team, in tough times, was the first to go. Training was the expendable critter scurrying through the business wilderness picking up resource scraps and being kicked around by larger apex predators. Over time we evolved into learning and development moving up the corporate food chain. Have we now reached an evolutionary dead end? Do we need to become a different species to move up any further?

In this session you will explore new and concrete ways that L&D departments can more tightly fuse themselves into the business and decrease their cost profile. You will explore ways to increase your ability to actually generate trackable revenue. You will discuss examples of success and failure and gain practical processes and tools you can immediately implement to evolve your training efforts. You will leave this session with new insight into the world of learning you’ve chosen as your career.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to tell if your department is currently acting as predator or prey
• What being a predator looks like
• How you can be both predator and prey
• What you can do to move up the food chain

Audience:
Novice to advanced project managers, managers, directors, and VPs.

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Social learning has been the “next big thing” for years now, yet discussions often still focus on introducing the tools and simple uses for them. It’s time for learning professionals to go beyond the basics and focus on advanced techniques for using social tools and networks for learning.

In this session, you will go hands-on with Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. You’ll also explore some of the newest social networks: Snapchat, Secret, and Vine. You’ll be presented with a challenge and then explore how the challenge can be solved using common social media applications. You will learn best practices for incorporating these and other social networks into your learning programs. You will leave this session with tangible ideas for using social networks as part of your enterprise learning strategy.

In this session, you will learn:

• Advanced features of Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest
• How to use Vine, Secret, and Snapchat for social learning
• How to stay abreast of the latest social networks
• How to incorporate these social networks into a course design

Audience:
Intermediate designers who are familiar with the basic functionality of Twitter and Instagram and with the general principles of social learning and social networks.

Technology discussed in this session:
Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, Secret, and Snapchat.

Let’s face it: A lot of eLearning programs are just plain ugly. From the email invitations marketing, graphics and tweets, to the blog posts, presentations, handouts, and more, most learning experiences are built without focusing enough attention on the value visuals play in creating quality digital learning experiences.

In this session you will discover how to beautify all aspects of your digital learning, including your emails, presentations, handouts, social media posts, and more. You will learn tips that you can easily put to use, even if you are not a professional marketer or graphic designer. You will explore best practices in marketing, advertising, and graphic design. You will examine how to apply these practices to the world of digital learning. 

In this session, you will learn:

• Effective marketing approaches for your eLearning courses
• How to think outside the slide-deck
• The value of beautiful handouts
• How to grab people’s attention and hold on to it

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, and managers.

The Internet is full of compelling images, video, and sound, but most learning designers and developers struggle with understanding what content they are allowed to use, and which content is limited based on copyrights. There is a continuing struggle to quickly develop content while balancing speed with protecting our own work, respecting the work of others, and using copyrighted works fairly.

In this session you will learn how to develop an applied understanding of copyright law and how to find media you can use. You will discover how to use this knowledge to help you become more productive and focused as you maximize your financial and creative resources. You will find sites that already approve use of their content, so you don’t have to stress about copyright infringement. Participants will leave this session with an understanding of copyright law and how to apply legal concepts such as the fair use doctrine to everyday scenarios.

In this session, you will learn:

• The important issues surrounding copyright law and fair-use of images, video, and music downloaded from the Internet
• How to apply copyright law, and fair use in particular, in the context of digital media
• How to find websites that offer public domain and open-access media
• About Creative Commons licensing and which licenses are most accommodating
• How to easily and properly attribute Creative Commons works

Audience:
Novice designers, developers, and project managers with basic graphic design, web, or app skills.

Technology discussed in this session:
API for Creative Commons licenses and plugins for proper attribution of work.

The heart of many eLearning solutions is a video presentation. A recorded lecture, voiceover PowerPoint, or training video transfers information in a scalable, anytime, anywhere manner. They are also often passive, isolating, and dull. Ruth’s Chris Steakhouses have over 500 hosts working in almost a hundred restaurants around the world. How do you teach such a disbursed group the meaning of hospitality that makes the Ruth’s Chris experience unique? Training videos were not working.

In this session participants will explore a case study showcasing an instructional method that flips the use of traditional talking head training videos. You will learn how this method, based on research funded by the National Science Foundation, asks learners to record themselves roleplaying a response to a typical scenario. You will discuss how learners then review a sample of their peer’s submissions, and only then are they shown the training video. You will discover that when watched after the self-practice and peer review steps, the training video is significantly more engaging for the learner who is now primed to engage with its content.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to deliver asynchronous roleplay exercises
• How to turn training videos into active learning
• How to share best practices among a disbursed group of learners
• How to motivate learning in a large, distributed group

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors with a basic understanding of eLearning design and some experience crafting roleplay exercises.

Technology discussed in this session:
ApprenNet.

eLearning has had a good run. It will always have a home in our organizations, but change is in the air. New learners, new social technologies, declining resources, the rise of informal learning, and innovations in learning design are all converging to change how we must think about using technology for learning.

In this session you will join an open discussion exploring the changing social and technical landscape at work and the implications these changes have for learning. You will develop a greater understanding of how eLearning will change in the near future. You will explore the role of curation as part of your learning strategy. You will leave this session with a realistic roadmap to begin using social learning tools and technologies strategically to support organizational learning and performance improvement.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to make sense of social and informal learning approaches
• How eLearning acts as seed content in communities of practice and social media environments
• How curating digital learning content develops employees
• How eLearning can and will adapt in the emerging social workplace

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers with understanding of instructional design and eLearning and some interest in social learning.               

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

MOOCs have become a popular buzz word in the industry over the past couple of years. While interest in MOOCs continues to increase, our understanding of what MOOCs are and where they can best be applied to help organizations and individuals learn has not kept pace.

In this session you will explore the core elements of an effective MOOC. You will discuss the various ways that MOOCs can be used in organizational learning contexts. You will examine the various platforms that are used to develop and run MOOCs. You will leave this session understanding what a MOOC is, and how utilizing or providing MOOCs can be a huge value to organizations and their learners.

In this session, you will learn:

• What a MOOC is
• How MOOCs are delivered
• About the different tools for delivering MOOCs.
• What issues MOOCs present
• How MOOCs may fit into your current eLearning strategy

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
MOOCs, Coursera, edX, Udacity, Udemy.

If you find running online sessions difficult, and you and your learners waste time setting up activities and solving technical problems, you’re not alone. Even the most experienced online presenters can struggle to manage the software and deliver a clear message at the same time. An online session producer can provide the structure and support that allow presenters to stay focused on content and keep learners engaged.

Participants in this session will discover why it is not practical for a single person to manage all the elements of a webinar. You’ll learn how working with a producer, who can manage the technology and troubleshooting, frees the presenter to focus on the content and on the learners. Join this session to find out how producers ensure successful virtual online sessions.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to handle typical virtual session disasters
• How to identify solutions to mitigate or solve problems
• Which problems are best solved by the presenter and which by the producer
• About the producer role in The eLearning Guild’s Online Forums

Audience:
Beginner and intermediate; participants should have experience with webinars.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Connect, WebEx, GoToMeeting, and GoToWebinar.

A sea change in how children in K-12 learn is underway. Using a variety of strategies and technology, teachers are engaging students to a degree not seen in years, including flipped classrooms, genius hour, differentiated instruction, and project-based learning. While these methods may have academic origins, they have a place in corporate learning, too.

In this session participants will explore a case study where learning and the rate of knowledge transfer and skill building in an adult population was increased through the application of teaching strategies originally developed and used in K-12. You will discover how these methods and strategies can be implemented with minimal impact on your budget. You will examine ways to increase the social learning that is taking place. You will leave this session with a new set of tools to add to your design and development toolkit, and new strategies for doing more with less.

In this session, you will learn:

• To create learning activities on the cheap
• To design social learning into your online training
• To involve peers in an effective model for professional development
• About the third circle of training

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, and project managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Flipped classrooms, eLearning.

The Experience API (xAPI) has become a very popular topic in our industry. It seems everywhere you look someone is talking about it and how it will change the way we look at learning. And it may well do that. But is the xAPI right for you and your organization? Is now the right time for the xAPI?

In this candid session you will explore questions that put the xAPI into context so that you can determine if it is right for you and your organization. You will discuss what xAPI provides and how that matches against your organizational needs. You will examine how the xAPI relates to your existing LMS system and how it relates to SCORM, and you will leave this session with a better understanding of the xAPI in the context of your own work so that you can decide if this is the right path, and the right time, for your organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• If the xAPI will provide your organization what it needs
• How the xAPI relates to your LMS and SCORM
• If the xAPI provides actionable data to measure and impact learning
• What you can do yourself without the xAPI

Audience:
Beginning to advanced developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
The Experience API.

Learning how to do full HTML5 and JavaScript programming can be a daunting task unless you’re able to spend hours learning how to do all the programming by hand. Adobe Edge Animate is like Flash for HTML5. Edge Animate allows you to quickly build custom learning interactions with more control than any standard eLearning tool, but can still be imported into most eLearning authoring tools or wrapped inside of a PhoneGap mobile project.

Participants will learn the basics of how to create custom interactive learning activities that will play on any mobile device. This allows you to go beyond the limitations of any eLearning authoring tool and build custom mobile-compatible interactions with greater flexibility. You can do most of the interactivity without even knowing any code. Get hands-on experience with a great HTML5 animation/interaction builder. Get real-world examples that you can use as a reference down the road.

In this session, you will learn:

• Adobe Edge Animate basics
• Learn how to animate objects in Adobe Edge along the timeline
• Creative interactive movie clips/buttons
• Create interactive content with little to no coding knowledge

Audience:
Developers, project managers, and managers. No previous knowledge required.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Edge Animate CC.

Participant technology requirements:
A laptop with Adobe Edge Animate CC installed.

Visual design is one of the most important elements of effective eLearning. Unfortunately, it is also often the first element to get pushed aside when project deadlines loom and budgets evaporate. Instructional designers need to apply a wide array of resources and techniques in order to maintain visual-design quality in their eLearning programs.

In this hands-on session you will examine a number of creative and practical tips and tricks to give eLearning visuals cohesion and professional panache. You will explore a wide array of free and low-cost resources that you can use even when budgets shrink. You will apply practical tips, tools, and solutions that anyone can use to enhance the look and feel of their eLearning. You will leave this session able to look beyond the limits of what we think we can do and explore more creative alternatives.

In this session, you will learn:

• How visual cohesion impacts learning and enhances communication
• How to creatively leverage the photo tools you have at hand
• Where to get free and/or cheap software and resources for visual design
• How to leverage online tools to create, repurpose, and customize eLearning graphics and clipart

Audience:
Novice designers and developers who are new or moderately experienced in eLearning design or development.

Technology discussed in this session:
PowerPoint and other online resources.

 Participant technology requirements:
A laptop with MS Office. A smartphone is beneficial, but not required.

Technology has an image problem. Women are consuming technology but not creating it. Women are leaving the technology sector at twice the rate of men. The number of young women studying technology related subjects has declined every year for the past 10 years. This is increasingly weakening the effectiveness of organizations and workplace learning teams.

In this timely keynote, Belinda Parmar will explore the societal influences that function as blinders to how girls and young women look at technology. She will explore the expectations that are coded into our perceptions as children and how they shape young women’s assumptions of what “working with tech” means, discuss the importance of technology in the context of work, and examine the types of technology skills that are critical in tomorrow’s workplace.