The world of technology and information is changing rapidly. As emerging delivery and engagement technologies, including MOOCs, immersions, games, and badges, are disrupting expectations of relevant meaningful learning and development, new waves of learning technology innovation—wearable technologies and the Internet of Things – are promising to shake things up even more. Will you be ready to step up? In this session we’ll examine the current and emerging learning technology markets to anticipate the skills and capabilities required for success as eLearning professionals.

In this session, you will learn:

• The role new technologies, such as wearables, will play in L&D
• How MOOCs, games, and badges are and will be leveraged in organizations
• How to best prepare yourself to remain relevant in the face of continual industry change

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Nothing specific.

If you visit a Fortune 500 website today, what you see is not created by handcrafting a webpage. Amazon and Netflix recommendations, too, are not completed by someone watching your particular behavior and cobbling together those for you; instead, it’s a set of rules and tagged content. It’s quite likely that when you visit a site, it may be different than when others visit the same site. This isn’t magic, but it’s also not just your everyday content creation process—it’s a content strategy fueled by content systems. And these changes in traditional marketing have big implications for eLearning.

The future is within reach: personalized, even adaptive, learning; the costs are nontrivial, too. In this session, you’ll learn what’s happening and what it takes to be effective in areas such as content engineering, content management, content models, and content systems. We’ll review the elements, evaluate the tradeoffs, and identify the steps along the way so you can start putting together your content strategy for organizational eLearning.

In this session, you will learn:

• How a content “system” differs from content creation
• The elements of content engineering, management, and models
• How content strategy and systems will affect eLearning design and delivery
• The opportunity and financial costs associated with applying a content strategy

Audience:
Managers and executives interested in the future of content and learning.

Technology discussed in this session:
TBD

The promise of open digital badges extends beyond their potential to recognize informal learning and professional development. Open badges also provide data that can be mined and analyzed to benefit learners, educators, and learning organizations, both locally and globally across the ecosystem. What does the current universe of badges look like? What practical data can be conveyed through badges? How can usable data be extracted from digital badges that can be used by learners and institutions of learning?

In this session you will be introduced to the Open Badges Infrastructure. You will see examples of badge system designs that use learner analytics and explore the potential for ecology-wide data analysis using a badge discovery platform under development. You will learn the benefits of badge data analysis for learners, educators, learning institutions, and researchers, and learn some of the current challenges in data collection, including pitfalls for badge system designers.

In this session, you will learn:

• Basics of open digital badges
• What kind of additional information can be associated with an open badge
• How badge metadata can help drive discovery and accessibility
• How to harness metadata for practical usage

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Open Badges Infrastructure, application-programming interface, web services, IOS applications, and learner analytics.

The world of work and the workplace is changing rapidly, and your internal business strategy needs to include motivational elements such as gamification, badging, and incentives to support workplace engagement and interest.

In this session you will gain a 360-degree prospective of badges and how they can be incorporated and used for recruitment, onboarding, education, motivation, and employee assessment. You will also learn key concepts to integrate analytics into your organization to maximize strategy, forecasting, and outcomes. 

In this session, you will learn:

• What changes are coming in the workplace and what tools and technologies will best help prepare your organization
• How gamification, badges, and incentives can be used to increase engagement
• How to integrate analytics to impact strategy and better forecasting

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

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Back by popular demand, Hyperdrive returns to DevLearn this fall. This year’s Hyperdrive competition focuses on innovation, showcasing projects that are using technology and solutions to create new and exciting opportunities for learning and performance support.

In this session you will learn from the three winning entries from DevLearn Hyperdrive, the competition that took place before DevLearn began. You will learn from individuals and organizations that are pushing the boundaries of what learning and performance support looks like and explore examples of technology being harnessed in ways that most others have yet to consider.

In this session, you will learn:

• From cutting-edge examples of innovative learning
• How the projects provide business value
• Why a design decision was made
• The technologies used in innovative projects

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Various.

High-impact organizations invest in people. While some skills are prerequisites to employment, others can be acquired on the job, preparing people for more complex tasks, even future leadership roles. That is the promise and possibility of building a progressive credentialing system using competency-based digital badges as “curricular building blocks.”

In this session you will learn about several possible models for building such a system, how it can be used to address the changing demands in the workplace, and how it might help address critical skills gaps in organizations.

In this session, you will learn:

• How the changing face of work, organizations, and credentialing is propelling the need for new competency models
• Various models for competency-based digital badge systems
• How digital badge systems can be used to address organizational and industry skills gaps

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

Three significant challenges L&D practitioners experience are in the ability to add context to their mobile learning and performance support, time and resources to experience the possibilities of new technologies, and having the ability to see real-world applications. 

In this session, you will first gain a basic overview of augmented reality (AR) and 3-D and discuss wearable technology (glasses and watches). After having the opportunity to brainstorm on how to leverage these technologies within your own projects, you will learn three real-world solutions with examples ranging from training medics using AR; the 3D mHealth Viewer for educating medical students on anatomy; and how mobile devices, including wearables, were used to respond to the Ebola crisis. At the end of the session, you will learn how to use the free tool Aurasma to begin experimenting with AR. 

In this session, you will learn:

• How augmented reality can provide real-world context to your mLearning solutions
• How augmented reality is being used as a performance support tool
• How mobile 3D viewers are adding depth to learning
• How wearables are being used aid in decision making/performance support
• A three-step process for creating an augmented reality experience 

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Aurasma from an AR development perspective, 3D mHealth Framework (3-D model framework used in healthcare applications), wearable technologies (glasses/watches), smartphones and tablets (iOS and Android).

The world of digital online credentials is changing, and IBM is a leading voice in the IT industry. In this session, using real program data and results and the IBM Open Badge Program as a case study, you will learn how to design a nano-credential program that quickly generates significant results. See how IBM merges credentials and recognition with social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. The session explores Mozilla Open Badges, which are quickly emerging as an industry standard to recognize achievements and nurture and progress talent.

In this session, you will learn:

• A deeper understanding of Open Badges and the future of digital nano-credentials
• The benefits of Open Badges to key stakeholders—badge issuers, badge earners, and badge consumers
• How to demonstrate use cases and show the results an organization can achieve with Open Badges
• How to outline an action plan to get started with Open Badges

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

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

The number of freelance workers is expected to grow to more than 50 percent of America’s workforce in the next decade. An urgency has arisen to define, create, and articulate credentials that document alternative learning experiences and directly correlate with the skills required in the project-based job market. How can employers determine which soloists have the capabilities and experience that the work demands? And how can soloists showcase their capabilities and achievements so potential employers can reliably identify them?

In this session you will learn about alternative credentials where digital badges promise a level of transparency and verification that will remove some of the friction in the emerging labor market. Discover how IBM, Microsoft, and other organizations use digital badges to motivate, track, and recognize a variety of learning outcomes. You will come away from this session understanding how and why to incorporate digital badges in your own learning and development programs.

In this session, you will learn:

• The importance of creating learning experiences that clearly align with in-demand labor market skills and how badges can serve as an infrastructure for doing so
• How to identify badges that support new solo worker models and those that do not
• How corporations, certification, training programs, and community colleges are using badges to create an unrivaled transparency of skills

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

We have all experienced huge courses, documents, and texts that are barely manageable by the instructional designer. In fact, much of how we design courses and documents makes it impossible for an employee to find the one piece of information they need at the time they need it. Since content is so dense, it makes finding meaningful information difficult, and it makes tracking anything useful in it even more difficult.

In this session you will explore the big picture of what technology is capable of today. You will dive into practices that will extend the lifespan and reduce the headache of how we create and manage content. You will learn tips on how to create content that is easier to track, can be used in many different areas (including mobile), and helps to populate more meaningful reports, both for management and the designers. You will discuss the value that content management systems and learning record stores play in forward-looking technology infrastructures.

In this session, you will learn:

• How today’s technologies make creating content easier and more effective for designers
• How today’s technologies make accessing content easier and more effective for workers
• How you need to structure content so that it works on all devices
• Why the LMS alone isn’t the backbone of your technology infrastructure

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

Technology discussed in this session:
LMS, CMS, LRS, the xAPI.

From the first desktop PCs to today’s cutting-edge smartphones, technology has a history of fundamentally changing the expectations of learning and development programs. We are now on the cusp of another technological advance, one that will once again change some of our definitions and how we address performance issues: wearable technology. This technology will come in various forms, but the one that many expect to serve as a quantum leap forward is Apple Watch.

In this session, you will learn about Apple Watch from an early adopter who is viewing the device through the lens of learning and performance. You will learn what Apple Watch is, how it works, and what the experience of using it is like. You will explore the many different ways that Apple Watch can be used for learning and performance improvement. In this session, you will discover the possibilities that are being opened by this new and exciting technology, and how those possibilities are once again redefining the expectations of learning and performance programs.

In this session, you will learn:

• What Apple Watch is, what it isn’t, and what it can do
• What the Apple Watch experience is like for the user
• How people react to Apple Watch
• What doors Apple Watch opens up for learning and performance
• How people are already using Apple Watch for learning and performance support today

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Apple Watch, mobile phones.

An intensive two-year study of 29 projects that were awarded funds to build digital badge systems in the 2012 Badges for Lifelong Learning competition revealed surprising results.

In this session you will get a deeper dive into the specific principles and practices learned for employing digital badges to recognize, assess, motivate, and study learning. You will learn how the most obvious principles for adding value to digital badges—associating them with formal credit and gaining external endorsement—turned out to be the most difficult to implement. You will learn how the most successful badges contained unique claims and evidence about learning, the impact of social and less informal learning, and the importance of “layering” into existing instructional content and web technology. You will explore value with connections to competency-based learning, stackable credentials, ePortfolios, and credit for prior learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• The contexts and practices in which open digital badges can be used most successfully to support learning
• To use the web-enabled resources from the Design Principles Documentation Project
• To use the web-enabled resources from the Open Badges in Higher Education project, including open case libraries and extended case studies to inform their own badge development efforts

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

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Technology has completely changed the way we live, work, and learn. Technology has brought us the Internet, smartphones, tablets, and many more tools that have changed our lives forever. Of course, these same technologies have also brought us memes like Socially Awkward Penguin, Success Kid, and yes, Grumpy Cat.

For the second year in a row, these two worlds collide as six industry experts use today’s memes to explore the innovative world of learning. The rules of each presentation are simple: Each speaker’s presentation has 20 slides that automatically advance every 20 seconds. That provides each speaker with six minutes and 40 seconds to share their vision for how learning is being innovated. And there’s one last rule—slides can only use common Internet memes for visuals. Join us for what is sure to be a fun and informative session.

In this session, you will learn:

• How learning is being innovated
• How Ignite session formats can create unique learning opportunities
• What learning might look like years from now
• Way more about Internet memes than you ever thought possible

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Various.

Have you decided to implement a badge program at your organization but are unsure what to do next? Perhaps you are wondering: How do I create the badges? How do I award them? How are the badges displayed? What kind of communications do I send out to those who are awarded badges? How can I promote badges beyond my department? How do I help participants understand the value of badges? Find out how a badge expert used badges to gamify an award-winning developmental math massive open online course at Cuyahoga Community College, and developed a successful badge system for professional development workshops at Kent State University.

In this session you will learn about creating a badge program, issuing badges, as well as answers to common questions and solutions to common obstacles. You will leave with takeaway templates that can be used to implement a badge program within your organization quickly and easily.

In this session, you will learn:

• The overall concepts behind digital badges and how they work
• How to develop a badge communication plan and materials for badge recipients
• How to identify different systems for badge display

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

As the world becomes more and more mobile, so too has the technology we’ve grown accustomed to using on desktops moved to mobile devices and in so doing has expanded the possibilities. AR is one of the emerging technologies that enable smartphones and tablets to interact with the world around them.

In this session, you’ll learn how Qualcomm employees use augmented reality (AR) and other emerging technologies to experience richly interactive learning on top of non-interactive things (like a patent wall). Originally used for marketing and selling, these technologies are now being redeployed for learners and employees—putting them to work for good. Learn how you can do the same.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Qualcomm uses augmented reality to aid employees
• Examples of augmented reality being used in non-marketing spaces, such as for learning and performance
• Why mobile technology and augmented reality is a perfect marriage for organizational learning

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Augmented reality.

More than four years have passed since the inception of the Open Badges experiment, and in that time the concept of digital badges has moved steadily into the general consciousness. As this novel idea continues to evolve, so do its many opportunities and challenges.   

Part technology, part conceptual approach, the digitization of representations of learning now touches upon such wide-ranging considerations as competency-based education and ePortfolios. IMS, a global, nonprofit standards organization, is working to make sense of these issues as they relate to education—from investigation into an extended transcript based on the Open Badges standard to the development of the currency framework that endeavors to define and highlight the value propositions inherent in digital credentials.

In this session, you will learn:

• How the badging initiative has evolved into the digital credentialing movement
• The broad definition of digital credentials, and why they’re increasingly valuable and meaningful
• What role competency-based education is playing in the development and recognition of digital credentials
• How IMS is helping to make sense of digital credentials—including badges

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Digital credentials.

The coming year will see the launch of inexpensive virtual reality (VR) devices. But this change is not about gadgets; it’s about a massive consumer technology that will be accessible and powerful with huge potential. VR is a medium, not a gadget. How appropriate is it for education and training?

In this session we will explore seven key principles that support virtual reality as an educational medium. In learning we all yearn for something that can really hold sustained attention, induce intense emotion, allow learning by doing, provide relevant context, enable transfer, increase retention, provide cognitive swap, and above all, allow you to do things that are impossible in the real world.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why VR is on its way as a massive consumer phenomenon
• Seven learning theory principles that support the use of VR as a medium
• From real examples of the use of VR in both education and training
• From an actual experience of VR for real (well virtually real)

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Oculus Rift DK1 and DK2

People live in a visual world and are, therefore, conditioned to perceive quality based largely on its visual design. Your digital badge is your visible representation displayed in digital backpacks and ePortfolios. You have been tasked with creating the badge artwork. But you are not a designer and your budget does not support hiring one—so what do you do?

In this hands-on session you will learn the badge design process. Explore a host of design questions focused on creating the actual artwork. Learn what needs to be communicated and explore which design elements, such as fonts, colors, and imagery, will communicate effectively. The session also discusses the existing online design badge builders. By the end of this hands-on session, you will be equipped with the resources and confidence to create dynamic badge art on a shoestring.

In this session, you will learn:

• The communicative role of badge artwork
• How to identify steps to starting the design process
• How to identify key design elements to effectively communicate
• How to Identify online design resources for creating badge art
• How to create a digital badge

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
TBD