Given that the role of the eLearning professional has a wide range of possible responsibilities, hiring a person who has the exact set of skills and experience to meet the specific needs of your organization can be daunting. How can you ensure you find individuals who have the expertise needed to function successfully on your team and really hit the ground running?

In this session, you’ll explore the particular competencies you’ll want to look for when hiring a new eLearning professional. You’ll find out more about where to look for qualified candidates and what experience, education, certifications, and training you’ll want your new hire to possess. To help you dig deeper on your candidates’ skill sets, you’ll discuss what to look for in a candidate’s work, approaches to reviewing portfolios, and what questions to ask—including how you can use behavioral interviewing to craft interview questions specific to the position and your department’s needs. And while it’s great to know how to find new talent, it’s even better to not need to hire at all. You’ll finish this session by looking at actions you can take to develop and retain the talented eLearning staff you already have.

In this session, you will learn:

• Where to find qualified eLearning candidates
• How to identify appropriate competencies for your eLearning staffing needs
• How to craft behavioral interviewing questions
• How to review eLearning portfolios
• About actions you can take to develop and retain your current eLearning staff

Audience:
Novice and intermediate managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
eLearning development tools and LMS platforms.

Training the modern team can be a challenge. With users engaging with learning over many platforms, developers are often forced to create multiple versions of the same course, creating content to work across multiple devices. This can cause great difficulty. In this session, gomo managing director Mike Alcock will show you how to create beautiful, engaging courses that work perfectly on any device, on any screen size, and in any orientation. Bring your QR code readers to experience this on your own device.

Learning management systems were initially built for supporting instructor-led training (ILT). As the needs of 21^st-century learners evolve, companies are rapidly transitioning away from ILT toward next-generation learning experiences, and many LMSs are not keeping up. Learn how some of the largest and most innovative companies in the world are using the latest technology (e.g., video platforms, learning paths, self-paced labs, etc.) to provide an outstanding blended learning experience—without an LMS.

Text and voice communications are the cheapest, fastest, easiest way to communicate, but they are also the least effective. With over 100 billion emails sent each day and climbing, your message is lucky to break through the noise. If you do get noticed, your text and voice often fail to keep audience attention or boost learning retention. If you want your message to be seen, understood, remembered, and acted on, you need to make it visual. This session will share the science behind visual communication, and attendees will leave with a clear methodology to apply immediately.

Company changes are hard for most employees, and they can be especially hard for managers caught in the awkward position of having to communicate and enact changes they didn’t initiate. Yet the success of company change is critically tied to managers’ ability to lead their teams through it. Learn about the common challenges facing both managers and the HR and L&D leaders who support them, as well as solutions and lessons learned from people who’ve been there before. You’ll leave with practical ideas to help equip managers to survive, thrive, and lead effectively in tumultuous times. Audience participation is encouraged!

Over the past 15 years, organizations have accumulated massive amounts of digital content in the form of common document types, such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint formats. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of this content is sitting on servers, undiscoverable, and in some cases irrelevant due to outdated branding, the inclusion of discontinued product and services descriptions, or the exclusion of current and critical information. This session will examine how to breathe life back into your organization’s digital content with a strategic digital transformation, and how to make it more relevant and impactful than ever by implementing a learning transformation strategy.

Formal online learning doesn’t work like it used to. Attention spans are decreasing, and mobile access is more critical than ever. So how do you create mobile learning without hiring experts or spending a fortune? And how do you get part-time employees to care about making shakes and smoothies?

In this session, you’ll learn how mobile games like Diner Dash and Cooking Fever inspired LifeCafe restaurants inside Life Time Fitness locations to drastically change the way they certified team members in the creation of shakes and smoothies. You’ll explore the full-scale design and development process and walk away with specific steps to create your own mobile or multi-device learning game with a simple authoring tool like Articulate Storyline 2.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why games in learning are a good idea
• How to design a multi-platform game
• How to create a mobile learning game with Articulate Storyline 2
• Ways to save serious time

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Mobile game applications and Articulate Storyline 2.

In a world of short attention spans and the need to “break through the clutter,” how can you ensure your learning videos leave your audience remembering your message? Maybe it’s time to look outside L&D for inspiration and toward a field that already does this well: advertising. If advertisements can influence people to purchase items they don’t need, are there ways to use this field’s secrets to influence learners (and do this without their feeling manipulated)?

In this session, you’ll learn how the techniques that influence purchasing behavior can also change the behavior of your audience. You’ll find out what exactly makes an ad so compelling that it can persuade you to spend your money, then apply these secrets to make your next learning video successful. You’ll explore the hooks that grab viewer interest, the components that lead to an effective video concept, and a framework you can use to shape a successful learning-video strategy.

In this session, you will learn:

• About a strategic framework for designing and evaluating effective video for learning
• About two “hooks” that make the content in your learning video memorable
• About four components that make an effective video concept
• About two techniques for using drama to design or evaluate videos

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and managers.

Click here for the session trailer

In just a short span of time, a succession of technological advances have impacted L&D, from VHS tapes through to eLearning and mobile—and they’ve landed with mixed success. All have had an impact; none have been transformative. But that’s about to change as distributed technology and AI start to intersect with learning. The success of these technologies, though, depends on industry professionals. Are you ready?

In this participative session, you’ll explore the future of learning. You’ll experience a future-facing session where you’ll look not just at what is on your doorstep, but at the things you’ll need to put in place to shape tomorrow. This session will consider not specific technologies, but rather categories of technology and the ways they’ll transform learning, including the impacts of wearables on performance, AI on communication, and collaborative platforms on knowledge itself.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the true disruptions around the corner for the field of organizational learning
• How wearable tech and AI will fully contextualize and geolocate learning
• How these technologies will fully democratize and liberate learning
• About the risks for those organizations that don’t start to explore

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Wearables (from Glass to Oculus, watches to phones) and AI platforms (specifically a research project out of SRI, as well as bots focused on storytelling and captioning activities).

Are you meeting all Five Moments of Learning Need? You already teach the moments of “new” and “more.” But what are you doing to support the moment of “apply,” when your learners become performers and have to use the knowledge you taught them? What about the moment of “solve,” when things are broken and need to be fixed? Or the moment of “change,” when they have to unlearn old habits?

This session will provide an overview of the Five Moments of Learning Need and how they can extend learning beyond the classroom. The Five Moments concept applies a complete approach to designing learning by blending both formal and informal learning. You will learn a defined process that blends the benefits of deliberate instructional design with the means to influence the “70” and “20” in the 70:20:10 mix. You will learn how to decide what should be the “10” and what should be in the “70” and “20” by correctly identifying the subject matter that can safely be left to informal delivery methods.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the Five Moments of Learning Need concept and how it compares to ADDIE
• How to identify business performance challenges
• About the ideal blend of resources at the task level to ensure sustainment of performance at all Five Moments of Need
• How to accommodate for procedure-based, principle-based, and knowledge-based solutions, as appropriate, in your learning programs

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers, developers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Electronic performance support systems.

When a new specification such as the xAPI comes out, it is important to understand the basics. And one of the most critical basics of the xAPI is the concept of statements: the way most xAPI data is communicated. Before getting started with an xAPI implementation, you’ll want to have a strong understanding of what statements are and how you can form them yourself.

In this session, you’ll take a close-up look at what exactly makes up an xAPI statement. You’ll start by defining the requirements for creating a valid statement. You’ll then learn how vocabulary and context can be assigned to a statement. You’ll also look at the optional fields that can be used to further define your xAPI statements. All of this will arm you with the basics you need to begin using the xAPI effectively.

In this session, you will learn:

• What goes into a basic xAPI statement
• How verbs can be defined for statement generation
• How important context is when generating statements
• How statements relate to activities

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers.

Big data and learning analytics are top of mind for many organizations throughout the training industry. However, while there is a lot of of information about what you can do with data, there is much less about what you should do. Since data can include deeply personal or sensitive information, training organizations cannot consider using this information without first thinking about the ethics of what they are intending to do with that data and the privacy of individual learners.

In this session, you’ll explore how you can use learner performance data while also respecting the privacy of your audience. You’ll start by looking at R&D initiatives and explore common data scenarios that can put learners at risk and even, in some cases, trigger legal action. You’ll then learn research-based best practices for how to avoid these scenarios, such as building a deeper practical understanding of privacy laws and expectations, sharing this information effectively with all your stakeholders, and using this knowledge to guide new approaches to the design and development of your data projects. You’ll leave this session understanding not just the research-based recommendations for how to address privacy and ethical considerations, but also why it benefits your organization to make this topic a priority.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why ethics is an important discussion in the training domain
• How learners and organizations may be affected by data collection
• About specific legal and ethical considerations you should be aware of when using learner performance data
• How stakeholders should plan to address emerging privacy and ethical considerations

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
CAE’s R&D into systems for data collection in training (specifically, courseware and simulators).

A large amount of research in recent years has explored the value that music has for the brain and learning. Everyone has experienced it in some way, be it from listening to music while studying, learning something from a catchy song, or learning to play an instrument.

In this session, you will explore the many relationships between music and learning. You will examine and discuss how people learn to play an instrument—there will even be ukuleles available for some to participate hands-on—and what this might mean for learning in general. Using the introductory ukulele lesson as a framework, this fun session will help you explore the many ways that music impacts and enhances learning. (Ukuleles made available during this session will be donated to the Children’s Hospital of Nevada UMC after the conference.)

In this session, you will learn:

• How music enhances learning
• How people learn to play an instrument, and what that means for learning
• How music might enhance your practices
• How to play a ukulele!

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

Click here for the session trailer

Online videos are extremely popular these days, particularly for quickly learning new skills and just-in-time content. While short videos can be an effective way to learn soft skills and system processes, many instructional designers and developers believe they have neither the tools nor the skills to create these training videos themselves. But they’re wrong, because most people have a surprisingly useful animation tool already: PowerPoint.

That’s right. PowerPoint can be a powerful yet easy-to-use tool to create videos with sound and animation, and nearly everyone has it. By learning just a few simple techniques, you’ll be able to create short, entertaining videos that will engage and educate your audiences, and this session will teach you the first steps you’ll need to use PowerPoint in this unexpected way. You’ll find out how to use motion paths, enter and exit animations, and sound syncing to create visual effects; how to bring in voice-overs and soundtracks to add to your content; and how to get all these aspects in sync so your final video looks polished and professional.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use PowerPoint to create and publish videos
• How to add animations such as motion paths
• How to add audio to your animations and set audio timing
• How to use the PowerPoint animation and selection panels to adjust movement and layers for smooth animated techniques

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
PowerPoint, picture editing software (Photoshop, GIMP, Snagit), audio editing software (Audition, Audacity), and online image libraries.

Click here for the session trailer

It’s harder and harder to catch the attention of learners, especially field sales representatives. It is also difficult to encourage them to practice important skills like sales techniques and how to speak with customers in different situations. While they need to practice these critical skills to succeed in their roles, they don’t always take the time to do so. What could engage this audience?

The solution was Zombie Sales Apocalypse: a game to reinforce key sales skills. This serious game made practice easier by creating an exciting and immersive experience using the popular genre of zombie games. In this session, you’ll discover how a branching story simulation combined engaging game activities—such as fleeing from zombies, moving furniture, and smashing through walls—with sales-focused challenges like choosing the right response to customers, bringing the right materials to a sales call, and properly diagnosing customer issues. Through examining Zombie Sales Apocalypse, you’ll find out more about the key elements and influences you’ll want to consider when creating your own games for practice and reinforcement.

In this session, you will learn:

• About three key elements that are required in any serious learning game
• Why the use of fantasy was a critical element in the design of this learning game
• How immediate feedback changes learner behavior
• How learner input was used to drive engagement with the sales model

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Unity game platform.

Click here for the session trailer

“Blended learning” was one of the hottest buzzwords back in the day. In its infancy it was, at best, a design construct that focused on combining the best elements of face-to-face with eLearning. At worst, though, it merely gave the learner the choice of attending class in person or online. This was a cutting-edge approach at one time, but the tools and media for learning have expanded far beyond this. To get the most out of blended learning, you need to shift your thinking and look at how you can use all of today’s tools in the blend.

In this session, you’ll discover what’s beyond the traditional application of blended learning and dive into the next generation of this approach. With this new view on blended learning, your toolkit will move beyond just in-person classes and eLearning to include elements such as assessments for content personalization, simulations, mobile interventions, games and gamification, social learning, user-generated content, knowledge management, and yes, even performance support.

In this session, you will learn:

• What makes next-generation blended learning work
• What tools you should consider adding to your blend, and what the best practices for application are
• How instructional intent applies to this next-gen blend
• What modern blended learning solutions look like in action from real-world examples

Audience:
Intermediate to advanced designers, developers, managers, and directors.

As websites and apps get increasingly more sophisticated and personalized, people are coming to expect a similar experience from learning as well. Adaptive learning is one such technology that promises this experience, but many of the platforms that exist are expensive and currently geared primarily toward K-12 and higher education. How can L&D professionals in the corporate space find ways to provide their audience with this more tailored learning experience?

In this session, you’ll learn about the basics of adaptive learning, why it has been gaining momentum in K-12 arenas, and why it should be on your radar in the corporate environment. You’ll discuss obstacles to implementing full-scale adaptive learning technologies within the corporate infrastructure, and how you can leverage some of the adaptive philosophies within your current learning culture. You’ll also discover budget-friendly ways to use tools you already have, like Storyline or Captivate, to incorporate adaptive learning principles and give your audience a tailored learning experience.

In this session, you will learn:

• Where eLearning software falls on the spectrum of adaptive learning technology
• Three ways you can apply adaptive learning principles to eLearning
• How to create an adaptive learning path
• Which Storyline 2 features support adaptive learning design

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 2, Adobe Captivate, and Smart Sparrow.

Design starts on paper—or at least it used to. Early apps were clunky, and those that had great promise fell short because of a stylus that did not feel the same as a pencil. With the advances in touch-sensitive screens and stylus technology, designing or sketching on an app is like having a library of sketchbooks. The current problem is no longer technology, but rather choosing the right app. When choosing which app to use, it takes time and practice to become proficient enough to determine whether it is the right app for your application and workflow.

This session will look at several popular apps for sketching and designing and compare their advantages and disadvantages. The session will demonstrate apps using the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil, and there will be several other styluses for participants to test-drive.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the common and popular apps for sketching
• About advantages and disadvantages of various apps
• About the stylus pens currently available
• About apps that capture actual paper notes and sketches

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers; other sketchnoters.

Technology discussed in this session:
The iPad Pro, sketching and design apps, and styluses, including the Apple Pencil.

Are you designing training for people who need to experience situations firsthand, but struggle with how to do that effectively and efficiently? Is your workforce widely distributed, so in-person training is just too expensive? What if you could bring a situation to your audience anywhere and any time you needed to with a solution that was both immersive and cost-effective? While this sounds like a training option from the future, it’s actually something you can launch right now using Google Cardboard and 360 degrees of virtual reality.

In this session, you’ll learn about the technology that’s available today to create low-cost virtual reality videos and how you can leverage this groundbreaking technology in your training. You’ll find out more about the websites and apps that are available to support VR videos, which cameras you can use to capture footage, and which cardboard viewers are compatible with smartphones. With these affordable tools, you can easily create immersive experiences that do things like put your new remote employees in the office to meet the team on their first day, put your sales force in a car for a ride-along without the cost of travel, or send your employees on a tour of a facility across the world without impacting anyone’s daily routine.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to create your own 360-degree virtual reality videos
• Which websites and apps support 360 VR videos
• How to use Google Cardboard with a smartphone
• Ways to implement VR into your training program

Audience:
Novice designers, developers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Ricoh Theta and Google Cardboard.

Intellectual property law affects every stage of the development and delivery process. Unfortunately, it’s daunting—and, even worse, often deadly boring. As a result, your decision making about what media resources you can actually use might be rooted in ignorance, fear, or frustration, none of which contributes to your project goals. As a result, it’s not uncommon to struggle with how to use free media to enhance your projects while also avoiding accidentally infringing on someone else’s work or exposing yourself to unpleasant legal action.

In this session, you’ll learn about copyright essentials through a surprisingly entertaining and easy-to-understand snapshot of the law and recent cases. Learn how to protect your own work and apply legal concepts, such as the fair use doctrine, to everyday scenarios and become more confident in finding sites that offer public domain, Creative Commons, and open access licensed works. Building this stronger understanding of how you can and can’t legally use media in your work will help you become more productive and focused as you maximize your financial and creative resources.

In this session, you will learn:

• About copyright law and fair-use basics
• Which recent court cases are interesting, relevant, and important
• How to protect your work and avoid being sued
• How to find awesome online media you can use
• About Creative Commons licenses and which are most accommodating
• How to correctly attribute media you use

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

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

Click here for the session trailer

Photoshop is the de facto standard for image creation and manipulation, and over the years, more and more features have been added to this tool. Some of these features are real time-savers and also have the ability to make your images stand out. However, if you haven’t taken courses on Photoshop, or haven’t taken any recently, chances are you may be underusing these helpful new additions to the tool.

In this hands-on BYOL workshop, you’ll learn a variety of Photoshop secrets that can quickly improve the quality of your images. You’ll also look at a new feature introduced in Photoshop CC 2015 that can make a noticeable impact on your work: artboards. In just an hour you’ll learn quick ways to remove blemishes and imperfections, punch up the color of digital photographs, leverage the automatic features in this software, build icons and buttons using artboards, and even have Photoshop export CSS code.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to remove background colors from images
• How to adjust imperfections on a person’s face
• How to add a smile to a portrait
• How to fill in an area using the content-aware feature
• What the new artboards feature is, and how you can create images using it
• How Photoshop can export CSS code from your image

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Photoshop.

Technology Required:
Mac or PC with Photoshop CC 2015. The trial version will work.

Using technology to help make  learning “stick” is something L&D is always pursuing. Augmented reality (AR) is one of the newer entries into this category, in large part because of how well it can support learning in the moment. However, AR can often seem overwhelming, time-consuming, and difficult to use in everyday learning development, and these assumptions could cause you to overlook the potential this technology holds for your audience.

This session will challenge the idea that AR is too complicated to use for L&D and explore just how easy it actually is to get started creating training with AR. You’ll explore tools that you can use to create an AR project; features of AR that you can consider using; and how to plan, build, and share your project with the community. You’ll then have the opportunity to create original AR content in this session using free development tools.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to create an AR project using Aurasma Studio
• Which interactions are available for you to use within AR
• What features to consider when planning your AR project
• How to use multimedia assets to enhance your AR project

Audience:
Novice designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Aurasma Studio (cloud-based), Aurasma app (for iOS and Android), and Google Drive.

Technology required:
A laptop with Internet connection and a mobile device with a camera for viewing.

If you’re looking for your first LMS (or starting fresh by leaving an old one behind), the number of choices you have can be overwhelming. But there’s one option you may not have thought of that can be a surprisingly good nontraditional solution, particularly if you’re working with bundling open or microlearning courses: using WordPress.

In this session, you’ll find out more about the challenges, constraints, and affordances of using WordPress as your LMS. Through real examples of this approach used with several online open courses, you’ll find out more about how features like open badges, emailing, tracking, activity/assessment tools, mobile delivery, and multimedia development actually function when you use WordPress in this way. By the end of this session, you’ll know everything you need to begin setting up your own open or microlearning portal through this unusual, but effective, LMS option.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to bundle open online courses
• How open LMS platforms inform the design and delivery of content
• How to evaluate the suitability of WordPress plugins and third-party applications
• How to create a low-cost open or microlearning solution

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

Technology discussed in this session:
WordPress with LearnDash LMS.

Realistically, there are multiple ways a mobile performance support app can be built, all with their own benefits and drawbacks. Depending on a developer’s skill level, there are several options such as building a custom app, using your company’s or client’s existing infrastructure, or building a website and packaging it into an app.

In this session, you will address the need to create a mobile performance support option that is easy to access and easy to use. The session will cover possible solutions for mobile performance support that anyone who is “slightly techie,” but not a programmer, can build. You’ll also look at solutions for individuals or small teams that require less development effort.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to recognize when a performance support tool may benefit your learning audience
• How technology is changing the way companies provide performance support
• About barriers to success when implementing your solution
• Tips to get started developing a PS solution
• How you can use an app to make information more accessible

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Popular tools used to develop mobile PS, such as Appy Pie.

Participant technology requirements:
Laptops and/or mobile devices.

Have you ever found yourself in front of a classroom of reluctant learners who, arms crossed, decline to participate? Have you ever carefully crafted eLearning, only to hear later that learners rig paper clips in the keyboard so the course will automatically advance while they peruse Car & Truck Trader? “But we’re different. You don’t get us,” they say. Reluctant learners present a huge barrier to achieving good training results.

This session will explore the reasons behind this attitude in the context of three specific industries: firefighting, manufacturing, and aircraft maintenance. You will learn how to overcome this resistance and deliver training solutions that meet employee needs. You’ll also discuss strategies for developing buy-in from tough learner audiences.

In this session, you will learn:

• Strategies for creating training for a resistant audience in a way that builds buy-in and yields good training results
• About motivations behind the “But we’re different” attitude toward training
• About characteristics of skilled trade experts that contribute to a “But we’re different” attitude

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

During design and development, SMEs sometimes suggest ideas or practices that are antithetical to good instructional design. For example, a designer might have a stakeholder who believes it’s best to simply film a daylong stand-up training session and deliver it as one video. When this happens, it is helpful for the designer to be able to identify research findings to help the SME understand why learning should be designed differently.

This session will outline the most current research regarding assessment, usability, and multimedia in eLearning. Being able to cite research with SMEs and other stakeholders can assist the designer in creating quality instruction, as decisions are based on findings. Knowledge of current research is also one way for designers to remain current with regard to best practices in their professional field. Framed as a story, the session will use scenarios in which research is used to make design decisions, and attendees will receive a list of places to look for current research to inform eLearning practice.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to cite research in three areas: multimedia, visual design/usability, and assessment
• How to successfully use research to make data-driven decisions for design and development
• How to find sources of eLearning research
• How to conduct a research-based discussion with SMEs

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

eLearning is a diverse and far-reaching field. While eLearning developers work in a variety of environments, few have examined self-employment, and by extension entrepreneurship, as a viable career option. Fear of failure, lack of information on how to start a business, and, perhaps most striking, lack of understanding of the huge opportunity for eLearning developers has led to few eLearning developers taking advantage of opportunities that exist.

In this case study session you will learn a model for eLearning entrepreneurship that has made many practitioners successful. You will build a specific plan, including relevant websites, checklists, and other resources that you can use to become an eLearning entrepreneur. The presenter’s company offers a case study within which you can explore the techniques used to build an eLearning entrepreneurship.

In this session, you will learn:

• The market for eLearning content
• How to sell the same course 20,000 times
• How to create an audience for your content
• The technical requirements for creating eLearning independently
• Why you should give your eLearning away
• How to market your company and yourself
• Topics you can build courses around
• How to transition from a full-time job to a full-time entrepreneur

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Udemy.com, OpenSesame.com, Adobe Premiere, and Adobe After Effects.

When imagination, knowledge, and collaboration intersect, something special happens. In this session, learn how to harness your organization’s internal expertise and creativity to develop a culture of open knowledge sharing. See Versal in action and master techniques to bring instructional content to life. This session will demonstrate scenarios to expand the use of eLearning, including daily learning modules that engage a broad workforce, peer-driven training that empowers employees, and mobile field training. Learn how to leverage your best content, keep it fresh and interesting, and ensure retention. Walk away with actionable steps to make your eLearning interactive, collaborative, reusable, changeable, sharable, and embeddable.

Get a comprehensive introduction to video compression and delivery standards for optimizing content delivery to mobile and desktop devices. This session will provide an overview with everything you need to know about editing, preparing, and delivering the highest-quality video and audio to your audience. Learn about the latest standards and how you can take advantage of free to inexpensive tools to deliver amazing content , and find out about hardware, software, and mobile apps to upgrade your studio.

It’s no secret that some videos are way more successful than others at supporting learning objectives. But what makes some videos work and others fall flat? This session will highlight four types of video that lend themselves well to learning, and it will equip you with criteria to help you decide which type of video to employ for your project. You’ll look at real examples, discuss what makes them impactful, and get tips to help you craft them with confidence.

Trends show that the volume of custom-developed compliance content and custom content in general is rising. Additionally, much of the content developed over the past 10 years is expiring and must be refreshed.  How should you approach this problem?  Explore the path to quicker, cheaper methods of managing the ever-changing complexities of compliance and custom-developed content. In this session you will learn three key areas of focus that will save you time and money. 

Millennials make up a quarter of the US population and will be a majority of the workforce in less than 10 years. Learning is a priority for Millennials, but how they learn differs greatly from previous generations, and new approaches are needed. This session will explore Millennial learning needs and discuss strategies that will engage them and keep them coming back for more.

Poor leadership is a significant drain on organizations, with some estimates claiming it costs the US economy billion of dollars a year. That’s why leadership development remains a top priority for many companies. But while organizations want to invest in this training, in many cases the training they offer doesn’t fully meet the needs of the leaders taking it. So where should you look for inspiration on how to make your leadership development more effective? Games!

In this session, you’ll examine a number of ways to build leadership experience through gaming. You’ll uncover the psychological benefits derived from games like Candy Crush. You’ll then explore the ways adults build leadership capabilities by looking at how chess players master their art. Finally, you’ll discover the advantages of practicing high-stakes skills in game-like environments, much like pilots do in flight simulators. And throughout this talk, you’ll find out how organizations are already using gaming mechanics successfully to develop leadership capabilities. By the end of this session, you will understand not only how games are effective for learning, but also how serious gaming can close the leadership gap in your organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• What behavioral science reveals about how complex capabilities such as leadership are developed
• About the psychological forces that make gaming a powerful learning mechanism
• Why games can be particularly effective for teaching leadership
• How you can incorporate serious gaming into your learning and development plans
• About four best practices for using gaming in leadership development

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

Technology discussed in this session:
A game created specifically for leadership development.

Video production and delivery have evolved quickly over the past few years. Unfortunately, pre-2010-era video knowledge often dominates how people consider using video for learning, including their understanding of video files and codecs, streaming specifications and file sizes, video production techniques and styles, and even the role of video in training media. Moreover, these misconceptions actually keep teams from launching the video production processes they’d love to be working on.

This session will rapidly dispel the top video and audio myths held by eLearning developers. You’ll learn more about the technical side of creating video, including which video files, codecs, and optimum export settings you need to know; how streaming services really work and what types of files to give them; and how to work around Internet bandwidth concerns. You’ll also explore project management for video, from how to plan a production so that it can be accomplished in a single day or less to what level of production value is really necessary for good teaching. And, to round things out, you’ll get tips for how to leverage the vast array of free online videos in your training.

In this session, you will learn:

• Whether or not you need a fancy new camera
• Whether codecs even matter
• Whether reducing frame rate actually reduces video bit rate
• What compression is and how it works
• Whether you should use your camera’s microphone for recording
• How to plan your production so that it can be accomplished quickly

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Video cameras, video files and codecs, streaming services, audio files and types, and video editing and compiling software.

In a world of fragmented content consumption and constant distraction, how do you not only grab your audience’s attention but also get them to care about your content? One way is to create an emotional connection by putting them in the driver’s seat of the experience. Giving your audience choice both attracts their attention and creates emotional investment, allowing the message you share to go deeper and actually change behavior.

Interactive video is a powerful tool in this shifting landscape. With it, you don’t have to choose between making an emotional connection or providing information: You can instead enjoy the benefits of both. In this session, you’ll find out how interactive video allows your content to speak to an individual instead of generically addressing a broad audience. You’ll also learn more about the rapid development tools available today that can help you easily make your own interactive videos. These tools automate many of the technical details of creating and deploying your content, allowing you more time to focus on making your content authentic, relatable, and engaging.

In this session, you will learn:

• How interactive video helps get your audience to critical emotional mass
• How to use interactive video and the “gratitude effect” to drive action and desired behaviors
• About rapid development interactive video tools in the marketplace today
• Which data and insights best justify the use of interactive video

Audience:
Intermediate managers, directors, and senior leaders.

Technology discussed in this session:
Rapid development and interactive video technologies.

You know that taking online courses isn’t the only way to learn. You want to invent new learning formats and experiences that better meet your audience’s needs. However, in many cases you need to include tracking, and the types of learning trackable by traditional learning management systems are limited. The Experience API (xAPI) specification is flexible enough to track a wide range of learning experiences, but it’s a new technology, and barriers to adoption still exist. How do you bridge this gap?

In this case study session, you’ll learn how the American College of Chest Physicians (known as CHEST) used the xAPI and a learning record store to collect learning data from its medical simulations and share the data with its LMS. CHEST’s experience of broadening what training can be tracked will give you a road map to adoption within your own organization. You’ll find out about the technical details, best practices, and lessons learned from CHEST’s experience with the xAPI, which will help you unlock the technology’s potential and deliver more innovative learning experiences.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the opportunities the xAPI creates for education providers
• About the advantages and disadvantages of the xAPI compared to earlier technologies like SCORM
• How to decide what you want to track, and how to translate those objectives into xAPI activity statements
• Best practices for building your API
• Which factors to consider when choosing a learning record store (LRS)

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced developers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
The Experience API (xAPI), REST, CourseStage Health LMS, Moodle LMS, ADL LRS, LearningLocker LRS, Laerdal Airway Management Trainer.

Click here for the session trailer

How do you develop a generation of learners who may have spent more time with video games than in school? How do you leverage the explosion of screens and devices to change behavior among all learners? How do you use the recent growth in affordable virtual reality devices to bring immersion, engagement, and presence to new levels? This is the reality in which you design training. So how do you use these media experiences as inspiration for where L&D should go in the future?

In this session, you’ll learn how various media—like serious games, podcasts, simulations, short-form videos, 3-D immersive experiences, mobile, and virtual reality—are poised to forever change the way people learn and organizations teach. Packed with demos and case studies, the session will cover how leading Fortune 50 companies and government agencies are harnessing gamification, simulation, and digital video to build organizational capabilities. From sales skills taught in a spy-themed game with live-action video, to leadership skills taught with 3-D immersive simulations, to technical skills taught with virtual and augmented reality, these organizations will give you inspiration for how to use today’s multimedia breakthroughs to push what you can do for learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to incorporate gaming elements into your learning programs to make them engaging and inspiring
• How to develop compelling stories across screens, devices, and formats that inspire the audience to action
• What leading-edge virtual reality applications actually look like
• About trends that will impact learning over the next few years

Audience:
Novice and intermediate managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Mobile and tethered virtual reality; Unity and web-developed games; and short-form online video.

Click here for the session trailer

When a new director of diversity and inclusion reviewed the courses offered at Johns Hopkins Medicine International, the eLearning development team was surprised to find out just how much work its content needed in order to be current and inclusive. Staff had thought they were practicing diversity and inclusion at a high level, but this review showed that they were way off the mark. Both this review and feedback from newer members of the team helped the eLearning development team realize the nuances to incorporating diversity and challenged them to do better.

While representing diverse populations and cultures in eLearning in challenging, there are solutions. In this session, you’ll learn from the journey Johns Hopkins took in improving diversity and inclusion in its courses. You’ll explore why diversity and inclusion are so important, how to add diversity to your online courses, what you can do to build awareness in the workplace and online, and how to make diversity a priority. In this collaborative session, you’ll share your own input about current practices and projects, learn about best practices, and begin the process of strategic improvement.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to add diversity to your courses
• How to identify the benchmarks of diversity and inclusion for your workplace
• Best practices related to diversity

Audience:
Novice and intermediate managers, directors, and senior leaders (VPs, CLOs, executives, etc.).

Admit it: You have a love/hate relationship with stock photography websites. Sure, you love how using stock images can inspire your creativity, but you also hate how hard it is to find ones that look genuine and aren’t exaggerated. eLearning developers rely heavily on stock-image-based designs for building workplace eLearning. And it’s not just a problem of finding stock images full of people with the right poses or expressions. The bigger challenge is that the images you find often just don’t feel authentic.

In this session, you’ll learn 10 practical pointers for overcoming these challenges. Explore the research behind authenticity in images and find out how you can modify images to increase their authenticity. The session will cover when it’s acceptable to use stock images and when you should seek alternatives. You’ll learn about websites that provide diverse images, and you’ll leave with loads of free resources and inspiring ideas you can immediately apply to your projects.

In this session, you will learn:

• What research says about why authentic images really matter for eLearning
• How to find better-quality, more authentic imagery
• About specific websites that specialize in diverse imagery
• Different search terms to broaden the pool of images
• Easy techniques to add more authenticity to stock photos using tools you may already have
• When to consider alternatives to stock imagery

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

Implementing an effective mobile user experience is challenging. How do you deliver useful information at the time of need without being disruptive to the employee’s workflow? How do you integrate the content effectively within the context of the user’s task at hand? How do you leverage the available technology to reach the target audience? How can you create a mobile app that is “sticky”?

In this session, you’ll build your skills in strategy and guidelines for effective user experience design, both for mobile and other new platforms. The session will examine how user-centered design can produce training that resonates with users. It will then explore the importance of context and how the learner’s environment can greatly affect the UX. As you explore the unique affordances of mobile devices and how they should contribute to your approach, you’ll also look at an actual example deployed in 2016 by a major retailer and uncover the lessons learned from that project.

In this session, you will learn:

• What mindsets are needed for effective user-centered design
• How to analyze and evaluate your target audience
• How the environment affects the user experience, and how to design for context
• How the wide variety of mobile device capabilities can enhance UX
• About the unique requirements and demands of mobile UX

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Handheld mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) and smart wearable devices (glasses, watches).

Using workplace stories to engage learners and enhance your content is a hot topic in learning and development. But when you’re getting started with storytelling as an instructional design technique, you’ll likely have a lot of questions about where to find effective stories for this purpose and how to make sure they not only entertain but also foster learning at the same time. You’ll also want to know how best to integrate storytelling techniques in the tools you already use.

In this session, you’ll discover how best to leverage the power of workplace stories in your eLearning projects. You’ll take a look at a broader model for finding and building instructional stories in general, and also explore how to convey these stories using the specific strengths and weaknesses of eLearning. You’ll learn how using stories strategically can boost engagement from your audience, and even how to use stories to motivate them before and after each course. This session will also introduce you to a variety of tools that can help you share these stories in exciting new ways.

In this session, you will learn:

• What the basic elements of story are, and how to use them to tell a story in the context of eLearning
• How workplace stories can increase engagement while also teaching and reinforcing content
• How to find real workplace stories to use in your eLearning
• How to determine whether your instructional story just entertains or also fosters learning
• About tools that can help you find and bring to life workplace stories for your eLearning projects

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
eLearning development tools (Captivate, Storyline, etc.); animation tools (PowToon, CrazyTalk, etc.); augmented reality tools (Aurasma, etc.); and social media tools (brainstorming, sharing, chat, etc.).

You’re excited about the promise of an xAPI-enabled world, but you currently have a learning management system and a host of SCORM-based courses that you can’t just get rid of. Early on, it can be difficult to see how you can stay flexible and manage this transition over time. But what if you could get the most out of both an LMS and an LRS (learning record store) at the same time that you move to your next-generation learning and performance infrastructure?

In this session, you’ll quickly review what an LRS is and how it’s both different from and similar to the LMS you already have. You’ll explore your LRS options and find out more about how they work (or don’t work) with your LMS. Should you work with a stand-alone LRS? A front-end xAPI solution with a built-in LRS? An LRS that is aligned with your LMS and your current learning infrastructure? This session will help you make that crucial decision as you plot your organization’s course toward your next-generation learning ecosystem.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the benefits of an LRS, both in contrast to and in combination with your LMS
• How to evaluate your LRS options
• About potential options for your next-generation learning and performance infrastructure
• Which key partners in your business to engage as you migrate from SCORM to the xAPI

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers, developers, and managers. 

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning management systems, learning record stores, and the xAPI.

When you’re developing strategies to engage your learners, you need to keep your audience and their anticipated learning environment top of mind. But with more and more people shifting when and how they want to access training content, it’s more important than ever to make sure your design strategies reflect this. Your success in reaching the modern learner will depend on understanding how these shifts should influence your technology selection, implementation strategy, and design approach.

In this session, you’ll learn more about how the design of learning should be influenced by where and when it is anticipated to occur. You’ll look at best practices from experts on the Five Moments of Learning Need, principles of modern workplace learning, and “push” versus “pull” training culture. Through exploring how to design pull learning for specific environments, when to use microlearning techniques, which media formats can help, and how social technologies may assist you, you’ll be better able to make design decisions that meet the true needs of modern learners.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why modern learners need a different approach to stay engaged with your content
• How to integrate best practices on engagement from experts
• How to design pull learning for specific learning environments
• When microlearning techniques are most appropriate for increasing engagement
• How formats like video, infographics, and short eLearning modules support different situations and moments of need
• What role social and collaborative technologies play in a pull learning environment

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Social and collaborative learning tools and microlearning.

Click here for the session trailer

Accessibility is about more than just doing the bare minimum for compliance. It’s about the difference you can make when you ensure everyone has equal access to what you’ve designed. While this intent is good, in the real world, actually making all your content accessible can seem like a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be.

In this session, you’ll find out just how easy it can be to learn how to design for everyone. You’ll hear from a panel of seasoned designers and developers who will share their personal stories about accessibility and how they’ve used best practices to design universal or inclusive solutions. You’ll learn how to start the conversation with stakeholders, create accessibility standards, and even teach others about accessible solutions.

In this session, you will learn:

• About basic accessibility standards
• How to create accessible content
• How to get buy-in from stakeholders
• About the basics of user research
• About different types of users

Audience:
Novice designers, developers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Selecting authoring tools wisely is important! Choosing the right tools will set you up for success, and choosing the wrong tools can lead to disastrous results. Knowing your project’s requirements and the capabilities of the tools help ensure you select the best tools to get the job done. 

This session will draw on a mixture of practical eLearning development experience and widely accepted computer science principles to uncover the pros and cons of various authoring tools. You will learn about authoring tool selection concepts that are relevant for all eLearning and mobile learning programmers. You will see real-world examples from actual eLearning courses and tools.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the benefits of proper authoring tool selection
• About the pros and cons of several popular authoring tools
• About the proper rationale for which authoring tools should be used, based on several scenarios
• About the impact that responsive design has had on authoring tool selection

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
HTML, Articulate Storyline, Articulate Studio, Trivantis Lectora Publisher, and Adobe Captivate.

Critical thinking is an incredibly valuable skill in today’s workplace. In fact, the US Department of Labor proclaimed that it’s the raw material of workplace success. But while organizations value this skill, they don’t always systematically seek out and support it. Many employers actually say their employees struggle with critical thinking skills, and most want to provide more development opportunities in this area. How can the L&D field address this gap and help amp up people’s ability to think critically?

In this session, you’ll find out what critical thinking is, what it looks like on the job, and, most importantly, how you can contribute to building expertise in it at your organization. You’ll explore which training forms are most effective for building this complex skill and how mediums like video, mobile, and performance support can play a part. You’ll also find out about research-based methods and strategies to make your critical thinking training more effective. This session will help you create compelling experiences that encourage people to not sleepwalk through work but, instead, actively analyze and evaluate the work they do to make better connections and decisions.

In this session, you will learn:

• What critical thinking really is, and why it’s so essential to L&D
• How you can contribute to the development of critical thinking at your organization
• Research-based methods and strategies you can use in your content to boost critical thinking skills

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

To some, variables may be an unknown function in Articulate Storyline. Many haven’t had the opportunity to use variables or have been confused by them and what they are capable of adding to the learning experience. Whatever the reason for pleading ignorance, this session has it covered!

In this session, you’ll learn the basics of using variables in Articulate Storyline and take your variable use to the next level by exploring how to create some powerful interactions. By the end of this session, you’ll be using variables as if you’d been using them your entire life, and your colleagues won’t stop asking you how you created such cool eLearning!

In this session, you will learn:

• About the kinds of variables in Articulate Storyline
• About options available to you when using variables
• How to use variables to create a progress meter
• How to use variables to create a closed-captioning effect

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers and developers who have a general understanding of how to use Articulate Storyline.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline (1 or 2).

Participant technology requirements:
A computer with Articulate Storyline 1 or 2 (or a 30-day trial) installed.

“Design thinking” is a common buzzword in both business and L&D these days. But while the term is talked about at length, the actual process for design thinking and the strategies associated with it are mentioned much less often. What makes design thinking so useful? What strategies do you need to keep in mind while using it? And most importantly, how exactly can you use it to create better courses and content?

In this hands-on session, you’ll build an understanding of the design thinking process and learn how to apply it to the design and development of your learning content. Through reworking a real course or lesson plan that you bring with you to this session, you’ll learn various strategies to assist with gaining a stronger understanding of your learner, generating big ideas, and prototyping the learner experience. You’ll leave this workshop with a practical collection of useful strategies and a concrete beginning to a new course or learning experience!

In this session, you will learn:

• What design thinking is and how to apply this process to your course design
• Strategies for researching and empathizing with your learners
• Methods for collaborating and generating ideas
• Approaches for prototyping
• How to apply these concepts to your own work

Audience:
Novice designers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Stormboard.

Technology required:
Attendees will need to sign up for a free Stormboard account.