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111 Onboarding: Not Just an Information Dump but a Learning Experience

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Monday, October 19

Failed onboarding programs can result in frustration, as well as wasted time and money. But what can lead to a failed onboarding program? One that isn't backed by learner needs and science. New employees, for example, don't want to watch hours worth of eLearning modules; they want to get on the floor and get their hands dirty. The 70-20-10 rule suggests that most learning happens via on-the-job training. It also suggests that not all knowledge and skills can be delivered via eLearning. Knowing all that, how can you create a program that engages people and produces results?

In this session you'll learn how Domino's transformed its in-store onboarding program from a slew of eLearning modules and coaching guides to a more dynamic, interactive, and practice-based program. You'll learn about the steps the team took, using learning theory and science, to assess the opportunities in the old program and apply them to the new. You'll find out how this team of four came together and using audience analysis, brainstormed solutions and collaborated to outline the program. You'll also learn how the team worked through the research, design, and development process to create materials aligned with business objectives and audience preferences. And then how the team used a science-backed approach to make the case for change and gain executive buy-in. Finally, you'll gain insights into how the team worked with the LMS team to determine the best way to setup and assign the program to over 300 stores. Through exploring this case study you'll leave this session with a better understanding of how taking a research-based approach when developing your onboarding program can help you feel more confident as you develop and deliver a new training program.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Why it's important to conduct a gap analysis when creating a new training program
  • The power of using evidence-based research to gain organization-wide buy in
  • How the team implemented in 4-D, or an Agile-based instructional design process, as part of this larger, collaborative effort
  • How the team integrated a variety of development tools to form a well-rounded development strategy
  • The process the team went through to determine how best to assign, deliver, and track the program to over 300 stores

Audience:
Designers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate Prime


Kinnari Middlebrook

Manager of Curriculum

DOMINO'S PIZZA

Kinnari Middlebrook, manager of curriculum, manages the instructional design team within the leadership and development function. She, along with her team, manages the design process, development solutions, and learning- based decisions around operations-based initiatives. She started her career with Domino's in 2010 on the operations side of the business but she soon found her passion for learning and development as she helped to build an eLearning strategy for the international side of the business. Her passion has since evolved into working with and educating other departments on the importance of finding not just "any" solution to learning, but the right one.

Erin Higgenbotham

Instructional Designer

Domino’s Pizza

Erin Higgenbotham is an instructional designer at Domino’s Pizza, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She aims to create learning experiences that are relevant, applicable, engaging, and effective for learners. Before joining Domino’s she worked as an instructional designer at Honda of America Manufacturing and at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. Her educational background includes international experience studying at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. She holds an MA in Japanese linguistics with a focus in curriculum development for bilingual learners and a MEd in instructional design and technology.

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114 Need Training Spice? Games are the Hot Sauce to Engage Remote Learners!

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Monday, October 19

Is your training content complicated? Do your employees complain about being overwhelmed with training or even worse, not show up? Then it's time to ditch the PowerPoints and training manuals and start infusing gamification into your training. Games add spice to just about any training material and make it more digestible and much more fun. When employed correctly, games can be highly effective in engaging your learners, keeping their attention, and motivating them to perform. Feeling like a “deer in headlights” when it comes to starting a game-based learning strategy? Don't worry, it's much easier than you think.

In this session you'll learn the science behind games and why so many L&D professionals are using them to engage their teams. You'll learn about the benefits of games over traditional training methods. We'll discuss how to start building your game-based learning strategy by first considering a variety of desired skills and behavioral outcomes. We'll help channel your inner-Goldilocks and help you select the “just-right” game for your learning objectives. We'll dive head-first into Bloom's Taxonomy and discuss how this brilliant classification system can serve as a road map to creating a game-based learning strategy that will ensure maximum effectiveness. We'll discuss how games provide rich and actionable data that will help you clearly see learning gaps and measure the training effectiveness. Lastly, we'll discuss the difference between games and gamification and how you can level up from games and assessments to incentives and rewards. You'll leave this session with the knowledge and tools needed to start you off on an exciting game-based learning journey that will help your employees retain more knowledge and ultimately be more confident on the job.

In this session, you learn:
  • Why games are the spice you need to make your training more fun and engaging, virtually (and eventually back in the classroom)
  • How to use Bloom's Taxonomy as a roadmap to ensure your game-based learning strategy is effective
  • How to select the “just-right” game to ensure you are training to your desired learning outcomes
  • How to use rich data and analytics to see learning gaps and measure the ROI of your training

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders



Stephen Baer

Chief Solutions Officer

ELB Learning

Stephen Baer is Chief Solutions Officer of ELB Learning, Forbes.com thought leader, and EdTech speaker with over 20 years of experience creating immersive training solutions. He focuses on leveraging eLearning, game-based learning, interactive video, and virtual reality to re-skill learners, change behaviors, and foster continuous learning. Previously, Stephen was Co-Founder of The Game Agency and Director of Marketing at Atari Inc. He holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and an M.B.A. from Columbia University and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Life Sciences Trainers & Educators Network.

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115 Trends in Learning Today: Where Should I Focus?

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Monday, October 19

With the constant changing of technology, we need to understand what is possible and how to determine what is a fit for your audience. With all the buzz and solutions, let's break down the trends and think about practical ways to create a road map forward.
Join us for this in-depth look at what tools, design, and technologies we should focus on in learning today, and what's just around the corner. We'll dissect what technology will be enhancing learning and what we need to get excited about and start planning how to integrate into our solutions. What can we learn from the buzz and new tools appearing in the consumer and corporate environments, and how can we take advantage of them to help our audiences succeed? This fun session will give you dozens of ideas and reboot your brain with fresh perspectives on how to enhance your learning today.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to design amazing experiences for your learners
  • New tools, apps, and resources that you can apply immediately
  • How to get started with a personal learning network
  • Learn about learning trends; when, why, and how to confirm they are a fit, and how to get started today
  • Six areas that can apply to your learning road map this year

Technologies discussed:
Collaborative audio editing tools, gamification tools, AR, VR and MR


Nick Floro

Learning Architect/Imagineer

Sealworks Interactive Studios

Nick Floro, a co-founder and learning architect at Sealworks Interactive Studios, has over 25 years of experience developing learning solutions, applications, and web platforms. Nick is passionate about how design and technology can enhance learning and loves to share his knowledge and experience to teach, inspire, and motivate. As a learning architect, Nick gets to sketch, imagine, and prototype for each challenge. He has worked with start-ups to Fortune 500 companies to help them understand the technology and develop innovative solutions to support their audiences. Nick has won numerous awards from Apple and organizations for productions and services.

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122 Recording Professional Audio for Great Sounding Training Programs

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Monday, October 19

Have you ever wished you could incorporate professional level voiceover or audio in your training course or training video? Do you find that your recordings sound thin, distant, or lack a depth and richness that you hear in professional audio? What if you could improve the quality of your audio without going to a professional studio or without hiring outside voice talent?

In this session you'll learn how you can achieve professional-sounding audio recordings from your own home or office, with software that you probably already own or can get for free,  Adobe Audition, or Audacity. You'll learn simple techniques that you can immediately incorporate with no cost into your daily work to record higher quality voice over … things such as room treatment, improvement of your acoustics, and proper mic placement and technique. I'll show those of you who have a budget how you can integrate better audio recording equipment and software, and I'll provide you with example materials lists in three different price points to fit into any budget. Finally, you'll learn how to use that equipment and software to achieve a professional result, as well as learn audio editing techniques that can help improve previously recorded, poor quality audio.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The importance and impact audio quality can have on your training results
  • How you can use everyday items to improve room acoustics and turn your home or office into a better studio space
  • How to use software to improve audio quality through the use of equalization, compression, noise reduction, and other simple editing skills
  • About other audio equipment available and be given sample materials lists that you could incorporate into your studio at various prices to meet low, medium, or higher budgets

Technology discussed:
Adobe Audition or Audacity, common USB microphone usage such as Blue Yeti or Snowball, Waves and Universal Audio software plugins, acoustic room treatment techniques from DIY blankets, quilts, rugs, etc. to specialized acoustic foam and room treatment


Matthew Hoffman

Sr. Media Production Manager

AT&T

Matthew Hoffman has been in the adult learning field since 2008 and has had a passion for audio production and engineering his whole adult life. With AT&T University he has contributed voiceover narration and character parts for hundreds of training courses, for a variety of different lines of business. He is the sound engineer at his church, running live sound and mixing both front-of-house and stage monitor mixes.

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123 How Scenarios, Assessments, and Feedback Can Reduce Learner Overconfidence

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Monday, October 19

As learners gain new information or take on a new skill, they develop a level of confidence about their abilities that exceeds their actual competency. This is an example of the "beginner's bubble," a hypothesis that suggests individuals learning a new task will become overconfident after gaining a basic level of knowledge. The result is that these learners make mistakes, costing our organizations money and, potentially, our valued customers.  As content creators and developers, this creates challenges. We want our trainings to be effective but these learner mistakes could lead us to believe otherwise. We have the ability to help learners remain confident while managing their own expectations. How can we use simple, practical applications to curb our learners' overconfidence?

In this session you will start by identifying an area in your training programs where learners may struggle. Using case studies and surveys with your peers, you will find solutions you can implement as soon as you return to your role. First, you will identify powerful real-life scenarios and learn how they can help your learners see the impacts of their decisions on your business. Not only will you begin to encourage learners to make the right choices through scenario-based activities, you will show them the wrong choices and they will see the consequences of those choices. Next, you will discover the ways a challenging assessment can help learners feel confident about their knowledge but also recognize areas for further improvement. You'll learn how to write a great assessment that won't confuse learners. You will also learn the best ways to provide feedback to your learners. You will see how detailed and specific feedback can help a learner understand the risks that come with their mistakes, and you'll give valuable information to help them improve. You'll leave this session with multiple resources you can take with you, including a developed plan to help your learners be better prepared and truly confident in their knowledge and skills.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How the beginner's bubble affects our organization's learners
  • Why you should not only use real-life scenarios, but encourage your learners to see what happens when they take the wrong approach
  • How to create challenging assessments where learners can gain knowledge and feel good about their success, even when they may not have all the right answers
  • How to provide feedback that doesn't just show the correct answer, but explains the why and the what ifs
  • How to talk to leaders about training time constraints and the need for effective learning programs

Technology discussed:
Articulate Storyline and/or Rise 


Bryan Smith

Blended Learning Developer

Casey's General Stores

Bryan Smith has worked in learning and development for 12 years as a facilitator and instructional designer. He has worked as a blended learning developer for Casey's General Stores since October 2018, creating learning solutions for the organization's 40,000+ team members.

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FS02 A Crash Course on Designing for Any Virtual Classroom

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Monday, October 19

If they're going to work in a virtual classroom, your traditional learning methodologies need a makeover. A virtual session is more than simply a lecture and uploaded PowerPoints. Unique techniques must be used to engage learners throughout the session. Another common pitfall is to focus on the virtual classroom technology and forget about the design–often resulting in unengaging sessions focused on using the tools and not meeting the needs of the learners.

This session will explore the six key principles of successfully designing for any virtual classroom platform. The principles of feedback, equipment functionality, instructions, scripting, visual and verbal cues, and time management provide a blueprint for adapting traditional classroom methodologies for live, online instruction. Learn best practices gained from over 20 years' experience designing, developing, facilitating, and producing online events. Whether you want to simply improve facilitated online meetings, enhance a few classes by adding online follow-up webinars, or completely transform a full curriculum, these principles will provide the guidance you need to create successful live, online learning experiences.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The six guiding principles of virtual classroom design
  • The benefits and limitations of common virtual classroom tools, including how to compare functionality, speed of set up, and ease of use.
  • How technology, timing, and talent (the "three Ts") affect design outcomes
  • How to design interactions for your chosen virtual classroom platform
  • A strategy for implementing design and delivery best practices within your organization

Audience:
Designers, managers

Technology discussed:
Adobe Connect, WebEx Training Center, WebEx Meeting Center, Zoom, GoTo


Melissa Chambers

Online Instructional Specialist

MSC Consulting

Melissa Chambers is an online instructional specialist at MSC Consulting and a contract speaker coach/host for The Learning Guild's Online Forums and Guild Academy. Melissa has over 20 years' experience in creative media production, project and change management, online instructional design, and eLearning strategy development, and has been designing, producing, and coaching for synchronous online programs since 2002. She holds a master's degree in instructional design for online learning, and has spearheaded award-winning programs in eLearning, process improvement, and strategic development. Melissa has a passion for lifelong learning, technology, cultivating creativity, and having fun while working.

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132 ON-DEMAND: Social Learning Experiences with Social Video Apps

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Monday, October 19

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform. So how could we use it in our own learning ecosystems? The TikTok app provides many social learning options that can be administered in an engaging and safe manner. Join us to learn the basics of how the app functions and then divide into small groups to build your own TikTok videos together and share your creations with the group. Download the app to your phone and prepare to have some fun learning about the social learning magic of TikTok.

In this hands-on session, you'll learn how the TikTok app is being used by early adopters to provide and curate active learning experiences for learners in an interactive video-based learning social media environment. You'll start by exploring examples of how to use the duet option to inspire people to create a duet TikTok passively meeting learning objectives. You'll then divide into groups to create one of three types of TikTok videos, and post the these videos to the group TikTok channel. The three TikToks video projects will include:
  1. A duet asking a group to form and present the lyrics to a tune provided by the facilitator
  2. A duet mimicking the actions in a facilitator TikTok to show application of an activity
  3. 3A critical thinking activity responding to an evidence-evidence based opinion piece provided by the facilitator.

Then we'll discuss the experience and break down how everyone could use these approaches in their own learning programs. By the end of this session you'll know the basics of how TikTok can become a way to include active learning in an asynchronous social learning environment.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to get started making and joining a TikTok channel
  • How to use the duet feature to particpate in social active learning activities
  • How to create a private TikTok channel
  • How to curate TikToks videos using hashtags
  • How to promote interactive experiences with learners on TikTok
  • How to setup and particpate in a TikTok channel
  • How to create a mobile learning activity
  • How to set the mindset that TikTok is for learning

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
TikTok app platform


Angela Anderson

Learning Design Researcher

Angela Learning

Angela Anderson is a recovering software engineer who helped build the first instances of online banking in the early 2000s. Angela has revered the world of EdTech and asynchronous mobile learning for the past decade working as a university instructor and instructional designer. Angela served as the instructional designer for a team building the first completely remote doctoral program for Physician Assistants in the United States. Angela seeks to keep elevating the world of social online learning experiences as a learning experience researcher with the social learning apps like TikTok and social robotics innovations.

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133 ON-DEMAND: Designing Micro Mobile Learning

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Monday, October 19

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

Does your company shy away from going mobile because they just aren't ready? Do they claim the mobile screen is too small or that their LMS is not mobile ready; or do they say that their content is too complex? What if their issues could be solve by mobile design? If you could design true micro mobile learning versus trying to redesign eLearning courses to be mobile, your company could address their mobile concerns by embracing a mobile design mindset. How do I know? I know first-hand because this was my company.

In this engaging learning session, you will be challenged to transform how you develop mobile learning. You will embrace design principles to design for your mobile phone first. Part case study, part engaging learning opportunity, you will explore how to use Articulate Storyline 360 to set your story size for optimal use on a mobile phone device. You will identify techniques to use hotspots and icons to help learners easily navigate throughout a course. You will also discover how to make course content go from macro to micro. Lastly, you will be shown how others have used their LMS app to deploy mobile learning. The overall goal of this session is to reveal easy steps to develop a micro-mobile friendly course that your company will be proud to utilize to launch their next learning initiative.

In this session, you will learn:
  • To transform how you develop mobile learning
  • To embrace design principles to design for your mobile phone
  • To use Articulate Storyline 360 to set your story size for optimal use on a mobile phone device
  • To use hot spots and icons to help learners easily navigate throughout a course
  • To make course content go from macro to micro

Technology discussed:
Articulate Storyline, Sum Total

Session evaluation.

Reashonda Breckenridge

Sr. Instructional Designer

Medxcel

With 20 years of experience creating innovative learning experiences, Reashonda Breckenridge, senior instructional designer for Medxcel, believes that like bacon, color makes everything better. Reashonda mixes her love of color and design with her love for eLearning. She has spoken at national and local L&D conventions, workshops, and forums on the topic of color in learning, and has shared best practices at Purdue University. Reashonda received her masters degree from Indiana University. She is a member of the Association for Talent and Development (ATD) and The Learning Guild.

Nanette Sullivan

Senior Instructional Designer

Medxcel

Nanette Sullivan is a senior instructional designer at Medxcel. A passionate instructional designer with more than 20 years of experience in every facet of design, Nanette received her master's degree from Indiana University. She is a member of the Association for Talent and Development (ATD).

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134 ON-DEMAND: The Things You're Doing in Your vILT Are Making You Hate Your vILT!

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Monday, October 19

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.
Let's be real: the sad reality is that much of the virtual instructor led training (vILT) out there today requires participants to sit through a boring experience where information is lectured, the platform features go unused, and most interactions seem contrived, superficial, and one dimensional. And it gets worse when the session is interrupted with insufferable and seemingly never-ending technical problems. Many online attendees spend more time in email than they do participating in the virtual class itself and honestly, it is our fault. It's time to change things.

In this session, we'll explore how the things you're choosing to do, or not to do, could be exactly why you hate your virtual classroom training! You'll explore examples of these common vILT instructional and technical missteps, and we'll discuss and brainstorm together how each one can be addressed so they never happen again. The types of activities and interactions, time it takes to run a live online session, and the number of participants are all determined by the goals and objectives of the learning, so you'll get strategies for getting clear on what attendees need to do following the session. You'll learn why the standard things most online trainers do are exactly why you hate your class so much: muting everyone because they don't know how to properly connect, not using the chat because you cannot keep up with it, and not calling on people to talk because you have too many there. We'll also explore the most common technical problems you'll face when training online so you can become armed with a plan of action to avoid these issues. Participants are tired of them, and you just plain don't want to have to deal with them anymore. And since there are so many platforms available for us to train online with today, you'll also receive a platform checklist to help you walk through and identify what's what so you can plan your vILT's with confidence. It's time to create engagement in the virtual classroom. It can be the same experience as in-person and sometimes even better—if we make it that way!

In this session, you will learn:
  • How the learning objectives determine the time, number of participants, and depth of learning achievable in a virtual instructor led training session
  • The top 5 things you need to stop doing because they are making you hate training online
  • How to manage the biggest technical problems every virtual trainer will face
  • How to use a virtual platform checklist to learn the features of your online training platform with ease

Audience:
Designers, managers

Technology discussed:
Zoom, Adobe Connect, WebEx, Gotomeeting, Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint, Slack, Teams, Flock, laptops, mobile devices, email, webcams


Kassy LaBorie

Founder & Principal Consultant

Kassy LaBorie Consulting

Kassy LaBorie is the founder and principal consultant at Kassy LaBorie Consulting. She is a professional speaker, author, facilitator, and instructional designer who specializes in virtual engagement for learning and development professionals and business owners who get to use web conferencing technology to connect with people around the globe. In her previous role at Dale Carnegie & Associates, she was the director of virtual training services, a corporate consultancy that partnered with organizations to help them develop, design, and develop successful online training strategies. Kassy is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. She's known for believing that "being online is certainly equal to, and in some cases, better than, being in-person!"

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135 ON-DEMAND: The White Whale: Learning Analytics That Mean Something

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Monday, October 19

Many learning teams find themselves constantly being asked to measure learning and prove ROI for their programs. Completion data, learning hours, and assessment scores tell business leaders two things: Learning costs time and money, and it keeps our people away from their jobs. It's because of this mentality that learning is one of the first things to go when budgets get tight. What if you had a process to ensure your learning wasn't ever questioned by leadership? What if leadership looked at learning as a vital part of the business rather than an expense?

In this session, you'll learn a simple, repeatable process to craft learning and performance objectives that drive business outcomes using a proven method. You'll explore how to write measurable learning objectives that link to specific business KPIs. We'll start by looking at the traditional instructional design process and flip it on its head. From there we'll walk through a six-step process to align business outcomes to learning and performance objectives. This process includes a proven measurement methodology that begins with involving senior leaders and ends with effective communication of learning data. Learning's impact on the business will never be questioned again, you'll be seen as a strategic partner in the organization, and you'll be guaranteed a seat at the executive table.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Why data is so important to the C-suite
  • How to identify KPIs that drive performance and learning objectives
  • Why writing specific business-driven learning objectives simplifies measurement
  • What steps are necessary to effectively measure and report learning data
  • How to communicate learning experiences and measurement data to executives

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
MS Excel, MS PPT


Michael Whatley

Senior Manager, Training Initiatives & Curriculum Design

Cox Automotive Media Sales Organization

Michael Whatley is the senior manager of training initiatives and curriculum design for Cox Automotive Media Sales Organization. Michael's award-winning learning experiences have helped transform the way Cox Automotive looks at learning. Since graduating from the University of Georgia with a BSEd in workforce education in 2009, Michael has worked in sales and service education for the healthcare, logistics, and digital media industries, in areas ranging from mobile and social learning to microlearning and interval reinforcement.

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FS03 L&D Lessons from Behavioral Economics: The Art of Nudging

11:00 AM - 11:45 AM Tuesday, October 20

L&D professionals are generally charged with creating lasting behavioral change through training. Yet, we all know how hard lasting behavioral change is. Think of that chocolate you eat, the exercise you don't do, or the late nights you spend watching screens—even though we rationally know other decisions will be more beneficial. If we struggle to impact and maintain our own behavioral change what makes us think we can do it at scale with the organizations we work with? It's certainly not enough just to throw eLearning or a workshop at people and consider our job as done. So what other techniques can we add to our behavioral change toolkit?

In this session, you'll get a crash course in the latest thinking from other domains including behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, habit formation, and marketing to provide practical takeaways for broadening our L&D toolkit. What if we could shift behavior by understanding habit stacking? Or by designing nudges using the EAST framework? How much training could we make obsolete just by adding or removing friction? See a range of surprising examples and learn how you can incorporate these techniques into your L&D practice.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How the fundamentals of behavioral economics inform our L&D work
  • What behavioral change strategies we can consider before resorting to training
  • How to use nudging in our solutions
  • How to apply the EAST framework to add and remove friction
  • How to leverage three forms of habit formation
  • How to integrate nudges and habits into an L&D process

Audience:
Designers, managers


Arun Pradhan

Learning, Performance & Innovation Strategist

ArunPradhan.com

Arun Pradhan is a curious geek obsessed with helping people and organizations learn, perform, and innovate. He has taken the lead creative role in delivering learning campaigns and performance ecosystems to Australia's largest banks, telcos, and retailers. Arun was awarded Australia's Learning Professional of the Year Award in 2017 and the Australian eLearning Award for Individual Excellence in 2015. He is the founder of Learn2LearnApp.com, an enterprise solution to enable a learning agility, and is launching his next start-up soon. Arun's areas of specialization include using design thinking for performance solutions and enabling learning agility in organizations and people.

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211 Future Proofing your Organization with Design Thinking-Driven Strategy

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Tuesday, October 20

Organizations face a range of challenges in today's ever-accelerating competitive landscape. Keeping up in L&D with today's thinking and needs presents its own challenges. Ideally, L&D should be a highly strategic capability for growing people and the business, yet many impediments exist. Items to overcome often include the perception of learning itself, having an organizational culture of learning, and organizational perception of the L&D function as it pertains to creating business impact and value. Are there other models and approaches that might help L&D move from being viewed as cost center to more of a strategic resource for the organization?

In this session you will learn models and tools that will help you more effectively partner and collaborate with the business to transform the value of learning. First, this session will provide a model for an adaptive learning organization. While many organizations are undergoing digital and Agile transformation, there is a deeper level of capability that is needed to drive value and impact from learning. The adaptive learning organization framework can serve as a guide for both the L&D organization and the overall business. Designing for impact is essential and many methods focus on the design of the learning itself. Second, you'll learn models for learning ecosystems and innovation frameworks. These models will be presented as design thinking tools and will give you the ability to immediately apply the models to your own organization's transformation. Lastly, you will learn about enterprise modeling techniques that enable a new common language between L&D and the business. These techniques will enable a different approach for modeling where learning can be applied to create impact.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The adaptive learning organization framework
  • To assess your organization along the adaptive learning organization framework
  • Learning ecosystem models and design thinking tools to better plan your future
  • An innovation framework that will help the business and L&D collaborate effectively
  • Enterprise modeling techniques that will help you explore and define areas to maximize investment in learning collaboratively with the organization

Technology discussed:
Analog and digital tools and frameworks


Michael Hruska

President/CEO

Problem Solutions

Michael Hruska is a technologist and design thinking (DT) practitioner with experiences spanning across standards, emerging technologies, learning, and science. As a former researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Hruska provides technology, business model, and innovation solutions to Fortune 500, government, and startup companies. Hruska speaks at industry events, conferences, and webinars on topics spanning the continuum between advanced research on adaptive learning ecosystems and emerging technology solution/product design in a variety of industries.   Hruska is an advisor/mentor to Ed Tech startups for GSV Capital, along with mentoring local and regional entrepreneurs. He is on the advisory board of a number of companies that support entrepreneurship and early- stage companies, as well as being recognized at industry events internationally.

Daniel McCoy

Strategic Services Practice Lead

Problem Solutions

Daniel McCoy has 25 years of experience working in the knowledge, education, media & communications, and technology sectors. Over the course of his career Daniel has leveraged advanced technologies to transform organizations, developing successful learning and commercial initiatives. Daniel holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction from the University of Florida, a MA in anthropology from the UCLA, and a BA in anthropology from San Francisco State University.

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213 Alexa, Play "Customer Service Training"

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Tuesday, October 20

Traditional phone call training (sales, support, etc.) is either web-based or done in-person. In-person training such as classroom-based courses or role playing requires heavy involvement of people other than the learner, and is therefore not scalable. Web-based training doesn't adequately provide a real-world situation. In both cases, learning effectiveness is difficult to measure because assessments are either weak or not given at all. What if there were a way to provide a real-world scenario where a learner can practice calls without needing a partner? And what if robust analytics were automatically captured to better understand where learners are struggling?

Voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa seem to be ubiquitous. We call on these devices to play music, turn on lights, set alarms, and even tell us whether we need an umbrella for the day. But have you ever considered how they might be used for learning? In this session you'll learn about educational use cases for the Alexa platform, focusing on a proof of concept to train technical support agents. You'll learn about how we built our Alexa skill, why you should consider developing one, and how to get started building your own using a simple web platform called Voiceflow. Specifically, we will cover how to get Alexa to speak, collect user input, and connect to external applications. You will see how a connection to a learning record store can provide detailed learning analytics for how the learner is interacting with the Alexa skill. You'll leave this session with a broader appreciation for the learning opportunities available through voice assistants, as well as the power that learning analytics can provide to your organization.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Specific use cases where an Alexa skill can be useful
  • How to build an Alexa skill that speaks, collects user input, and incorporates basic logic
  • How to connect your Alexa skill to external applications such as an LRS
  • How a learning record store can help you collect detailed learning analytics
  • How you can play your Alexa skill on your own Echo device

Technology discussed:
Alexa, Voiceflow, Watershed Learning Record Store, Alexa Developer Console


Bryan Wanzer

Instructional Designer

PitchBook

Bryan Wanzer is an instructional designer with PitchBook in Seattle. His role focuses on creating internal employee learning programs across the organization. Prior to PitchBook, he was a K-12 educator where he taught a variety of technology-based courses and had the opportunity to design and launch a brand-new course in audio engineering.

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221 From Traditional to Virtual Classroom: Conversion Made Easy!

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Tuesday, October 20

Are you guilty of turning your existing instructor-led training (ILT) into a webinar? Good virtual classroom training is more than simply showing some PowerPoint slides and reading the existing lesson plan. It's essential to have two-way communication and interactivity to keep your learners engaged every 3-5 minutes, which is best practice.

In this session, you'll gain the knowledge and skill you need to successfully convert your ILT to the virtual classroom (VC). We'll begin by looking at the suitability for conversion using a comprehensive checklist to assess whether a VC strategy is the best choice for your ILT content. You'll learn how to identify practice exercises/activities in your existing ILT content, determine if realistic practice is achievable in the VC, and how to set expectations with your client/stakeholders when realistic practice is not achievable. Next, we'll explore how to choose engaging, interactive methods and tools for the VC. You'll be provided a method conversion worksheet that will allow you to track all the components of the methods you selected. You'll walk away with an efficient and effective process, leaving enlightened and ready to convert!

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to determine the suitability for conversion. Is your ILT course a good candidate for conversion? Use the suitability for conversion checklist to guide your decision.
  • How to determine timing parameters. What will go into your live VC sessions, and what will be covered in intersession work?
  • How to audit your existing ILT materials, using the course audit worksheet to document your findings in one location.
  • How to choose engaging, interactive methods and tools. 
  • How to use the method conversion worksheet to document your work and stay on track.

Technology discussed:
Virtual classroom platforms, Poll Everywhere


Melissa Grey Satterfield

Director & Master Trainer

Langevin Learning Services

Melissa Grey Satterfield is a recognized leader in the corporate training industry, with more than 20 years of experience in the talent development field. Since 2000, Melissa has brought passion and dynamic presentation skills to Langevin Learning Services as a master trainer. She specializes in the delivery of both instructor-led and virtual classroom training. Her experience has helped to develop Fortune 500 companies in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Melissa is an experienced event presenter. She's been welcomed at ATD's TechKnowledge conference and at The Learning Guild's DevLearn and Learning Solutions conferences.

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222 Lessons Learned: Building a Seamless, In-App Learning Experience

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Tuesday, October 20

Our goal was to provide a seamless, in-app learning experience for users of 84.51° Stratum, our flagship cloud-based data analytics software. Our challenge was that our LMS could not deliver content in this way. Our dilemma was to provide in-app learning with no tracking or provide tracked learning that disrupted the user experience by taking them away from the application. Our solution was to create an innovative, LMS-less tracking solution, leveraging Storyline, Vimeo, MadCap Flare, Mixpanel, and Javascript. How did we do it? What mistakes did we make? What did we learn along the way? Come find out! We will also share our model, methods, resources, and code snippets that you can use to create a seamless, in-app experience for your own learners.

In this session, you will learn how we overcame three challenges: Putting the learning within or adjacent to the user's workflow; make access to the learning as seamless and pain-free as possible; and to track this learning. You will see the solution in action both from the learner and administrator perspectives. You will explore our end-to-end infrastructure model and learn the role that each component plays in the solution. And, you will examine how you might be able to substitute your own tools to accomplish the same goals. You will learn about the barriers we encountered and the lessons we learned as we figured out how to make it all work. We will share our data tracking model, which details everything we can capture about a course. Finally, you will look at how we embed Vimeo videos into our courses and use Vimeo APIs to track viewing progress and share that data with Storyline. This ensures that the user is actually watching the videos before receiving completion credit. You will walk away with infrastructure and data models, practical code, helpful resources, and a viable course tracking alternative to the traditional LMS. These tools and ideas may enable you to create a seamless, in-app learning experience for your company.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The components needed for an LMS-less course tracking solution
  • How to embed a Storyline course on a webpage and share data between the course and the page
  • How to overcome Storyline variable tracking limitations to identify new versus resumed course views
  • How to send course progress and completion data from Storyline to Mixpanel, or another online data collection tool
  • How you can embed Vimeo videos into a Storyline course and use Vimeo APIs to track video viewing progress
  • How to plan the course data that you want to track, and transform it into the correct format for your database

Technology discussed:
84.51° Stratum (our product), Stratum Learning Center, built with MadCap Flare (CMS), Articulate Storyline, Mixpanel (data analytics tool), Vimeo and Vimeo APIs, Javascript


Fred Tacon

Instructional Designer/Elearning Developer

84.51°

Fred Tacon has been a part of the learning industry for more than 25 years as an instructional designer, eLearning and multimedia developer, classroom facilitator, and overall technology geek. He currently designs and develops effective and innovative technology- driven learning solutions for 84.51°, the data science, customer analytics, and personalized marketing enabler for The Kroger Company. Previously, he created learning solutions for Fidelity Investments and Provident Bank, among others. Fred likes to find creative ways to make stuff work, explain complicated things in ways that uncomplicated people can understand them, and engage learners with surprising aesthetics and immersive interactions.

John Stoll

Learning Technologist

84.51°

John Stoll is a learning technologist at 84.51° where he designs innovative instructional content and coordinates the implementation of technology in the virtual and onsite classroom. He has over seven years of experience in designing technology-enabled instruction. John earned his master's degree in instructional design from the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services at the University of Cincinnati, where he focused on building elegant, accessible online learning objects. John likes to make learning easy by creatively simplifying the learning infrastructure for end-users and facilitators using technology with graphic design best practices.

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223 Next Gen VR and Mobile Games/Simulations

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Tuesday, October 20

How does the largest employer on the planet, Walmart, attract and develop a new generation of managers who have spent more time playing games than they have in the classroom? How do pharmaceutical leaders Pfizer and Novartis quickly train people on best practice procedures where mistakes have life and death consequences? How do you go beyond realistic simulations to learning simulations where people acquire the correct skills? How do you leverage a new generation of immersive virtual reality headsets and phones to boost performance and accelerate the digital transformation of your learning function?

In this session you'll explore some of the leading-edge immersive learning simulators and games used by Fortune 50 companies. You'll also find out how such "first-person thinker" games can provide a risk-free virtual rehearsal space for skill practice and build the cognitive equivalent of muscle memory. You'll see a demo of a multi-player VR sim used by pharma leader Pfizer, where students and instructors can interact with each other. Then you'll check out mobile gaming for learning (and even get to download it to play yourself) with the Walmart Spark City game. In its new Black Friday level, Walmart managers practice getting their store ready for the customer crush straight on their phones and iPads, building skill mastery and retention with a game that's engaging and fun. Leave the glowing desktop screen and classroom behind and step into a new world of immersive learning.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How industry-leading companies are tapping into the exploding popularity of console-quality 3-D games for the mobile handset to reinforce new skills and concepts
  • How the Oculus Quest blew the doors open for mobile VR enterprise learning at scale
  • How hyper-realistic performance environments with positional audio and haptic response can create a digital rehearsal space that allows unlimited do-overs and accelerates skill development
  • How to deploy immersive learning solutions at scale in a large enterprise, safely integrated with legacy LMS and LRS
  • How students and instructors can interact with each other in multi-player VR sims
  • How to develop human-centered learning simulations with tutorials, feedback, guided practice, engagement, and scenario design

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
Oculus Quest, Unity3D, Phones


Anders Gronstedt

President

The Gronstedt Group

Anders Gronstedt, PhD, is president of The Gronstedt Group, which is instrumental in helping global companies like Walmart, Pfizer, Novartis, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Daikin improve performance with their custom-developed multi-player VR simulations and learning games. He is a frequent industry speaker and writer with articles appearing in the Harvard Business Review.

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225 21st Century L&D: Drive Business Results Through Performance Consulting Skills

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Tuesday, October 20

Today’s learning experience designers often feel like order takers, as they are asked by SMEs and others to do things like "just make my deck look great." We know we can do better. This session will help you define strategies and skills needed to guide your stakeholders through a results-focused, solution-neutral process that translates business objectives into human performance. Shift the focus for your organization to maximize investments in learning solutions that are meaningful for learners, feasible from a technical perspective, and viable for your business goals.

This session will identify and walk through practical, 21st century learning and development skills that will bolster your capabilities as a performance improvement consultant. Our session will start by describing 2020 workforce trends shaping our processes. Then, using specific examples from in-depth case studies, we will dive into how to use performance consulting skills and tools to assess performance gaps and needs, synthesize insights, and, ultimately, ideate and architect human-centered solutions aimed at real-world problems.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Project intake and scoping strategies for results focused success
  • How to gather data using empathy tools such as day-in-the-life/journey maps
  • Analyze data and synthesize insights -gap and root cause analysis/learner personas
  • To ideate and scope solutions



Jolene Rowan

Chief Learning Officer & EVP of Client Solutions

Dashe & Thomson

With over 25 years of experience in adult learning, Jolene Rowan is a data-driven thinker who generates and executes ideas at strategic and tactical levels. A creative visionary with a passion for learning, she is an instinctive collaborator who values working partnerships with client teams. As chief learning officer, Jolene is responsible for the overall solution design and development on learning initiatives. Jolene designs solutions to deliver both functional and organizational- level objectives: how training is impacting revenue, customer satisfaction, employee experience, and overall productivity. Jolene is a thought leader of new technologies and methodologies, fostering a culture of innovation and excellence.

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FS04 Incorporating Storytelling into Your eLearning

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Tuesday, October 20

eLearning tends to be a content-focused experience that leaves people overwhelmed and wondering how it all applies to them. Your audience needs context to make content feel relevant and valuable to their lives. And using story is one strong way to make your eLearning come to life for them.

Incorporating storytelling into your design is a great way of making content easier to understand and feel relevant to the learner. But how well you design stories into your courses it what determines its success. In this session, you'll learn the three primary steps for using storytelling to enhance your eLearning courses. First, you'll learn strategies for interviewing subject matter experts to get the stories you'll need to tell. Next, you'll learn tips for using instructional design strategies to build stories into your courses. Finally, we'll discuss bringing stories to life using scriptwriting techniques.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Ways to interview subject matter experts to unearth the story the course needs to tell
  • Methodologies for designing stories into your courses
  • Strategies for telling your stories with scriptwriting techniques
  • Techniques for creating compelling characters

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
iSpring Branch Scenarios, Articulate Rise Scenario Builder



Hadiya Nuriddin

CEO and Learning Strategist

Duets Learning

Hadiya Nuriddin has two decades of experience in learning strategy, instructional design, eLearning development, and facilitation. She worked in corporate learning before choosing to found her firm, Duets Learning, where she's worked with a wide array of companies on a variety of topics. She speaks at events and industry conferences and travels teaching courses for the Association for Talent Development (ATD). Hadiya holds an MEd in curriculum studies, an MA in writing, and the Certified Professional in Talent Development (CPTD) designation. She is the author of the book StoryTraining: Selecting and Shaping Stories That Connect, published by ATD.

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231 ON-DEMAND: Cutting Through the Hype—Using Affordances, Research, and Data

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Tuesday, October 20

Too much of our industry is still beset by myths, superstitions, and misconceptions. The latest buzzwords generate a flow of excitement (and investment), but little is really new. Instead, we're sold old water in new bottles, and if we're being honest with ourselves, a fair bit of snake oil. And it's time to stop. We owe it to our learners, our organizations, and to ourselves to do better. We need to be good stewards of professional learning practice.

In this session, we'll go through the ways to be resistant. We'll examine examples to be smart consumers of learning tools and practices. We'll look at the concept of affordances, which while seemingly esoteric offers practical guidance for understanding new technologies. We'll look at how to usefully take advantage of academic research without reading the original works in inscrutable academese. And, we'll talk about how we can collect and use data, to make better decisions for our learners and ourselves. Caveat emptor, in our case, means knowing what's real and what's hype. So get armed and be prepared.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to use affordances to evaluate new technology
  • How to use research to validate proposed innovations
  • How to use data to evaluate outcomes
  • How to design data collection methods

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
AR/VR, authoring tools, emerging technologies


Clark Quinn

Chief Learning Strategist

Upside Learning

Clark Quinn, PhD is the executive director of Quinnovation, co-director of the Learning Development Accelerator, and chief learning strategist for Upside Learning. With more than four decades of experience at the cutting edge of learning, Dr. Quinn is an internationally known speaker, consultant, and author of seven books. He combines a deep knowledge of cognitive science and broad experience with technology into strategic design solutions that achieve innovative yet practical outcomes for corporations, higher-education, not-for-profit, and government organizations.

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232 ON DEMAND: Lessons for L&D from YouTube Creators about Creating Better Video

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Tuesday, October 20

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.
Learning and development has a lot it can learn from other industries and groups, especially when it comes to video. While many may want to scoff at YouTube, it has without a doubt been successful and has changed the video landscape forever. And while we may want to ignore what's happening because our organizations don't let us use YouTube or public sites, we really shouldn't ignore the second largest search engine and probably the largest "How-to Engine." YouTube creators have gotten smart about creating videos at scale that reach very specific audiences. They're also making more and more content that is focused on learning and helping viewers accomplish specific tasks. What lessons about video can we learn from YouTube creators? How can we learn from them to improve our quality, better hone our message, and create more effective content?

In this session, we're going to explore the lessons we can learn from successful YouTube creators, how they think about video creation, and the takeaways that we can apply to L&D. Drawing from interviews performed with multiple YouTube creators who have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, we'll break down advice and tips that we can apply to our videos, even if our videos will never get near YouTube or any other public platform. The ideas we'll explore include looking at how to increase our video skills incrementally, rather than trying to focus on perfect today. Next, we'll explore the importance of knowing your audience and what these creators do compared to the typical process used for creating learning content. Finally, we'll explore some factors that make videos successful on YouTube and discuss how we can translate those into our typical learning environments. This session will focus on translating these ideas into practical and useful concepts that you can apply to your next video. If you're just starting to explore video, there's a lot you can do from the start to help you to progress your skills quickly. If you've been making videos for a while, this session will provide a different perspective around the video creation process from individuals who are creating videos, which are often how-to topics, every week for large audiences.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Why we need to evaluate our current video skills and strengthen them
  • How to continuously improve our skills with video production
  • Why knowing your audience is critical, and how YouTube creators use that information
  • Why focusing on creating helpful content leads to successful outcomes
  • Why you should keep videos focused, and specific tips for how to do it

Audience: Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed: Video creation, video hosting platforms


Matthew Pierce

Learning & Video Ambassador

TechSmith

Matthew Pierce, learning & video ambassador from TechSmith, has created videos for learning and marketing for over a decade. He is the lead behind TechSmith Academy, a free platform teaching video and image creation for business, which has been used by tens of thousands of users. He is host of The Visual Lounge Podcast from TechSmith, which streams live on Youtube and LinkedIn weekly. Matthew is a regular speaker at multiple learning and development-focused conferences and is a regular contributor to various training publications.

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233 ON-DEMAND: Advanced Articulate Storyline Tips and Tricks

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Tuesday, October 20

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.
While most users Articulate Storyline users are able to develop courses with basic interactivity (click-to-reveal, drag-drop, etc.), they may not be aware of some of the more complex and engaging interactions that can be built with the Storyline features they already know and love. What if they were able to move beyond using templates, speed up their workflow, and jump right into creating original, engaging interactions quickly and efficiently?

In this session, you'll learn to use Articulate Storyline to go beyond basic interactivity and learn techniques to create customized, engaging interactions that can be adapted to a variety of uses. You'll also learn to speed up your workflow and refine your design capabilities by customizing the quick access toolbar to suit your unique needs, and you'll get comfortable with a handful of shortcuts.

Topics include:
  • Grouping animations to create motion graphics
  • Gamifying your course with looping animations and triggered animations
  • Creating a dice-rolling interaction using random variables
  • Creating a custom UI with nested menu and animated progress bar



Mark Weingarten

eLearning Developer, Instructional Designer & Consultant

Mindstream eLearning

Mark Weingarten has worked in online learning for nine years and has been focusing on Articulate Storyline since its release in 2012. He started Mindstream eLearning in 2015 and has worked with a variety of clients from commercial, higher education, government, and nonprofit sectors. Clients include The Princeton Review, PG&E, Prosci, Ideo, AJLI, APLU, AFS, TechChange, The Cloudburst Group, and DevelopIntelligence.

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235 ON-DEMAND: Step Right Up for the AR Sideshow SpectaculAR!

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Tuesday, October 20

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.
You there! Yes, you! Have you ever wondered about augmented reality? Have you heard some things and been wanting to check it out? Is your curiosity on overload? Well, right this way, ladies and gentlemen, right this way! Don't be afraid to step right up. Here is your chance! This is a session unlike any other. Many L&D professionals are curious about AR but hesitant to dive in and find out what it's all about. The AR Sideshow SpectaculAR allows you to experience AR and get inspired, motivated, and ready to take action. Ladies, gentlemen, and children of all ages—the AR Sideshow SpectaculAR is about to begin!
In this session not one, not two, but THREE unique AR experiences—the likes of which you have likely never seen before, can be experienced! Bring your device and get a chance to try out three top AR platforms. We'll start each experience by downloading the app. While loading we'll discuss the purpose, value, and applications to L&D, and then you will get time to explore the app before we move to download and discuss another. You'll leave inspired, motivated, and maybe even entertained. Come one, come all to the AR Sideshow SpectaculAR!

In this session, you will learn:
  • From experience with pop culture and marketing forms of AR
  • Quick hit information about Zappar, Blippar, and Metaverse
  • What it looks and feels like to experience AR in three different platforms
  • Where to go to get inspired, motivated, and entertained with AR

Technology discussed:
Zappar, Blippar, Metaverse, Snapchat, Living Wines, Skyview Lite


Betty Dannewitz

Founder, CEO, the actual Betty

ifyouaskbetty

Betty Dannewitz is an immersive experience designer with over 18 years in corporate learning and development. She is also a speaker, podcaster, and high-performance coach. Betty's passion is to help people become better humans and she advocates that innovative technology, like augmented reality, has a HUGE role in making that happen.

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411 Preparing Your Company for an Immersive Learning Program

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Thursday, October 22

Immersive learning is a powerful tool that can help your team achieve learning goals in a meaningful and hands-on way. But within the L&D field, there's a lot of misunderstanding about what exactly AR/VR can do and how it can be implemented. And this can make it a challenge getting everyone at your organization‚ and even just your team‚ onboard with what you need to know to make an immersive learning program a success.

In this session you'll explore the steps you'll want to take in order to successfully launch an immersive learning program at your organization, including how to get buy-in and acceptance by business units. You'll find out about creating a solid business case as a reason to use AR/VR, and how a business partner proposing to use AR/VR to solve a particular challenge can make it easier to implement AR/VR solutions. You'll then look at how to match the AR/VR use case with your business's core values to ensure people understand how specifically this new technology is going to impact the organization. You'll discover strategies for finding appropriate business cases and how to work with an internal team to plan, build, implement, and maintain an AR/VR project.

In this session, you will learn:
  • A step-by-step process for designing successful AR/VR learning
  • Why launching a pilot is a great idea to get started
  • To identify key players and successfully work with them on an AR/VR project
  • Ways to measure your results and iterate

Technology discussed:
Augmented reality, virtual reality, wearables, Unity, Zappar, Adobe Captivate 2019


Debbie Richards

President

Creative Interactive Ideas

Debbie Richards, president of Creative Interactive Ideas, is a learning architect, self-proclaimed geek, and early adopter of learning technologies. For over 30 years, she has helped enterprise teams design, develop, and deliver immersive learning programs with measurable impact. Passionate about working with and mentoring other learning professionals, Debbie is a director at L&D Cares. The nonprofit group provides talent development professionals with no-cost coaching, mentoring, and resources to help them thrive and flourish in their careers. She is the past president of the Association of Talent Development, Houston chapter, and a past national advisor for chapters. Debbie has authored two TD at Work guides, Seeing the Possibilities With Augmented Reality and Preparing Your Organization for New Technologies.

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412 What's In it for Me? Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for xAPI

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Thursday, October 22

xAPI can enable adaptive learning, provide rich insight into performance, and support mobile learning but many organizations struggle with how to get started. Stakeholders are not interested in technology for technology-sake.  This session focuses on the benefits to stakeholders at different levels throughout the organization.

In this session we will discuss the key drivers for decision makers—from the C-suite to first-line supervisors. We will focus on the benefits and results that impact your stakeholder—not the underlying technology—to sell your xAPI project internally. This session will highlight common challenges to new learning technology purchases and guide participants around potential roadblocks. Case studies from successful implementations will be used to help paint a picture of xAPI benefits. Everyone will leave with a list of free and low-cost resources to get their first pilot project off the ground.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The benefits that xAPI enabled projects can bring to the organization
  • Motivators for stakeholders at different levels your organization
  • Key challenges and responses to learning technology projects from various levels of management
  • Ways to develop a pilot xAPI project with no or little external cost
  • How to find free and low-cost resources for getting started with xAPI

Technology discussed:
MS PowerBI, LRS


Art Werkenthin

President

RISC

Art Werkenthin, president of RISC, built his first learning management system (LMS) in 1988 and now has over 25 years' experience working with LMS in the oil and gas, retail, finance, and other industries. Art is keenly interested in the xAPI specification, and RISC was an early adopter of this technology. Interested in expanding the xAPI to the LMS, Art has served for the past three years on the ADL cmi5 committee. In 2015, RISC demonstrated the first implementation of a cmi5 runtime engine embedded in its LMS. Art has presented on cmi5 at several conferences, including mLearnCon, DevLearn, and xAPI Camp.

Duncan Welder

Director of Client Services

RISC

Duncan Welder is a director of client services for RISC. He is an educational technology geek, having spent over 20 years implementing learning management systems, domestically and abroad, to manage regulatory compliance. As an xAPI evangelist with a career grounded in instructional design and eLearning, Duncan has provided presentations to professional organizations including the Connections Forum, The Learning Guild, and the Association for Talent Development. Duncan is an active member of the Houston ATD, currently serving as director of special interest groups.

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413 Ready to Record? Proven Tips for Producing Professional-Quality Videos

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Thursday, October 22

Video has quickly transitioned from being a high-cost luxury to an affordable opportunity for everyday learning experiences, yet the people responsible for creating the content—the educators, instructional designers, and others—often struggle to produce videos that achieve their goals of a professional-quality product. High-quality audio and video have been clearly tied to increased viewer engagement but researching and exploring the myriad options for microphones, cameras, equipment, and setup can quickly become overwhelming, and that's not even taking into consideration the development of your content!

In this session you'll learn how to efficiently focus your time, effort, and resources on specific video production considerations that will increase viewer engagement without spending a small fortune. You'll also find out how to balance pre-production content development with post-production content refinement and how key choices in content formatting (slides or no slides), interaction (markup or no markup), and delivery (scripted or unscripted) can have significant impact on all aspects of the video production process. For video production, you'll learn how to set up a professional-quality production without exhausting your budget by focusing your resources on increasing audio quality first and video quality second. You'll also find out how properly implemented rehearsal and preparation can minimize the time needed for video recording, which is often the most expensive part of the video production process. Finally, you'll hear tips about what to wear (or not), what to eat and drink (or not) before production, and how to maintain eye contact with the camera. You'll leave this session with a set of proven tips that are easy to implement and sure to have an immediate, positive impact on viewer engagement.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to develop content with an eye toward video production in an effort to maximize your opportunities for viewer engagement
  • How to balance your efforts for content development between time spent before recording and time spent after recording to increase flexibility while minimizing work
  • Where to invest resources for equipment purchases to have the highest return on investment for your finished video products
  • How to properly rehearse and prepare your content for efficient delivery during recording in order to minimize video production expenses
  • The do's and don'ts of dress code, food and drinks, and maintaining eye contact with the camera

Technology discussed:
Audio recording devices such as Blue microphones (Snowball, Yeti, etc.), lavalier microphones, and headset microphones, video recording devices such as Logitech C922 webcam, Sony XDCAM, etc., PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, interactive tablets such as Wacom, iPad, etc., generic screen capture software (such as Captivate, TechSmith Screen Capture, Windows Gaming, etc.), generic video platforms (YouTube, Kaltura, etc.)


Fred Telegdy

Senior Instructional Designer

University of Virginia Darden School of Business

Fred Telegdy is a senior instructional designer for the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. With more than 20 years of experience working as a multimedia developer and instructional designer, he collaborates with world-renowned faculty and staff to develop asynchronous and synchronous online learning experiences for the school's degree programs, executive courses, and public offerings. Fred holds a master of education in instructional technology from the University of Virginia and a bachelor of industrial design from Auburn University.

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414 How to Transform Instructor-Led Training into Engaging eLearning with Articulate 360

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Thursday, October 22

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced training teams to quickly pivot their classroom training programs into blended programs encompassing virtual instructor-led training and eLearning. Such an abrupt shift has left many training pros scrambling. Simply copying and pasting instructor talking points onto a slide doesn't create the rich, engaging experiences learners need to absorb the material. But with so much classroom material to work with—and so little time—how can training professionals create more engaging and effective eLearning? How do you transform static content into interactive content?

In this session, you'll learn tips and tricks for transforming instructor-led classroom training into engaging and effective eLearning courses using the apps and resources in Articulate 360. We'll show you how to prioritize classroom training content based on desired outcomes, how to identify creative ways to reimagine static content into compelling eLearning interactions like branching scenarios, interactive video, drag-and-drop exercises, and more. Finally, we'll show you some tips and tricks for quickly creating knowledge checks and quizzes to give learners feedback.

In this session you will learn:
  • How to prioritize classroom training materials based on learning outcomes
  • How to identify creative ways to reimagine static content and instructor-led activities into engaging eLearning activities
  • How to quickly create knowledge checks and quizzes to give learners feedback

Audience:
Designers, developers

Technology discussed:
Articulate 360


David Anderson

Director, Customer Training

Articulate

David Anderson, director of customer training at Articulate, is an award- winning eLearning designer, LinkedIn Learning course author, host of the E- Learning Challenges blog, and creator of the Design Mapping process that helps designers find the right look and feel for their eLearning. David has more than 18 years of experience designing, developing, and managing corporate clients' training programs.

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421 Show & Tell: Designing 3 Interactive Experiences in Real Time

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Thursday, October 22

Many designers find themselves struggling to create, imagine, or share a idea to stakeholders. What if there was a way to get inspired and break out of your standard workflow to kickstart new ideas and projects?

In this session you'll learn how to get started viusalizing and prototyping learning experience and activities. Learn how to quickly prototype with Adobe XD, sketch with a mobile device, leverage free stock imagery for quick compositions, and quickly gather feedback from your audience to turn your concepts into a interactive experience for testing and feedback. All will be shown by two L&D practitioners that will be presented with a challenge where you can observe their creative process for visualizng how to transform the challenge into a interactive learning experience.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to kickstart a new project
  • How to ask clarifying questions to ensure you are targeting the audience to help them 
  • Techniques for using fonts, color, graphics and motion to connect with the participant
  • How to quickly play, test, and assemble ideas
  • How to use audience feedback to iterate and work in what is actually needed by the audience

Technology discussed:
Adobe XD


Nick Floro

Learning Architect/Imagineer

Sealworks Interactive Studios

Nick Floro, a co-founder and learning architect at Sealworks Interactive Studios, has over 25 years of experience developing learning solutions, applications, and web platforms. Nick is passionate about how design and technology can enhance learning and loves to share his knowledge and experience to teach, inspire, and motivate. As a learning architect, Nick gets to sketch, imagine, and prototype for each challenge. He has worked with start-ups to Fortune 500 companies to help them understand the technology and develop innovative solutions to support their audiences. Nick has won numerous awards from Apple and organizations for productions and services.

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425 CLO's View of L&D Strategy Post COVID-19: Research Results

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Thursday, October 22

The global pandemic has clearly made a significant impact on learning and development teams for organizations around the world. The acceleration of long-sought programs to virtualize educational experiences is at the heart of most responses to the epidemic. To learn more about how our field has needed to adapt, we asked 800 CLOs and directors of learning how their organizations were handling the virtualization in the context of the pandemic.

In this session we will cover the results of the research study and offer a summary of the experiences reported by learning leaders around the world. The top takeaways from this session include, but not limited to:
  1. Insights into the background of the respondents and the survey methodology 
  2. Learnings from ~800 CLO's on how they navigated the uncertainties of COVID-19
  3. Action plans to plan/pivot their L&D strategy to cater to the new normal
  4. Shift in budgets allocated to learning programs
  5. How to respond to changing consumer behavior with the onset of remote work
  6. Virtual onboarding & talent development challenges
  7. Leadership training in a virtual setting 
  8. Looking forward beyond COVID-19

In this session, you will learn:
  • How significant the changes for L&D are
  • Tips for organizations to adapt effectively
  • What Learning Leaders have to say about the changes
  • Some real-world examples of these changes
  • What strategies are proving most successful

Target audience:
Senior leaders


Allen Partridge

Head, Digital Learning Evangelism

Adobe Systems

Dr. Allen Partridge is a learning addict with a rebellious spirit and a passion for evidence-based reasoning. Allen served on the doctoral faculties of The University of Georgia and Indiana University of Pennsylvania before joining Adobe in 2007. As Adobe's Head of Evangelism, Digital Learning Solutions, he provides guidance by relating customer experiences and challenges to the product and engineering teams that create Captivate, Presenter Video Express (PVX), and Adobe's extraordinary new learning management system, Adobe Captivate Prime. Allen is well recognized for his videos and presentations to audiences around the world. He has published a host of articles and a handful of books on topics ranging from critical thinking for business training to 3D online game development.

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FS06 Learning Games: From Simple to Complex

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Thursday, October 22

Learning games come in all shapes and sizes: from overly simplistic to fantastically complex and detailed, and every variation you can think of in between.

This session takes you on a tour of several radically different learning games ranging from the basic to the highly complex with the goal of highlighting key features and attributes you should seek or include in any type of learning game you are developing or purchasing. Discover how the games are played, what instructional goals are sought with each type of game, and the elements that make them instructionally effective. Gain insights into how to make the right decision when it comes to choosing a learning game for your instructional needs.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The educational efficacy and effectiveness of different game approaches
  • What to look for when purchasing commercial, off-the-shelf learning games or building your own
  • Key elements that make learning games both engaging and instructional

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers


Karl Kapp

Professor

Commonwealth University

Karl Kapp, EdD, is a professor of instructional technology at Commonwealth University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania who teaches instructional game design, gamification, and online learning design. He keeps busy internationally consulting, training, coaching, and counseling established companies, academic institutions, and startups. He co-founded L&D Mentoring Academy, which helps midcareer learning professionals move to the next level. Karl has authored many books and created several LinkedIn Learning courses. In 2019, he received the ATD Distinguished Contribution to Talent Development Award. His YouTube series, "The Unauthorized, Unofficial History of Learning Game," is his current passion project.

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431 ON-DEMAND: Case Study: How Gamification Helps Frontline Employees at Connect First Credit Union

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Thursday, October 22

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.
Research shows that broad-based subject matter or literacy training can positively impact frontline delivery and overall financial results. Still, literacy learning through traditional training methods can be difficult. Every time your frontline employee forgets basic concepts, it affects your credibility and bottom line. By using fun and engaging gamification approaches, you can develop online programs that deliver real time results.

In this session you'll learn about gamified mobile-responsive courses that have helped increase employee engagement, corporate knowledge, and most importantly, frontline results. Learn directly from Connect First Credit Union on how their organization converted their frontline financial literacy program into a self-directed, online playable map, improving overall literacy by as much as 7 percent for their most challenged learners. Discover how Connect First Credit Union uses points and badges to track learning behaviors and provide critical task-by-task feedback to support their staff and demonstrate return on investment. See the specific results that helped their team conduct a more detailed, data-driven approach to new course development and gain new ideas on how you can improve the impact of your corporate literacy programs.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How gamification helps organizations deliver and improve employee literacy
  • A live, real world example of the positive impact gamification has had on overall employee literacy
  • How you can use gamification to teach different subjects to frontline employees
  • Data-driven design principles that optimize and deliver on the promise of immersive online learning experiences

Technology discussed:
Gamification, online learning, mobile delivery, data visualization, AI/ML (extremely high level, how it relates to the data), API integration with existing environment (high level, i.e., single signon/simplicity for employee)


Jason Suriano

Founder & CEO

TIQ Software

Jason Suriano is the founder and CEO at TIQ Software. He is a former instructional designer and has over 17 years of experience leading the development of over 200 online and mobile game-powered applications for clients such as Discovery Communications, ATB Financial, Boilermakers of Canada, and the University of Alberta. Jason holds an MA in humanities computing from the University of Alberta, and is the author of the book Office Arcade: Gamification, Byte-Size Learning, and Other Wins on the Way to Productive Human Resources.

Maranda Sheahan

Innovative Solutions Producer, Innovation & Strategic Insights

Connect First Credit Union

With nearly 10 years experience in the financial services industry, Maranda Sheahan is the current innovative solutions producer, innovation & strategic insights at Connect First Credit Union. Using project management fundamentals, Maranda leads the execution of ideas through CFCU's innovation framework while developing plans, recruiting and aligning internal and external resources, and managing the processes which move solutions from conception through to implementation. Maranda holds certifications from the University of Calgary, Dale Carnegie, and Cornell University.

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432 ON DEMAND: Can't Get You Out of My Head: Engagement Techniques From Marketing

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Thursday, October 22

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.
With the need to change behavior, how can your learning solutions leave your audience remembering your message? Why not leverage decades of proven techniques from the marketing industry? If marketing messages can provide message retention and ignite action, how can you use these marketing techniques to change behavior among your learners?

In this session you'll learn the four key techniques that marketers use to make their messages stick. Through practical tips, you'll explore the role of visually depicting the message, emotions, compelling text, and humor. You'll examine both marketing and training examples in order to apply the concepts to your own projects.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The power of visually depicting your message
  • The best methods to harness emotions among learners
  • How to write concise text so your message sticks
  • How to effectively use humor in learning solutions

Audience: Designers, managers


Danielle Wallace

Chief Learning Strategist

Beyond the Sky

Danielle Wallace is the chief learning strategist at Beyond the Sky: Custom Learning. Previously, as a marketing leader with Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo, she learned strategic marketing principles which she now applies to learning and development to create compelling breakthrough solutions. Danielle is a sought after speaker at global conferences and her thought leadership is found in numerous industry magazines and publications.

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434 ON-DEMAND: Creative Tips for Enhancing Learning Engagement in Articulate Rise

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Thursday, October 22

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.
Have you been curious about developing a Rise course that goes beyond knowledge acquisition and takes the experience to an advanced level of thinking? Have you ever wanted to collect data from a Rise course but didn't have the budget for xAPI integration, or wondered how to create an interaction in Storyline to use with a Storyline block? Articulate Rise is a rapid development tool that can be used as an alternative to Articulate Storyline to create engaging learning solutions, especially in situations with budget or timeline constraints. Because of the rapid development nature, Rise has limited capabilities in terms of the "block" options that can be used when designing and building a learning solution. While Rise provides "blocks" of basic activities for presenting content, such as flash cards or interactive hotspots, developing in Rise often requires creative thinking to take engagement to the next level.

In this session, you'll learn how to take a creative "think outside of the box" approach to learning design using Articulate Rise in order to achieve a user experience that will increase engagement and higher-level thinking. You'll explore why creating an engaging user experience is important for optimal learning, and how to leverage tools beyond the built-in "block" features to make this happen. Specifically, you'll learn how to use Articulate Storyline to create meaningful interactions by practicing using sliders and drag-n-drops, as well as how to create client-specific experiences such as a custom calculator and scenario. Next, you'll learn how to use Typeform as a tool for audience polling, data collection, gathering feedback, and open-ended questioning to facilitate information processing and reflection. You'll also walk away with a variety of "hacks" to make your Rise course even better, such as a template with custom dimensions to export images with embedded text labels that fit perfectly within the flashcard block, how to place a logo in a header image that will appear correctly on any responsive device, and how to embed videos using tools such as VideoScribe. Did you know you can also use Articulate Review as for social learning? It's true! You'll learn how to turn a Rise course into a social learning experience and see a successful example of how that can look when implemented effectively.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to use Storyline to create meaningful interactions to increase learner engagement (e.g., slider, scenario, drag-n-drop, calculator, etc.)
  • How to use Typeform to create a poll, for data collection, feedback, and open-ended response questions to encourage higher-level thinking and reflection
  • How to embed videos such as VideoScribe into the Rise course
  • How to make a Rise course a social learning experience
  • How to create images with embedded text labels that are the perfect size for the flashcard block
  • How to embed a logo into a header image that effectively responds on any device

Technology discussed:
Articulate Rise, Articulate Storyline, Articulate Review, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft PowerPoint, Typeform, VideoScribe


Whitney Thurmond

Learning Solutions Designer

Vivayic, Inc.

Whitney Thurmond, learning solutions designer, has an extensive background and is skilled in organizational development, change management, and learning design. Whitney's background includes a BS in agricultural communications from Oklahoma State University and a MEd in leadership & organizational performance from Vanderbilt University.

Jessica Travis

Learning Designer

Vivayic

Jessica Travis, learning solutions designer, has an extensive background in teaching and learning and is skilled in learning design and development. Jessica's background includes a BS in agricultural education from the University of Florida and an MS in agricultural and extension education from Virginia Tech.

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435 ON DEMAND: 5 Tools to Help You Get Started with Augmented Reality

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Thursday, October 22

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.
Augmented reality is still fairly new and may be very intimidating when you first start. You may feel like you need to go and learn complex tools with complex code to really create the types of AR experiences you want to create. Luckily, some tools make it easier for you to get started building your own AR experiences.

In this session, we will explore 5 tools that make it easier for you to create your own augmented reality experience. You will quickly get a taste of each tool; what it can do, and what its strengths and weaknesses are, to help you decide which tool may fit the best for you and your organization. We will walk through examples created in each tool and talk about the pros/cons and complexities of each tool. By the end of the session, you will walk away with examples and resources you can use as you dive into the tools yourself. AR tools are not as complicated as you might be thinking, and the session will help you get started creating your own AR experiences.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to get started with various AR tools
  • The pros and cons each tool brings
  • Live examples of each tool including how they were developed
  • How each experience can be delivered and consumed by your learners



Jeff Batt

Founder

Learning Dojo

Jeff Batt has 15+ years of experience in the digital learning and media industry. Currently, Jeff Batt is a Learning Experience Designer for Amazon. He is the founder and trainer at Learning Dojo, a company dedicated to training you to become a software ninja in various eLearning, web, and mobile-related software applications. He was also the program manager of DevLearn for The Learning Guild. Jeff often speaks on developmental technologies such as xAPI, HTML5, augmented reality, mobile development, eLearning development tools, and more.

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436 ON-DEMAND: Getting Started with Stop-Motion Animation Explainer Videos

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Thursday, October 22

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.
Searching for new ways to present animated or video content in training initiatives is an ongoing challenge for most designers. Animation beyond the standard effects requires deeper thought in design and often involves additional skills in a variety of tools. And the barriers to learning new animation software can result in not pursuing this more engaging approach. However, with smartphone cameras, available apps, and software, you can dramatically reduce those barriers and get started right now with designing creative stop-motion animation videos to tell stories, explain processes, and more.
Stop-motion animation is defined as capturing a photo of an object, then slightly moving that object and capturing another photo so that it appears to move on its own. This technique is easy to implement and a great way to animate objects such as rotating a product in 360 degrees, displaying the assembly of a process without human intervention, and many other creative applications. In this session you'll learn how, with a free app on any smartphone and a little creativity, you can create your own stop-motion animations and open up a world of possibilities. During this session, you'll learn the basics of the tool, as well as simple animation techniques to get you started.

In this session, you will learn:
  • A basic understanding of stop-motion animation techniques
  • Various approaches and styles of stop-motion animation for eLearning
  • About multiple tools and software applications for creating stop-motion animation
  • Best practices for designing stop-motion animation and when best to use this approach for learning

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
Smartphone, tablet, Stop-Motion app


Kevin Thorn

Director of Development

Artisan E-Learning

Kevin Thorn holds an EdD in instructional design and technologies and is an award-winning eLearning designer and developer. He is the director of development for Artisan E-Learning, and principal owner of NuggetHead Studioz, LLC., a boutique studio specializing in consulting and developing custom learning experiences. Kevin combines his skills in technology, instructional design, eLearning development, illustration, graphic design, animation, video, and educational comics to develop innovative learning solutions. He is a well- known industry speaker and trainer in visual communication, eLearning development, and design workflows and is a certified facilitator in LEGO® Serious Play® methodologies. ?

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513 Accessibility Tips and Tricks in Storyline 360

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Friday, October 23

Course accessibility is a common task for developers and creates many questions. What makes a course "accessible"? How can you use Storyline 360 to make courses accessible to a variety of audiences? How can you easily create closed captions and alternate text for your courses? What are some best practices when planning and developing WCAG or 508-compliant courses? How can you test courses to ensure accessibility?

In this session you will learn what "accessibility" means and how you can use tools in Storyline 360 to make your eLearning courses accessible. You will explore the idea of user experience and how to optimize accessibility that will not only open your courses to a wider audience, but also maintain the style and interactivity made possible in Storyline 360. Finally, you will discover tools, resources, and best practices for testing your eLearning modules for accessibility.

In this session, you will learn:
  • What "accessibility" means for eLearning developers
  • How to quickly add alternate text for objects
  • How to easily create closed captions for your courses
  • How to increase accessibility without decreasing functionality
  • About tools and resources that will help you develop and test accessible eLearning courses

Technology discussed:
Storyline 360


Stefanie Lawless

VP Training

Yukon Learning

Stefanie Lawless is the vice president of training at Yukon Learning, where she manages the design and development of customizable off-the-shelf courseware in Rapid Course and provides virtual training for the Articulate suite of tools. She has spent more than 10 years training people on software products and policies, as well as developing eLearning content and custom courseware for organizations worldwide. Stefanie holds a BS in information technology and an MBA from Western Governor's University.

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521 Blockchain-Based Digital Credentials for Competency-Based Learning

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Friday, October 23

Blockchain technology is something many of us have heard about, but how can it fit in to the world of L&D? In this case study session you'll find out how a veterinary industry consortium was formed to focus on the application of blockchain for learning credentials in the veterinary industry. The goal was to create a framework for competency-based medical education using digital badges to support credentialing, as well as a minimum viable product (MVP). Working with a diverse group of stakeholders in the veterinary ecosystem they collaboratively created both the competency framework, an MVP, as well as the functional Pilot with a blockchain-based LCN that brought together educational entities, learners, and employers—allowing them to issue, share, and validate learner credentials in a secure manner.
Blockchain is a team sport and success requires a shared vision for the future. At its core, blockchain enhances the ability for diverse individuals and organizations to transact with each other without the necessity of a central authority. For this reason, it's crucial to create a healthy ecosystem where participants (even competitors) work together to solve the same problem. In this session we'll share the tools and approaches we used to collaboratively approach the creation of a consortium, focusing on governance and organizational design. You'll leave this session with a deep understanding of how to approach blockchain technology in learning–from evaluating use cases to MVP development with a technology partner, to the ultimate Pilot creation and launch of the product.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to determine if a blockchain solution may be valuable for your learning infrastructure
  • The basics of blockchain technology and how it applies to learning credentials
  • Moving development from concept to MVP to Pilot
  • Creating an industry consortium around the technology
  • About case studies on how blockchain-based learning technology has transformed areas of higher education, and how these examples could inform your thinking

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
Hyperledger Indy, Blockchain


Patrick Welch

Chief Knowledge Officer

ETHOS

Patrick Welch is responsible for people & organization, learning & development, knowledge management, and information technology/innovation for Ethos. He serves as the principle strategist and architect for developing a knowledge-based learning organization. He has a broad array of experience in both corporate and independent practices, with a clinical focus on veterinary ophthalmology and with management experience in organizational learning, learning technology, and innovation. Pat is a graduate of Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine. He completed a medical internship at South Shore Animal Hospital, his ophthalmology residency at Iowa State University, and an MBA at Colorado State University.

Jason Johnson

Dean, Lincoln Memorial University College of Veterinary Medicine

Lincoln Memorial University

Jason Johnson is one of the founding faculty members of 30th College of Veterinary Medicine in the USA, which he led to full accreditation. He has served in numerous leadership capacities including the Legislative Advisory Committee of the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) and in the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) House of Delegates. Jason has been awarded honorary diplomate status recognition by the American Society of Epidemiologists, Auburn Young Achiever Award, AVMA Future Leaders, Veterinary Business News Top 25 vets to watch in our 25th year, and the Ron Taylor Teaching Excellence Award.

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523 Develop Captivate Activities that Allow Learners to Discover Content

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Friday, October 23

eLearning authoring tools offer a number of different choices for creating activities but it can be overwhelming to figure out which kind to use for which type of content. When converting classroom training activities or even developing straight into eLearning, you may know what you what the activity to have the learner practice or prove but you may not know how to translate that idea into technology.

In this hands-on session, you'll use Adobe Captivate to develop five different kinds of activities from sample files that you can repurpose in your future training development. You'll start by defining the following forms of interactivity, reviewing the different reasons that you might choose to use each, and the best content types for: buttons with states, lightboxes/pop-ups, drag & drop, hotspots, and branching/scenarios. Then you and the other attendees will provide different kinds of content that they need to teach as activities and we will divide those into these types of activities or others that might be appropriate. Using that information, you'll use the provided template file to fill in content from the provided examples for future use. You'll leave the session with a working knowledge of how activities can be created in Captivate to help reinforce different types of content being covered in training modules.

In this session, you will learn:
  • What are button states in Adobe Captivate and what value do they have
  • What needs to be considered when developing drag & drop activities
  • What activities may not meet the accessibility requirements of your learners
  • What kinds of content are best suited to which kinds of activities
  • Which activities are better for mobile versus desktop end users
  • How does the complexity of the content effect the kind of activity being developed
  • Which kinds of activities are the most and least time consuming to develop and why

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
Adobe Captivate 2020, Microsoft PowerPoint, Draw.io

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop device capable of running an eLearning authoring software. Adobe Captivate 2020 (trial version is ok). Articulate Storyline can be used, but sample files are not provided


Emily Wood

Managing Director

Serenity Learning

Emily Wood is an innovative, award-winning senior-level development manager of learning and education with over 15 years of learning experience design, eLearning, and instructional design. She plans, manages, and executes the entire process, from gathering requirements to end-to-end course development to making courses available through the learning management system. She is a published author, noted speaker, and trusted thought leader with a track record of implementing learning best practices.

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FS08 The Cognitive Science of Video

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Friday, October 23

Many learning producers get training video ideas from popular forms of media including social media, entertainment, and commercials. But are those methods useful when producing a training video? Many videos that move us emotionally are not set up properly to transfer knowledge. In many cases, these training videos make an attempt to inject emotional elements like music, animation, and humor but these techniques fall flat when the main objective of the video is to transfer information. Optimal training videos use strategic emotional elements combined with video based information, presented with a low cognitive load.

In this session, you'll learn how cognitive studies illustrate methods for creating an optimally-formatted knowledge transfer video. You'll learn how to strategically use emotion in your training video to grab the viewers' attention or send them on a call to action. You'll explore various techniques to display content on the screen that reduces cognitive load and allows for ease of information processing. Learn the secrets for creating long-form training videos that maintain learner attention by using emotional fence posts. Next, you'll look at the importance of information priming and reflection in a short form training video, and the various techniques used at the beginning and end of your video. Walk away with video recipes that you can use to create your own training videos.

In this session, you will learn:
  • What cognitive science studies impact video creation
  • How to structure an optimal training video
  • How to strategically use emotion
  • How to reduce cognitive load
  • What is priming and reflection
  • How to use a video recipe

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
Video editing


Josh Cavalier

Founder

JoshCavalier.ai

Josh Cavalier has been creating learning solutions for corporations, government agencies, and secondary education institutions for nearly 30 years. He is an expert in the field of learning & development and has applied his industry experience to the application of ChatGPT and other Generative AI frameworks for business and life skills. Josh is passionate about sharing his knowledge and has a popular YouTube channel that shares tips and tricks on Generative AI. He is a seasoned speaker, presenting at conferences like DevLearn, Learning Solutions, ATD ICE, TechKnowledge, NAB, and Adobe MAX.

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531 ON-DEMAND: Developing Customized, Advanced Interactions in Captivate

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Friday, October 23

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.
We've all been there. You present your eLearning course to your stakeholder only to learn that they don't want the built-in interaction that comes with Adobe Captivate. Oh boy, this is going to increase your development time. Instead, imagine reaching into your advanced action tool belt and pulling out a ready-to-go interaction that you can make a few small changes to satisfy their needs.

In this BYOD session you'll learn how to build several custom interactions in Captivate that will show off your newly found advanced actions, conditional actions, and shared actions skills. Not only will you have the skills to build advanced interactions but you'll also learn how you can replicate these interactions quickly and easily and then customize them further for different uses.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to build a custom click-to-reveal that tracks what your learners have selected and shows completion of the activity
  • How to build a multiple-choice single answer question using variables and advanced actions that doesn't rely on Adobe Captivate's question slides
  • How to build a multiple correct answer question using variables and advanced actions, again, that doesn't use the standard question slides
  • How to save these advanced actions as shared actions, making them quick and easy to replicate whenever you need a similar interaction

Audience:
Designers, developers

Technology discussed:
Adobe Captivate

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop (Mac or PC) with at least a trial copy of Adobe Captivate 2019 or newer installed.


Paul Wilson

eLearning Designer, Developer

Self Employed

Paul Wilson has been an instructional designer since 2005. After 10 years, he decided to start his own company. To help promote his business, Paul began to create Adobe Captivate video tutorials on YouTube to attract potential clients looking for a skilled designer. Paul has worked with clients from all over the globe, helping them build highly engaging eLearning solutions. Paul's YouTube channel presented an additional benefit of attracting aspiring Captivate developers to seek him out as an instructor. As of 2019, Paul's YouTube channel has over 1.5 million views and over 13,000 subscribers.

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532 ON-DEMAND: Making Bite-sized Work: 5 Tips for Creating Effective Microlearning

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Friday, October 23

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

Microlearning is really hot right now. It seems everyone is "going micro" or wants to be. But with all that hype how do you ensure your microlearning is instructionally sound so you can have maximum impact on performance? Many people don't go micro because they are afraid it won't work. And those who do go micro without being instructionally sound create materials with little value that waste everyone's time. That makes it incredibly difficult to get organizational buy-in to your approach. To resolve all this you need to have a clear understanding of how to design microlearning to bring the greatest value to your learning programs.

In this session you will learn how to assess your curriculum to identify places where you could go micro with the greatest impact. Then we will share five recommendations for designing effective microlearning resources in a variety of formats and will show real pieces of microlearning used by organizations to improve performance. You will learn best practices for creating your own microlearning resources through actual examples of microlearning done well, and leave with new ideas for incorporating microlearning successfully in your organization.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Where microlearning can make the greatest difference in your organization
  • Five best practices for designing microlearning that rocks
  • How to create microlearning that is instructionally sound
  • Which best practices will make the biggest difference in your organization


Carla Torgerson

Solution Architect

SweetRush

Carla Torgerson, MEd, MBA has nearly 25 years of experience as an instructional designer and instructional strategist. Always interested in the latest learning trends, she has authored numerous blogs and articles on a variety of topics, including eLearning, mobile learning, and microlearning. She also developed MILE, the MIcroLEarning Design Model© and is the author of The Microlearning Guide to Microlearning and Designing Microlearning (with Sue Iannone). Currently a Solution Architect at SweetRush, Carla helps clients to dream up amazing performance solutions that both consider their learners’ needs and meet business objectives. SweetRush is known for exceptionally creative and effective solutions that combine the best of learning experience design with highly engaging delivery. Connect with Carla on LinkedIn for insights and announcements: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlatorgerson/

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533 ON-DEMAND: Making Learning Available in the Flow of Work Using AI

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Friday, October 23

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

In today's workplace L&D leaders are tasked with transformation from a culture of training to a culture of learning. The three key components to bring about this change transformation are giving learners control of what they learn, when they learn, and how they learn; ensuring that learning is made available in the flow of work; and making sure learners are easily able to navigate to the relevant content. Achieving this can be complex but what if we had a virtual coach or mentor powered by artificial intelligence and natural language processing to help L&D leaders bring this change transformation successfully?

In this session you'll learn how to implement AI-enabled virtual coaches or mentors for providing performance support at the point of need. You'll start from an instructional design perspective and see how to design content into bite-sized nuggets by using the framework for 5 Moments of Need. Next, you'll learn to evaluate what is the sweet spot for integrating this in your workplace and learning ecosystem so that it can make learning available in the flow of work. Then you'll look at how to select the right set of technology stack to build your chatbot and investigate how we could train chatbots and make them ready for functioning using machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) technologies. Finally, you'll explore the best practices and do's and don'ts to be considered while training chatbots.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to make your digital content AI-ready
  • Where to implement AI-enabled learning in the modern-day workplace
  • How to select the right set of technology stack to develop a chatbot
  • How to train your chatbots using machine learning and natural language processing
  • What examples of performance support through AI can look like

Technology discussed:
Microsoft Q&A maker, Google Dialogflow, Amazon Lex, training chatbots using machine learning and natural language processing


Poonam Jaypuriya

Vice President, eLearning

Harbinger Group

Poonam Jaypuriya is a seasoned eLearning solutions and education technology expert, with over 18 years of experience in eLearning design and development, program management, and product evangelism. She started her career as a programmer and joined the products division of Harbinger Group. She worked on multiple eLearning products, from ideation to product launch. Her responsibilities included everything from product design, engineering, and management to leading product marketing. She heads Harbinger Interactive Learning and is part of the core team managing sales planning, strategy, and learning solution design.

Rahul Singh

Senior General Manager

Harbinger Interactive Learning Private Limited

Rahul Singh, senior general manager at Harbinger Interactive Learning Private Limited, is a digital learning enthusiast and is passionate about helping organizations and leaders solve business challenges through intervention of learning technologies. In his career span of over 13 years in the digital learning space, he has helped a host of global organizations cutting across industry verticals in implementing a myriad of new initiatives around their digital learning strategy. Rahul frequently blogs on a variety of topics; sharing his experiences and thoughts as a way to give back to the learning and development community.

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537 ON-DEMAND: Building a Culture of Learning in a Remote Team

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Friday, October 23

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

Whether your workforce is completely remote, in the office daily, or somewhere in between, continuous training and learning is essential for every team. However, organizations can benefit further by creating a culture of learning in the workplace that not only empowers learners and maximizes learning outcomes, but ultimately helps companies realize the full potential of their training programs. So how do you build that culture, especially when your team is remote?

Over half of the US population holds a job that is compatible with remote working at least part of the time, and these numbers are only growing with more companies moving online due to COVID-19. Building a successful culture of learning is not only possible in a remote work environment, but it can be built to be just as strong, if not stronger, than one in a traditional workplace setting.
In this session, we will explore the advantages of building a culture of learning, including the positive effects around employee retention as well as the financial benefits it can offer. Additionally, we will dive into the essential aspects of building a culture of learning including leadership buy-in, employee incentivization, company-wide initiatives, and picking the right technology to support your training goals. Lastly, eThink CEO Brian Carlson will share his own insights on what has worked for his remote company in the hopes you can take away some ideas to implement for your own team.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The importance of a culture of learning in the workplace (even a remote one)
  • Strategies that can be utilized to create an engaging learning experience for all types of learners
  • The importance of technology choice in building a culture of learning for remote teams
  • How to identify and implement company-wide learning initiatives as an essential piece of your learning strategy

Audience:
Managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
Learning management systems, virtual meeting tools


Brian Carlson

CEO and Co-Founder

eThink Education

Brian Carlson co-founded eThink Education more than nine years ago, and today has oversight of the entire operation. He brings more than 15 years of education-technology experience, including six years at SunGard HE (now Ellucian) as a senior technical consultant, where he worked extensively with student-information systems. Brian holds a BS in physics and astronomy from Evergreen State College and is active in advising entities on eLearning initiatives through outside advisory roles, such as his seat on the Baltimore Workforce Investment Board.

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611 Moving to the Point of Need: Performance Support and the Learning Ecosystem

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Monday, October 26

Learning teams are regularly asked to support large scale system launches with minimal time to prepare training materials. When faced with this challenge for a major upgrade to our own core HR systems, Charter Communications used its learning ecosystem to implement a performance support approach that successfully addressed the problem while minimizing the needed development time to meet the time crunch. Using this project as a case study, you'll learn about the strategy and tools that make up our learning ecosystem and share how our design team leveraged its capabilities to support several simultaneous system launches. We'll also share the data on the positive impacts (performance and time) the business experienced.
Providing great learning experiences requires more than just instructionally sound materials. It requires both a technology and a design approach that is focused on empowering learning professionals to deliver great experiences. This presentation will explore two threads that have allowed Charter Communications to support the learning needs of our stakeholders, and then a use case to demonstrate the positive business impacts we have experienced.

The first thread is creating a learning ecosystem; a complex yet powerful infrastructure, with multiple components working together to achieve common goals. When the right entities are working together, success can seem effortless and even be taken for granted. Yet, without a conscious approach to building a true learning ecosystem, the exact same components can result in little value. You'll learn what systems make up our ecosystem and the rationale for each system.

The second thread is a design approach focused on limiting formal learning and relying more on performance support solutions. A key aspect was how the employees would access the performance support materials. We'll share how we took this design approach from concept to reality on a large scale project. With these two threads in place, our learning team was able to support Charter's launch of a major upgrade to its core HR technology tools. You will be able to see sample deliverables that live in the ecosystem and how they support the design approach. Finally, you will see how these threads impacted the business metrics and how these two threads helped performance and our stakeholders' ability to meet their business goals.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to determine a strategy and build the business case to enhance your learning ecosystem.
  • How an ecosystem can be leveraged to support learning needs
  • The business impacts  and metrics of combining an ecosystem with a learning strategy
  • Strategies for tackling major technology system roll-outs
  • Tools and techniques that can make creating and maintaining performance support materials easier
  • Data insights that can be used to help stakeholders embrace a performance support approach to learning

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
Learning content management systems, eLearning development tools, video platforms


Kevin Yount

Senior Manager, Learning Technology

Charter Communications

Kevin Yount has been in instructional design and software development for over 15 years. In his current role as manager of learning technology, his team develops and supports custom and hosted learning applications focused on such things as improving employee performance, connecting and enhancing the learning ecosystem, and learning data consolidation.

Marc Donelson

Manager, Curriculum Design

Charter Communications

Marc Donelson is the manager of curriculum design at Charter Communications. He started his career as an eLearning developer, and over the past 20 years has moved into roles as an instructional design and performance consultant. During this time his success has come from balancing new approaches of supporting learners with a company's culture match to adopt new ideas. This is a mindset that Marc's design team now uses throughout its projects.

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612 The Emergent Training Professional: How to Thrive in the Enterprise 4.0 Era

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Monday, October 26

After seeing other companies adopt new technology like AR/VR, AI, or IoT, many training professionals are wondering how to even get started on solutions that are beneficial to their own needs. Or they need guidance after a failed or less-than-stellar attempt on emergent tech that left stakeholders disappointed. The multitude of technology options can seem overwhelming, inaccessible, and unaffordable. And, finding a clear path to a specific solution that meets specific needs quickly feels impossible. Training professionals already know their worlds are changing because of emergent technology. The confusion and handwringing is over and now they want specific solutions that actually work for their particular training needs and career aspirations.

In this session you will move past the high-level discussions of emergent tech and touch and see an actual VR example (Oculus Quest) while learning how to build a coherent strategy that meets the needs of the target audience and the learning objectives. You'll learn practical steps to build an emergent technology adoption that takes into account the requirements of the Audience, the Context, and the Technology—the ACT Connection. You will understand how to work alongside the new training team member named "AI" and how to see it not as a threat but a powerful ally. Most importantly, you will learn real steps to integrate new technology solutions back in the real world. The session will set the stage for the Enterprise 4.0 era and share how it is changing the fundamentals of L&D in areas such as instructional design, assessment, determining skill sets, collaboration, learner tracking, and learning goals. In other words—everything.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Ways to evaluate your existing training methods in light of the Enterprise 4.0 era
  • Criteria that leads to consideration of different types of emergent technology in order to meet your specific training needs
  • The importance of clearly understanding your target audience and their exposure to the emergent technology
  • The ways that user context will greatly impact the training experience impact
  • Steps to work with IT stakeholders to launch a new technology
  • Practical measures to build an emergent technology adoption strategy
  • The power of an immersive VR experience by trying Oculus Quest

Technology discussed:
Augmented reality, virtual reality, Oculus Quest, VR headset, Wander VR software, ISS training VR software, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things


Scott McCormick

CEO

Emergent Enterprise

Scott McCormick is a national speaker, CEO, editor and writer. In a 30+ year career he has helped launched three companies including his current business, Emergent Enterprise. He has spoken at ATD CETS Showcase, Learnaplaooza, Augmented World Expo, LiveWorx, Realities360,, and XR Immersive Enterprise 2020. Scott speaks and consults on topics such as emergent technology adoption strategy and user experience and is editor of emergent-enterprise.com, the tech news and insight website. He was featured in the 2019 eBook, What is Augmented Reality? and has delivered strategy webinars and onsite presentations to leaders in healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality, and consulting.

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615 Engaging Learners with Video: Passive & Active Engagement Strategies

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Monday, October 26

Video is a great tool, but no one wants to watch videos that are tedious or boring. Making engaging videos feels difficult, but it doesn't have to be. During this session we are going to dig into ideas to help make any video more engaging and balance that against keeping it instructionally effective. We'll look at strategies of what you can build into your videos that are passive for the viewer that can make a difference. We'll also look at some interactions that you can build in to provide your viewers opportunities to interact and engage more directly with the content.

In this session, we'll look at two types of engagement strategies: passive and active. Passive engagement is where the video and contents lead the learner to watch and keep watching but requires them to take no action. Active engagement is where the learner is encouraged to take action.

During this session, we'll review and look at multiple passive and active engagement strategies, and their impact (or potential impact) on video outcomes. Both sets of strategies are important and will allow the content creators to impact outcomes.

In addition to covering the variety of strategies, including why and when they can be used to have the greatest impact, other tips to make impactful videos will be included in the session. Video examples will be provided as well.

In this session you will learn:
  • To apply a variety of strategies to create more engaging videos, using both passive and active engagement techniques
  • To draw from a variety of ideas for engagement to enhance the videos to foster better outcomes
  • Ways to make videos more interactive to enhance engagement

Target audience:
Designers, developers


Matthew Pierce

Learning & Video Ambassador

TechSmith

Matthew Pierce, learning & video ambassador from TechSmith, has created videos for learning and marketing for over a decade. He is the lead behind TechSmith Academy, a free platform teaching video and image creation for business, which has been used by tens of thousands of users. He is host of The Visual Lounge Podcast from TechSmith, which streams live on Youtube and LinkedIn weekly. Matthew is a regular speaker at multiple learning and development-focused conferences and is a regular contributor to various training publications.

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622 Building Serious Games: Create an Immersive World and Engage your Learner

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Monday, October 26

In the world of facilitator-led training, review games are the bread and butter of ensuring knowledge retention. Once we transition into the self-paced training realm, review games frequently fall out of focus. There are a number of restrictions that can prevent you from gamifying content reviews. Whether the reason is too much development for a limited amount of use-time or a lack of development time to build an engaging review game, we should overcome the obstacles and build these games! How can you build a review game for your company's needs? Where can you start coming up with ideas for an original story? What do you need to immerse a user in your fictional world? How do you incorporate game elements into your story? So many questions, and just an hour of your time can get you started!

At DISH we recognized the need for an extensive review game in our blended-learning curriculum. We created a game for our participants to take at the end of their six-day new hire training program. The game challenged them on the current and previous days' learning, while progressively advancing in difficulty and subject-matter. In this session you'll go behind the scenes of DISH's Wolf of Wall Street review game and learn how to develop one yourself. From the visuals to the audio, we'll explore how to immerse a player in a story. Next, we'll get into the development details by defining common interactions and how to incorporate them in your own story. By the end of this course, you will walk away with ideas for engaging self-paced review games AND the know-how to build them.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to create an immersive game 
  • How to outline all creative assets needed to produce a serious game
  • Which Articulate Storyline interactions can be used to create game interactions
  • How to customize Articulate Storyline interactions to fit the game's visual imagery

Technology discussed:
Articulate Storyline, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Audition


Pace Myrick

Learning Experience Design Manager II

DISH

Pace Myrick is an accomplished learning leader in the learning and development field for seven years. He has led instructional designers and trainers to build and deliver award-winning content, as recognized by Training Magazine, Brandon Hall Group, and more. With a bachelor's degree in human resource development and extensive experience in leading people, Pace has held fundamental roles in changing the training landscape at DISH.

Marcello Munoz

Learning Experience Designer III

DISH

Marcello Munoz has been working as a professional in the field of instructional design for nine years. He started building eLearning games when Adobe Flash was the dominant program for building online training. With a bachelor's degree in fine art and a certificate in multimedia design, Marcello has extensive knowledge in Articulate Storyline, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, Premier, JavaScript, ActionScript, ReactJS, and HTML. He has been an integral member of corporate teams that have won Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Learning Awards, ATD BEST Awards, and Training Magazine’s Top Training 125 list, two years in a row.

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FS10 Motivation and Learning

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Monday, October 26

We can create the best learning experiences in the world but it won't matter if learners aren't motivated to learn. And even if they do learn, they also need to be motivated to take action on that learning. So how can we influence that motivation in our work in learning and development?

A number of different research-based models exist of human motivation. In this session you'll learn which provide the most actionable recommendations to help learners be motivated, and how to avoid strategies that risk demotivating your audience. You'll look at this research about motivation in a practical way that can help you take models and strategies and determine how best to use them in the context of your work to solve real world challenges.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to translate models (such as self-determination theory) into practical design recommendations
  • How to avoid demotivating your learners
  • How to evaluate motivation strategies such as incentives or gamification to ensure you are using the most effective strategy for your audience
  • How understand the barriers to motivation in your audience
  • How to help people be self-directed learners

Audience:
Designers, managers

Technology discussed:
Digital apps for habit formation


Julie Dirksen

Learning Strategist

Usable Learning

Julie Dirksen, a learning strategist with Usable Learning, is a consultant and instructional designer with more than 15 years' experience creating highly interactive eLearning experiences for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to technology startups to grant-funded research initiatives. She's interested in using neuroscience, change management, and persuasive technology to promote sustainable long-term learning and behavior change. Her MS degree in instructional systems technology is from Indiana University, and she's been an adjunct faculty member at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is the author of Design For How People Learn.

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631 ON-DEMAND: Innovation Governance: Turning Big Ideas into Low-Cost Experiments

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Monday, October 26

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

Team mantras these days seem to be all about acceleration: Get stuff done. Fail fast. Learn fast. Move fast and break things. Even our methods emphasize the need for speed: Agile. Sprint. Rapid prototyping. And while there's no doubt that traditional design approaches are slow, it seems we're still wasting money on tech that doesn't meet our needs, building stuff we can't scale, disappointing stakeholders and frustrating users. There's a lot of effort and uncertainty involved in getting from, "What should we build?" to delivery of a viable, feasible, and desirable solution.

In this session you will explore the concept of innovation governance: a framework for capturing ideas, prioritizing them, and developing solutions that solve user problems. You'll learn how frameworks like design thinking, lean, and Agile can be integrated to help you find patterns in the noise and then turn those insights into low-cost experiments. Internalize the mindset of "start small and scale" and walk away with ideas for how to test the validity of your design before you invest in development.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The concept of innovation governance
  • Tools for capturing ideas and feedback so they can be synthesized for insight
  • A framework for prototyping methods and how to choose the right tool for what you need to learn
  • A five-step process for running successful prototyping experiments

Technology discussed:
Trello, Quora, Reddit, usertesting.com


Becca Wilson

Senior Product Manager, Training & Certification

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Becca Wilson is a New York City-based product manager, designer, and facilitator with experience creating innovative and engaging education products for companies and individuals. She has more than 10 years of experience in instructional design, training delivery, and developing blended learning strategies for Fortune 500 organizations. Becca currently works at Amazon Web Services (AWS) on initiatives designed to close the global cloud skills gap at scale. Previously, she worked at IBM where she focused on addressing the scarcity of artificial intelligence skills in the marketplace. Becca was also an education product manager and learning experience architect at General Assembly, supporting the ongoing discovery and development of scalable learning products in UX and product management.

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632 ON-DEMAND: Create Stunning Interactions in Minutes Using Adobe Captivate

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Monday, October 26

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

Adding interactions to your eLearning courses can make them interesting and engaging for learners. But it can be time-consuming, and to some extent, challenging as well.

In this session, you'll explore simple ways to add interactivity to your eLearning courses. You will learn how to use interactive objects, multi-state objects, drag and drops, simple actions, and automatic forced navigation in Adobe Captivate. You'll also learn about tips and tricks to quickly convert drab and boring content to vibrant interactive eLearning, without using any advanced features.

In this session, you will learn:
  • To use interactive objects in Captivate to build custom interactions
  • How to build click-to-reveal and click-to-replace interactions
  • To create a click-to-play audio interaction
  • To build an interactive slideshow
  • To create variations of process interactions
  • To create drag and drop interactions to match objects
  • To enable automatic forced navigation for interactive screens.

Audience:
Designers, developers

Technology discussed:
Adobe Captivate


Pooja Jaisingh

Senior Director, Digital Learning

Icertis

Pooja Jaisingh works as a senior director of digital learning at Icertis. She has created several award-winning eLearning courses and authored books and video courses on eLearning tools and technologies. In her previous roles, she worked as a principal eLearning evangelist at Adobe and chief learning geek at a start-up. Pooja is CPTD-, and COTP-certified. She holds a master’s degree in education & economics and a doctorate in educational technology.

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634 ON-DEMAND: Easy & Effective Visual Storytelling with PowerPoint Morph

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Monday, October 26

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

Training presentations and eLearning often suffer from the same problem—too much text and not enough engaging content, resulting in death by PowerPoint or dull click-through eLearning. Everyone largely recognizes this now, and that a great way to solve it is to develop more dynamic, more visual, and more interactive content. There are tools out there to do it, but it can take such a long time. But one really cool way to achieve a great end result is to use PowerPoint. No, really. Specifically the Morph transition, which is just incredible and is staggeringly quick to use.

This session explores ways to really push the effect and tell stories in a way that wasn't possible before in PowerPoint, using dynamic visuals, interactive elements, and a whole host of techniques that provide a much more immersive and seamless experience for your audience. And it's all done with standard PowerPoint. You'll see techniques like lens effects, reveals, cutaways, and complex sequences that push your storytelling to another level. We'll examine the various tricks used to bring your content to life and harness the power of Morph to do ever more complex and amazing things with visuals, all of which only take a short amount of time to create. It's only a single transition, but understanding the nuances behind how various effects have been achieved will give you the skills to transform your existing content and use to generate more effective presentations, webinars, videos, and eLearning.

In this session, you will learn:
  • To develop complex visual storytelling techniques, all within standard PowerPoint
  • To go under the hood of PowerPoint with in-depth Morph hacks to achieve amazing effects
  • How to use Morph to create seamless interactive content for self-guided learning or responsive training
  • How to use and export these Morph techniques to other media and formats

Technology discussed:
PowerPoint


Richard Goring

Director

BrightCarbon

Richard Goring is a director at BrightCarbon, a presentation and eLearning agency. He enjoys helping people create engaging content and communicate effectively using visuals, diagrams, and animated sequences that explain and reinforce the key points.

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637 ON-DEMAND: Going Beyond Standard eLearning Tools: Exploring Custom HTML5 Development

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Monday, October 26

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

Standard eLearning tools are great and you can do a lot with them, but they have their limits. There are parts of those tools that you can't customize or control, or if you can, it takes a lot of hacking to get it the way you want. Some eLearning tools also produce large files with a lot of extra lines of code that make your courses slower and harder to interact with. Cost can be a factor too, as tools may be priced out for reach for some organizations.

In this session you'll look at an alternative option for eLearning development—inexpensive HTML5 standards to build custom courses that have no limits. There are literally thousands of different coding libraries that allow you to add on and customize any type of functionality you want in your course. You'll discover some of the libraries that you can use to create standard eLearning experiences, as well as other libraries that allow you to add functionality that you can't easily get with standard eLearning tools. The best part of all of this? Almost every library you'll explore in this session is free! There is so much you can do with custom courses so let's start by exploring what's possible.

In this session, you will learn:
  • About custom course structure
  • Which JavaScript libraries can be used for eLearning
  • Which JavaScript libraries have resources you can use for developing AR and VR experiences
  • What you need to know about each library to use them effectively

Technology discussed:
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, various HTML5 libraries


Jeff Batt

Founder

Learning Dojo

Jeff Batt has 15+ years of experience in the digital learning and media industry. Currently, Jeff Batt is a Learning Experience Designer for Amazon. He is the founder and trainer at Learning Dojo, a company dedicated to training you to become a software ninja in various eLearning, web, and mobile-related software applications. He was also the program manager of DevLearn for The Learning Guild. Jeff often speaks on developmental technologies such as xAPI, HTML5, augmented reality, mobile development, eLearning development tools, and more.

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714 Address the Skills Gap with Micro-Credentialing

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Tuesday, October 27

As the skills gap in our workplaces increases, more organizations are having to rapidly contend with the problem in their own backyards. Essential technical and software skills are falling behind, and almost half of CEOs from 500 major corporations across the US report that durable skills like communication, critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity aren't at the levels they need to succeed. To prepare future workforces, we need a way to track current skill sets, identify gaps in skills development, incentivize people to pursue additional skills development, and create a common mode of sharing these to demonstrate those skills to others so that they can't be falsified.

Using Open Badges to provide micro-credentials is a great way to track upskilling and career pathing for learners within organizations. This session will cover how micro-credentialing supports ongoing professional development and personalized learning pathways as it pertains to accomplishments and skills.

In this session you will learn what challenges micro-credentialing will solve, and how. For example, as an individual, open badges will allow you to get a digital accreditation that you can take with you. It will also provide others with insight into your professional development and demonstrate efforts to improve. Finally, micro-credentials can incentivize you to pursue new skills, with micro-credentials acting as a currency in the workplace. On the other side of the equation, micro-credentials help organizations identify areas for improvement as well as the distribution of talent and gaps; increase completion, productivity, and engagement; demonstrate a culture of learning, and finally, help create alignment with skills needed for continuous improvement across sectors.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to leverage an open badge framework
  • How to track progress to act as a workplace currency
  • How to analyze why most organizations that try badging don't succeed in their goals
  • How badges help solve the skills gap, and how clients are using them to transform their learning culture
  • Strategies for badging effectively in your organization

Technology discussed:
Brightspace, D2L's learning platform

Laura Janusek

Senior Product Manager

D2L

Laura Janusek loves building solutions that improve the education space. She has overseen the development of a range of EdTech products, both as a founding team member at digedu and as the head of product at Modern Teacher. Most recently she has joined the team at D2L, a top learning management system serving millions of users globally. Laura is an active member of communities for women in technology, a regular conference speaker, and a passionate believer in technology’s ability to improve lives in the education space and beyond.

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721 Let's Fix That C.R.A.P.! A Design Critique and Improvement Session

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Tuesday, October 27

We've all come across training and performance support materials that just don't look professional, don't visually communicate well, or are visually overwhelming. Sometimes we even create them ourselves! The challenge for those of us without graphic design skills is finding a straightforward, simple, repeatable way to improve this aspect of our work. If we can improve the visual communication, we can ultimately improve learning and performance outcomes. What's great is that you don't have to be a graphic design guru to make clear, visually successful materials.

In this session you'll learn a few straightforward graphic design principles that anyone can use to evaluate the visual design of materials to facilitate communication. We'll focus on C.R.A.P.: Contrast (if it's different, make it very obviously different); Repetition (if it's the same type of information, style it the same; choose a single design element or style and use it consistently); Alignment (nothing should be placed arbitrarily; line things up with each other precisely); and Proximity (if something goes together conceptually, put it together physically). We'll then apply those principles together to collaboratively critique some visual designs, finding ways that we can improve the design based on each principle. We'll use a tool you likely already use—Microsoft PowerPoint—to practice improving those examples using the same framework of graphic design principles. The types of improvements we'll make can easily transfer to other development tools used for elearning or desktop publishing so you can then take these principles and new skills back to work to improve your creations!

In this session, you will learn:
  • Four straightforward graphic design principles to follow: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity
  • How those principles support communication by organizing and clarifying the visual message of the content
  • How to repeatably evaluate visual designs using the four principles, with collaborative hands-on practice
  • How to improve visual designs following those principles, with hands-on practice using Microsoft PowerPoint text, design, and layout tools
  • How to apply text styling to text content in PowerPoint
  • How to apply consistent alignment to various elements in PowerPoint
  • How to apply slide masters and layouts to slides in PowerPoint

Technology discussed:
Microsoft PowerPoint

Participant technology requirements:
A laptop running Microsoft PowerPoint. A tablet may also work, but I won't be able to customize or troubleshoot for them because I don't use one.

Meg Bertapelle

Principal Instructional Designer

Intuitive

Meg Bertapelle is a principal instructional designer in the global customer learning & development department at Intuitive, with over 15 years of experience designing and developing learning solutions. She works continuously to improve internal and external customers' learning experiences involving Intuitive's products, emphasizing activity and practice as often as possible. Meg holds an MA in instructional technology from San Jose State University. She received the "Education Professional of the Year" award from her organization in 2016, placed second in the DevLearn Hyperdrive competition in 2017, and has been pleased to speak at DevLearn the last few years.

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725 Creating Amazing Microlearning Experiences: Get Inspired

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Tuesday, October 27

We often struggle to jump through hoops and find ways to simplify what we do and how we can help our audience. We hear all the buzzwords and we need help in defining an action plan for how to move forward.

In this session you will get insights on how to plan, design, and develop flexible microlearning components to improve ease of access, including supporting just-in-time solutions. Learn about several mobile and desktop apps, tools, and resources to quickly and affordably create audio, video, graphics, animation, and screencasts that you can implement on your next microlearning project. You will learn practical ways to apply the inspiration from DDX in what you’ve seen to the work you do.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How collaborative tools from Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, and Miro can simplify your creative and development processes
  • New tools, apps, and resources that you can apply immediately to get creative, simplify approvals, and juggle all the projects you are working on
  • How to design and prototype with Adobe XD, and how to share and gather feedback from your stakeholders and audience
  • How to design better feedback loops, from forms to testing
  • About apps that can simplify sharing of audio and video to quickly get your team and audience up to speed

Technologies discussed:
Adobe Spark, Explain Everything, PodBean, Miro, Mural, Adobe XD, Paper by Dropbox, Microsoft OneNote, Google Docs, Amazon Web Services, Figma, Descript

Nick Floro

Learning Architect/Imagineer

Sealworks Interactive Studios

Nick Floro, a co-founder and learning architect at Sealworks Interactive Studios, has over 25 years of experience developing learning solutions, applications, and web platforms. Nick is passionate about how design and technology can enhance learning and loves to share his knowledge and experience to teach, inspire, and motivate. As a learning architect, Nick gets to sketch, imagine, and prototype for each challenge. He has worked with start-ups to Fortune 500 companies to help them understand the technology and develop innovative solutions to support their audiences. Nick has won numerous awards from Apple and organizations for productions and services.

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731 ON-DEMAND: Build a Knowledge Management System to Improve Learning Efficiency with $0

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Tuesday, October 27

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve shows that repetition is the key. However, people rarely revisit an eLearning course they have taken. When they try to retrieve a certain piece of information from a course, they are discouraged since the information is trapped somewhere within an hour-long module in a traditional LMS. The organization is asking for an efficient solution to serve both formal and informal learning needs with the content created by L&D. Why don't we take out the content and convert it into free form to be used for both purposes? What if it can be built in a way to be integrated in your current LMS? What if it costs $0 budget to build such a system?

In this case study session, you will look at the learning challenges and needs in our organization and how we selected the platform to meet the needs and constraints. Find out how we build the knowledge management system using a platform you probably already own: Microsoft SharePoint (and alternatives), with no additional budget required. You will explore how to develop the framework of the knowledge management system by mapping out the existing content and the format of the content (articles, videos, spreadsheet, FAQs, etc.), and the tactics to integrate the knowledge management system into any LMS. Finally, you will look at how real-life victories and setbacks bring us where we are today.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Why we need knowledge management systems
  • Technical features and functionalities required to build a minimum viable knowledge management system
  • Development of the system content structure and framework
  • A new delivery model to integrate the knowledge management system into the LMS
  • The tips and pitfalls during implementation and maintenance

Technology discussed:
Microsoft SharePoint, knowledge management system

Lingyao Wang

Instructional Designer

NORDSON

Lingyao Wang has been working as an instructional design professional for 10+ years. She has a master's degree in instructional systems from Florida State University. She has experience working on various training subjects in different industries including government, food, oil and gas, electronics, etc. She is currently working at Nordson, a global leader in the industry, with a focus on technical training and system implementation. She is a firm believer in using innovative training solutions to drive behavior change and revenue growth.

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732 ON-DEMAND: Building an Adaptive Course in Articulate Storyline

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Tuesday, October 27

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

"I don't have time for this." "I already know this stuff." "Why do I have to go through all of this?" How often have you heard complaints like these? Everybody's busy these days. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do something to lighten the load?

In this session, you'll use standard Storyline features to quickly build a course that adapts itself to your audience, based on how they're doing. You'll discover how to create a pretest to evaluate pre-existing knowledge and use that information to allow your learners to skip sections that cover content they already know. You'll find out how to set up remedial sections to give more content or practice to those who need it. And you'll then learn how to create a final test which ends as soon as someone passes or fails, instead of making them go through the rest of the test questions.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to customize course content based on pretest results
  • A simple way to show remedial content only when it's needed
  • How to end the final test early, as soon as someone passes or fails
  • You'll also get access to templates with all these features that you can use back on the job

Audience:
Designers, developers

Technology discussed:
Articulate Storyline

Simon Blair

eLearning Specialist

SimonBlairTraining.com

Simon Blair is an evil genius and all-around great guy. He has developed eLearning and associated apps, spearheaded quality and efficiency initiatives, and is a go-to source for all things LMS and eLearning technology, supporting colleagues around the globe. At various points he has also been a software developer, a teaching assistant on back-country camping courses, a technical trainer, and a facilitator of virtual and in-person training across North America. He's also facilitated hands-on sessions at multiple North American conferences.

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733 ON-DEMAND: Podcast Production for the Rest of Us

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Tuesday, October 27

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

Are you interested in the potential of podcasts to engage busy learners? Maybe you've listened to podcasts for your own personal development and now want to create them yourself as another type of learning solution, however the process may seem intimidating, very technical, or you just aren't sure how to get started.

In this BYOD session, you'll learn the basics of podcast production through a series of demonstrations and hands-on activities. Afterwards you'll be able to apply what you've learned to produce and distribute your own full-length podcasts that supplement learning solutions or stand on their own. After a very brief demonstration of the podcast production process, you'll create your own podcast audio file. Each participant will use Audacity (a free audio editing program available for Mac and PC) to edit together several provided audio clips, along with some you will be encouraged to create yourself. You'll perform basic audio edits and adjustments (e.g., cut, trim, level, and fade) and assemble a final 1 - 2 minute audio file complete with intro and outro music. Finally, you will be encouraged to take what you have learned from this session and produce your own audio file from scratch. Record a short summary of your experience at DevLearn and turn it into a short podcast episode to share with your peers or manager.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The basics of podcast audio production (e.g., prep, record, edit, and publish)
  • How to use Audacity to create a podcast episode from start to finish
  • How to export audio to podcast-friendly formats
  • How to go to the next level and improve audio quality with practice

Technology discussed:
Audio recording and editing tools (Audacity) 

Participant technology requirements:
You will need a laptop with Audacity installed (Laptop should have Wi-Fi capabilities and no restrictions on access to cloud sharing sites like Dropbox). You'll also want to have either earbuds or a noise-cancelling headset with a microphone.

Joseph Suarez

Senior eLearning Developer

Management Concepts

Joseph Suarez works as an instructional designer and eLearning developer in Columbus, OH. He strives to craft impactful learning experiences based on effective design, proven technology, and empathy for end users. Joseph also produces and co-hosts the Instructional Redesign podcast.

Cara North

Learning & Development Leader, Speaker, & Author

Medical Mutual

Cara North is an award-winning learning leader who has worked in both corporate and higher education settings, as well as an independent consultant. Cara currently manages the learning and performance function at Medical Mutual. She is the author of Learning Experience Design Essentials and serves as a lecturer at Boise State University in their Organizational Performance Workplace Learning (OPWL) masters and certificate program.

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734 ON-DEMAND: How Universal Design for Learning Principles Make Your Training More Accessible

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Tuesday, October 27

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

If it's not visible, most individuals don't openly announce that they have some sort of learning or physical disability or challenge unless they're asked. Knowing that, instructional designers must create content to be as accessible as possible in order to be able to engage audiences of all backgrounds. But how can we ensure that we're creating training content that is comprehensible and usable to the broadest spectrum of participants? That is where the universal design for learning (UDL) principles come in handy. By following UDL principles, you'll be able to create training content that's easily navigable and understandable for all users so that even if a participant has dyslexia, visual impairments, or is an English language learner, they can still navigate and comprehend the content just as successfully as the rest of their colleagues.

In this session, you'll learn about what universal design for learning is and who UDL benefits. (Spoiler: the answer is it benefits everyone!) You'll explore the best practices on how to create training content that is the most comprehensible and engaging for the vast majority of participants through techniques like using the tools within Word and PowerPoint to make files screen reader-friendly, identifying which format of presenting materials is most accessible, identifying which materials should include alternative formats, and more. You'll leave this session knowing that developing an accessible training course doesn't mean you have to strip out all of the "bells and whistles”, instead, there are ways to make a training course both engaging and accessible to a wide variety of audiences if you just follow some very basic UDL principles.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Why universal design is a more effective approach when it comes to designing and creating training for participants
  • Which format is the best way to present different types of content (i.e., text information, videos, outside sources, etc.)
  • How to create and present materials in a flexible manner so participants from all backgrounds are able to access and engage with the content easily and demonstrate what they know
  • How to use different platforms to convert materials into accessible formats (i.e., built-in tools within Word and PowerPoint to create accessible documents, Adobe Acrobat to tag PDFs, YouTube as a preliminary video captioning tool)
  • Which materials within a training need alternative formats to be accessible
  • How to identify the typical problem areas that may go unnoticed during training development

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, YouTube, Adobe Acrobat

Judy Tseng

Senior Instructional Designer

Collegis Education

Judy Tseng is an instructional designer at Collegis Education and is the lead of the company's ADA project team for the content development department. Graduating from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a master's degree in education for instructional leadership, she's developed numerous higher education courses and training courses with clients from all different types of programs and backgrounds. She is also always passionate to learn more about what can be done to improve learning content to result in more engaging materials.

Kristin Swintek

Project Manager

Collegis Education

Kristin Swintek is a project manager for Collegis Education with 10 years' experience in eLearning. With a bachelor's degree in graphic design from Columbia College Chicago, Kristin has designed courses and trainings for corporate and higher education clients. They are passionate about creating eLearning content and media that is engaging for all learners and specializes in accessibility and universal design to ensure that people of all abilities can gain knowledge and enrich their world through education.

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735 ON-DEMAND: xAPI: What Is It & What Do I Need to Do? (An Intro to xAPI)

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Tuesday, October 27

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

As adoption of xAPI begins to take hold, it allows for more robust and interesting tracking of the learning process. As actual performance and results data are integrated with learning metrics, L&D professionals will have the data they need to tailor the learning process to individual needs at the same time that they can draw more useful conclusions about the learning as a whole across a wider population. With the xAPI specification nearly seven years old, the tools and platforms needed to support it are ready for mass adoption and many L&D professionals need a way to get started. This session is that foundational, practical, non-technical introduction to xAPI.

After a brief introduction to xAPI and what's different about it from the SCORM-based data we're used to, this session will explore three key areas that impact instructional designers as they embark on their first xAPI projects. First, we'll examine learning data needs and data sources that will help you answer organizational and L&D questions. Then we'll look at making choices about infrastructure: how and when to work with your LMS, your LRS, or both. This will provide participants with key insights to take back to their organization about how to get started. Finally, we'll discuss what can be done with the data gleaned from these projects: from better insights to the learning experience, data visualization, personalization and recommendations, business rules triggers and more.

In this session Megan shares a high-level review of currently available software & tools for getting started with xAPI. This section includes an up-to-date list of vendors with xAPI offerings. Takeaways will include a list of resources and other learning opportunities, an organizational readiness assessment that includes both infrastructure and cultural elements, and a set of questions to ask before embarking on any data-driven learning project.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to describe the impact that xAPI can have on your organization's learning and performance strategies
  • How to identify data needs and likely sources within the organization
  • How to identify new challenges in your work as an instructional designer
  • How to choose one or more first projects that leverage xAPI's capabilities beyond what's available in SCORM today

Technology discussed:
xAPI, SCORM, LRS, LMS, eLearning authoring

Megan Torrance

CEO

TorranceLearning

Megan Torrance is CEO and founder of TorranceLearning, which helps organizations connect learning strategy to design, development, data, and ultimately performance. She has more than 25 years of experience in learning design, deployment, and consulting . Megan and the TorranceLearning team are passionate about sharing what works in learning, so they devote considerable time to teaching and sharing about Agile project management for learning experience design and the xAPI. She is the author of Agile for Instructional Designers, The Quick Guide to LLAMA, and Making Sense of xAPI. Megan is also an eCornell Facilitator in the Women's Executive Leadership curriculum.

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FS13 Tips and Tricks to Create Standout Microlearning Videos

11:00 AM - 11:45 AM Thursday, October 29

We all know that video is one of the core ways the modern learner prefers to digest content. And the market has responded accordingly. With so many different softwares, programs, and styles that can be used to quickly and efficiently create microlearning video, how do you choose which is the right one for your program, timeframe, or budget?

This interactive session performs an in-depth analysis of five common types of microlearning video:
  1. Animated (using software such as Vyond)
  2. Whiteboard animation
  3. Compiled video or screen capture (using software such as Camtasia)
  4. PowerPoint
  5. Traditional video
This analysis includes a breakdown of the approximate costs associated with purchasing any needed equipment or software, discussing the learning curve associated in learning each method, exploring the potential budget or timeline involved in creating video using the selected medium, and sharing some scenarios where one type of video might work better (or worse) than other options. We'll also discuss some tricks we've learned in each platform to make your videos truly stand out.

In this session, you will learn:
  • About the various types of videos that can be used to create quick, effective, and engaging microlearning
  • How to properly budget your team's time and resources for each type of video based on the selected medium
  • Which equipment or software is needed to produce your video
  • When one style or type of video may be more effective and efficient at communicating your learning objective

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
Vyond, Adobe Premiere Pro, PowerPoint, Camtasia, various microphones and audio recorders, various cameras for shooting video


LaTarshia Wooten

Learning Experience Designer

LaTarshia Wooten is a learning experience designer with a background in communication and education media. She is passionate about helping others learn and understands the importance of reaching them on different platforms. She believes that learning should be fun, interactive, and provides value to the learner.

Julia Whaley

eLearning Developer

Cinecraft Productions

As an eLearning developer at Cinecraft Productions, Julia Whaley creates effective and engaging learning solutions. She enjoys developing scenario- and simulation-based training to help clients across various industries not only transfer knowledge, but transform learner behavior. A lifelong learner herself, Julia strives to master the skills and tools of her trade and continually add new ones to her arsenal as the learning landscape evolves. She studied media and design at James Madison University, and has been a speaker at multiple Learning Guild events.

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911 Finding the Fun: Lessons from Indie Games Designers

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Thursday, October 29

Too often, instructional designers are given dry content and told to "make it fun." But no matter how much gamification we add, it's still not enough to cover up how excruciatingly boring the content is. Exciting graphics, peer competition, and reward systems can only hold peoples' attention for so long—at some point they'll have to actually engage with and retain the material. However, we know how much fun learning new things can be, and there are many examples of fantastic learning games that are both engaging and highly effective. What sets those games apart and how can we emulate them? In this session, we'll look to the indie games community, which is on the forefront of designing unique and interesting game experiences, to learn how we can "find the fun" in our content and move from simple gamification into designing real games.

While fighting for attention in a heavily competitive market but without the big budgets of large, graphics-heavy games, indie developers must rely on good design to engage their players. Low budgets, short timelines, and distracted users sound familiar to instructional designers. In this session, you'll learn how the indie games community is solving the engagement problem and explore how you can incorporate the same principles into your own designs. You'll take a look at real game design documents and hear from designers about how they find the fun their everyday experiences to create unique and meaningful games. We'll explore the similarities between the game design process and competency-based learning, and discuss how games can be used as tools for persuasion, practice, and assessment. We'll also look at the community that supports indie game designers to see how instructional designers can emulate it, or even get involved themselves. Whether you're building a game or just looking to find the fun within your content, you'll come away from this session with a fresh perspective on how to engage your learners.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Design thinking strategies for developing playful learning experiences
  • How to "find the fun" in even the most boring content
  • How multiplayer online games provide a model for building peer learning activities
  • How to leverage competency-based learning to create authentic game mechanics
  • How indie game developers build a supportive community, and how instructional designers can do the same

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
Unity, Twine, GameMaker, Articulate Storyline, GitHub


Deidre Witan

Instructional Designer

Curriculum Associates

Deidre Witan is an instructional designer at Curriculum Associates, where she creates innovative and engaging learning experiences for teachers. She has designed learning games for both kids and adults at the MIT Education Arcade and Interactable, Inc. A graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Technology, Innovation, and Education program, now working in the GUMBO indie games collective, she has a unique perspective on both how gamers learn, and how learners play.

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912 Creating Memorable Animated Explainer Videos in 60 Minutes or Less

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Thursday, October 29

Remember the first time you discovered PowerPoint animations? Like most people, you probably went overboard with the animation at first. But you eventually figured out that less is more. Now think about your animation software. Your message may be getting lost in the clutter of canned characters and animation effects. Plus, if your videos all look and sound the same, your learners will start to tune them out. It's time to move beyond the software and explore better ways to make your explainer videos stand out.

In this session, we're going to build an animated explainer video together in 60 minutes. If you show up to this session, you're instantly part of the design team. We won't be making a fancy explainer video, but that's the point. It just needs to be effective. And memorable. And yes, maybe a little bit quirky. To start, we'll have a quick look at what makes a great explainer video: images, script, narration and music. Then we'll create a story that will "hook" the learner. We'll look at which animation style works best for our video. From there, we'll determine the proper length for our video–probably 30 seconds–and write our narration script. After that, we'll find good quality images for our animation, and then record and edit our narration. Finally, we'll put it all together: music, narration, images, and simple animation effects. And presto, we've just built an animated explainer video together!

In this session, you will learn:
  • How you can animate using any software tool
  • How to hook your audience with a great script
  • How to choose the right narration style
  • How to choose the right illustration and animation style
  • How to choose the right music

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
Camtasia, PowerPoint, Storyline

Sarah Dewar

Educational Technology Specialist

Michael Garron Hospital

Sarah Dewar is a seasoned instructional designer and developer. She has over 20 years of experience in the realm of adult learning, complemented by 15 years of experience creating innovative eLearning solutions for healthcare professionals. Sarah is currently developing a virtual reality training solution to orient healthcare workers to a new state-of-the-art healthcare centre. She also creates custom animation to engage learners. Sarah shares her knowledge internationally and volunteers her expertise to not-for-profit organizations.

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921 Tools for Creating Champagne Assets on a Beer Budget

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Thursday, October 29

When SMEs hand the instructional designer content it can sometimes be wordy, visually uninteresting, and without consideration for how people learn. Instructional designers are then tasked with taking these cluttered Word docs and PowerPoints and turning them into beautiful, on-brand assets built for how people learn. And while it's great to have exciting design tools and assets to help you make that content clearer, that can be tricky when you have little to no budget. Wouldn't it be great if there were a variety of free tools to help you create champagne assets on a beer budget?

In this session, you'll explore a variety of free (and freemium) tools that can assist you in creating beautiful learning assets on a budget. We'll discuss the principles of design and use a variety of tools that help us use balance, color, shape, and type to create assets that wow your users. You'll investigate how using Canva, the Noun Project, free Adobe tools, Wordmark, Google Fonts, and other easy-to-learn digital tools can help you with that dream of being able to create a champagne asset on a beer budget.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to use principles of design to create assets that wow your users
  • How to modify Canva templates to your brand's needs
  • How to find beautiful images and icons for your learning assets
  • How to match colors and fonts across platforms
  • How the principles of design can increase retention

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
Adobe Colors, The Noun Project, Unsplash, Pexels, Wordmark, Google Fonts, Adobe Capture, Color Picker, Canva


Rachel Medeiros

Instructional Designer

Amplified EDU

Rachel Medeiros is an instructional designer with over six years of experience developing custom-built training programs for schools, entrepreneurs, and corporations. Her eight years of middle school teaching experience made her an expert in creating engaging activities that deliver real results. Her innovative ideas and passionate workshops led her to become a Google for Education Certified Innovator and Trainer. With a masters in instructional science & technology from California State University, Monterey Bay, Rachel understands the science of learning. Rachel applies this knowledge and her classroom teaching experience to create intentional training plans that are engaging, easy to implement, and sustainable.

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922 6 Decisions to Make When Designing Online Software Training

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Thursday, October 29

Whether you're rolling out a new time-and-attendance system, upgrading your accounting software, or sharing the best tips and tricks on Microsoft Excel, eLearning can be a great way to get software training out to the people in your organization. But how do you approach such a project? Before recording simulations in tools like Captivate, Storyline, or Camtasia, you've got some important decisions to make. Should they just sit back and watch, or do they need to practice? Should we teach all the ways to do something or just one way? Do we really need a lesson on how to log in?

In this program, you'll look at six key design decisions you'll need to make when creating online software training. You'll tackle everything from whether to teach just the procedural steps or whether to teach underlying business rules and concepts to how to structure practice activities to provide just enough support to your learners. You'll walk away with specific tips on how to tackle issues like these:
  • They don't just need to know where to click—they need to know how to make decisions and adjust their workflow.
  • This needs to work for folks who know the old system, as well as people new to the organization.
  • I call it a menu but my co-worker calls it a drop-down.
  • A lot of this is self-explanatory, but that might not be true for everyone.
  • I need to start developing but the software isn't done yet.
  • You'll get to see real, live examples of different options so you can get a real sense of what the learner experience would be like and how that approach might work in your environment.

In this session, you will learn:
  • To uncover the needs of your learners around software training
  • How to get the right people on the team and the right access to the system you're training on
  • To balance the need for "where-to-click" training with the need for business process training
  • To use clear, consistent language when writing scripts or procedural steps
  • Design practices with just the right amount of support and guidance
  • How to adjust your process when encountering delays or changes to the software

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate


Diane Elkins

Owner/Founder

E-Learning Uncovered

Diane Elkins is owner of Artisan E-Learning, a custom eLearning development company, and E-Learning Uncovered, where she helps people build courses they're proud of. She has built a reputation as a national eLearning expert by being a frequent speaker at major industry events for ATD, The Learning Guild, and Training Magazine. Her favorite topics include accessibility, instructional design, and Articulate Storyline. She is co-author of the popular E-Learning Uncovered book series, as well as E-Learning Fundamentals: A Practical Guide, from ATD Press. She is a past board member of the Northeast Florida and Metro DC chapters of ATD.

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923 Project Management Magic with Project Charters

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Thursday, October 29

Kicking off any project is critical for project success. You start with the schedule, right? WRONG. When you skip the Project Charter, your schedule can end up being nonsense. The critical Project Charter defines WHY you are doing this project by identifying roles, objectives, risks, constraints, communication and governance. You're dead without it. The good news it takes less than 45 minutes to complete a Project Charter.

Think about a real project you'd like help with and attend this session to get your project humming. You'll get a copy of the Project Charter template to work on one of your real projects. You'll learn with peers to document simple activities in the charter. You'll easily finish it before the session is over and you'll be very proud of all the things you know now but didn't know before. Whether you work with ADDIE, SAM, LLAMA, AGILE or you like to just-build-it, the Project Charter is the critical starting place. Bring a pen and let's begin.

In this session, you will learn:
  • Why the Project Charter is the secret sauce of successful projects
  • How role clarity is critically important—who's in charge?
  • What objectives, constraints, communication, and governance contribute to the Scope Diagram
  • How a visual Scope Diagram drives communication with all stakeholders
  • How the Project Charter jumpstarts a successful project schedule

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
Templates and pencils


Lou Russell

Managing Practice Director

Moser Consulting

Lou Russell is director of learning at Moser Consulting. As an executive consultant, speaker, and author, she channels her passion to create growth in companies by growing their people. Lou inspires greatness in leadership, projects, and teams. She is the author of seven popular books on leadership, teams, and project management. Most importantly to Lou, you will leave this session with a new tool.

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FS14 Planning Your Learning Data Strategy

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Thursday, October 29

Executives are expecting key questions about their investment in L&D to be answered, backed by data. For too many years, L&D has generated a limited set of LMS and survey data. These data may show L&D activity and learner satisfaction but don't really explain L&D's value to the organization. Things get even trickier when you move beyond training to a more comprehensive learning and performance ecosystem. Knowledge bases, social networks, performance support tools, adaptive learning, microlearning, augmented and virtual reality-based learning, and serious games all generate their own data.

A data strategy describes the questions that must be answered and the data needed to make decisions and take actions that result in an advantage to the enterprise. In this session you will be introduced to a process for establishing your learning data strategy. We'll discuss the three most critical ways to use learning data, how to determine what data you need, what you have and where it is, and approaches to collection and analysis of data to create useful dashboard and generate actionbable reports.

In this session, you will learn:
  • The three most critical ways to use learning data
  • How to determine what data you need, what you have, and where it is
  • How to put mechanisms in place to collect and analyze data
  • How to define taxonomies for tagging and describing data
  • How to use dashboards and reports to drive decision-making

Technology discussed:
Knowledge bases, social networks, performance support tools, adaptive learning, microlearning, augmented and virtual reality-based learning
Session evaluation

Steve Foreman

President

InfoMedia Designs

Steve Foreman is the author of The LMS Guidebook and president of InfoMedia Designs, a provider of eLearning infrastructure consulting services and technology solutions to large companies, academic institutions, professional associations, government, and military. Steve works with forward-looking organizations to find new and effective ways to apply computer technology to support human performance. His work includes enterprise learning strategy, learning and performance ecosystem solutions, LMS selection and implementation, learning-technology architecture and integration, expert-knowledge harvesting, knowledge management, and innovative performance-centered solutions that blend working and learning.

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933 ON-DEMAND: No AI, No Problem! Build a Computer Opponent in Storyline Without JavaScript

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Thursday, October 29

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.  

"I'm afraid that's not the right answer, Player One. Player Two, can you steal the points and take the lead?"

Wouldn't it be great if you could build an AI-like opponent in Storyline 360 without using a single line of code? Add a competitive element to topics such as onboarding and compliance to make them more engaging and replayable, with a 'mechanical computer' that will track and respond to your learner's answers, push them to perform better, and assess them more effectively? Learn how to challenge and motivate your learners with 'game show' mechanics and a dynamic scoring system in this interactive session. Can your learner hold their nerve or will the computer opponent go home with the prize?

In this session you will learn how to modify Storyline's random number generator to power an intelligent but fallible computer opponent. This 'mechanical computer' requires no coding or JavaScript plug-ins, making this a technique that can be used by anyone with a basic understanding of motion paths, states, variables, and triggers in Storyline. As our method   does not rely on JavaScript, it will free up development time by allowing you to rapidly prototype and test it within 'preview mode'. Once built, we will configure this 'mechanical computer' to steal points away from your learner or to fail the question too, introducing the elements of chance and competition to the assessment. We will then place both our learner and our computer opponent in a game show-style environment and discuss how this approach will make learners excited to see what will happen next and motivate them to complete, and if necessary, retake your course. All participants will leave this session with a working proptype, a 'How-To Guide' and other resources used in the design.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to modify the random number generator to stop it picking the same number twice
  • How to rapidly prototype a complex game engine without JavaScript that works even in preview mode
  • How this game engine can power a dynamic computer opponent in a 'game show' environment
  • How to configure standard multiple choice quiz slides to support this approach
  • What changes you need to make to the results slide to make sense of the data produced by this assessment format in a standard SCORM report

Technology discussed:
Articulate Storyline 360

Jonathan Hill

Digital Learning Manager

Commercial Express

Jonathan Hill is an award-winning eLearning designer based in the UK, with a background in teaching and training in the further education and insurance sectors. For the past four years he has specialized in online and distance learning. Alongside his role as digital learning manager for Commercial Express, Jonathan is an active member of the Articulate E- Learning Heroes Community.

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934 ON-DEMAND: Building Cross-Platform VR Experience Using WebVR and Sumerian

3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Thursday, October 29

DDX On-Demand sessions are recorded videos you can access starting at this date and time and watch at your own convenience.

The virtual reality industry is in a state of constant flux with new, better hardware coming out relatively quickly. That means building an interactive learning experience for one particular headset can cause maintenance problems when upgrading to the newest VR headset. As well, if you build the experience for VR and have no alternative for people that cannot use VR, you limit the audience that can benefit from the experience. How can you build virtual reality that will last for years and also be accessible to non-VR users, too?

In this hands-on session you'll learn the basics of WebVR and how it can be used to build virtual reality experiences that are cross-platform and can deploy on multiple headsets. First, you'll see how, using A-frame and BabylonJS, you can prototype a scene using primitive shapes in less than 10 minutes. You'll then find out how to add lighting and animations to the experience, as well as how to get your 3-D models ready for use in WebVR. After that, you'll look at other aspects of building an experience, including using audio components, hand and gaze controllers, and what other user interface elements are available. Following that, you will test out the physics system that allows for gravity and collisions. In the final segment of the session, you'll take a look at Sumerian and compare it to the other WebVR technologies. You'll learn the basics of how Sumerian loads an experience on a headset and unique features like analytics and Sumerian hosts. By the time you leave, you'll be able to start on your own WebVR projects!

In this session, you will learn:
  • Why and when you should use WebVR
  • How to build a simple virtual reality experience using WebVR
  • What are the basic components of the A-frame WebVR library
  • What tools are available for manipulating gLTF models
  • How Sumerian compares to other WebVR technologies
  • What a Sumerian host is

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
WebVR, A-frame, BabylonJS, Sumerian, Sumerian host, Oculus

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop. Optional: a VR headset

Alex Galloway

Extended Reality Designer

Fun Tech Monkey

Alex X. Galloway is a Texan with a passion for learning through extended reality (XR). While doing award-winning software engineering at Hewlett Packard, he began to meet with members of the VR and AR community in the pre-Rift years and build 3-D experiences as a hobby. Fast-forward to today, he leads development of XR eLearning at one of the largest banks in the United States.

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FS15 Agile Methods for Instructional Design Projects

11:00 AM - 11:45 AM Friday, October 30

On time. In budget. What they need (even if that changes!) These are moving targets, and yet you're expected to deliver all three. Agile methods dominate the software development space in large part because Agile methods improve the ability to meet schedule deadlines, Agile quality is better than traditional norms, and Agile methods continue to provide users with a competitive advantage. It's no wonder that other organizational functions are beginning to eye Agile methods as an attractive option for project management, decision making, and prioritization. 

In this session you'll learn about the Agile project management methods adapted specifically for instructional design and development projects (Lot Like Agile Management Approach, or LLAMA) and how to use them on the job. We begin by covering why we would use something other than the tried-and-true ADDIE method that has served the instructional design world since the 1950s. Then we begin with the project kickoff: working with sponsors and SMEs to create a shared definition of goals and scope so that we set up the project to be managed successfully with Agile. Then we get to the day-to-day workings of the project: estimating, planning, delivering in iterations, and constantly evaluating. Takeaways from this session include templates and techniques for goal alignment, learner personas, scope definition, estimating, planning, and iterative development...and a burning desire to do something different on your next project!

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to build the business case for Agile with SMEs, project sponsors, and your own team
  • To create learner personas and define scope around behavior outcomes
  • How to use iterative releases to deliver a better product, and estimate and plan the project, so you arrive on time, in budget
  • To set a context for working with SMEs and project sponsors that allows for change


Megan Torrance

CEO

TorranceLearning

Megan Torrance is CEO and founder of TorranceLearning, which helps organizations connect learning strategy to design, development, data, and ultimately performance. She has more than 25 years of experience in learning design, deployment, and consulting . Megan and the TorranceLearning team are passionate about sharing what works in learning, so they devote considerable time to teaching and sharing about Agile project management for learning experience design and the xAPI. She is the author of Agile for Instructional Designers, The Quick Guide to LLAMA, and Making Sense of xAPI. Megan is also an eCornell Facilitator in the Women's Executive Leadership curriculum.

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1013 10 Things I've Learned Through Game-based Learning Projects

12:00 PM - 12:45 PM Friday, October 30

Games and gamification been a trend in L&D over the past few years. Many of us are intrigued at the possibilities and hope to have a situation that calls for us to create a game-based project someday. But when that situation occurs, how should we start creating a game that's effective for learning? What are tips, tricks, and pitfalls you want to be aware of, and how can you learn from the mistakes of others—including those we made at Winston Wolfe?

In the last two years at Winston Wolfe, we've developed many (not so) serious games, both for clients and in funded projects. These projects included mobile games, browser games, physical games, card games, and even a real escape room game. And to be honest: through these development processes we learned a lot. In this session, I'll share 10 critical insights on how to start a game-based learning project, how to tackle issues, and how to make those games a success. You'll discover the mistakes we made, how we got back on track, and what lessons we took from all those projects.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How to start (and finish) a game-based project
  • How to use a good framework in the process
  • How to communicate with the end-users
  • How to tackle misconceptions about games
  • How to have fun and learn from situations that don't go as planned

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
Game examples, What If It Framework, xAPI, Unity3D

Mathias Vermeulen

Founder

Winston Wolfe

Mathias Vermeulen, the owner of Winston Wolfe Innovative HR Solutions, has an eight-year track record in L&D and HR management. He received Belgian Learning & Development Awards in 2010 & 2011 and a nomination for 2013. Topics for the 2011 & 2013 awards were in the game-based learning and gamification domain.

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1021 VR: Is it Just Hype? A VR Case Study to Improve Empathy and Confidence

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Friday, October 30

Virtual reality promises to drastically transform learning and development practices. A variety of interventions have been tried in the past to effect behavior change without success, but immersive interactive virtual reality experiences have the potential to effect this behavior change. For example, empathy is currently taught as a core competency in medical education, however empathy decreases as individuals progress through medical school. Virtual reality is possibly the ultimate empathy engine, holding promise for teaching empathy-related skills by being able to put an individual in another person's shoes. Virtual reality holds a distinct benefit over other learning and development methods, specifically when trying to effect behavior change where knowledge alone is not enough. A growing body of evidence indicates that virtual reality scenarios are useful as an intervention to cultivate behavioral change related to empathy, confidence, and enabling a behavior.

In this case study session you'll explore the evidence-based outcomes from a VR research study designed to understand if participation in a virtual reality simulation can effect a change in empathy and confidence. This session will dive into why VR is the right tool for some learning interventions and we'll discuss how VR is uniquely superior for certain learning and behavior change interventions. We'll then show how the Behaviour Change Wheel and COM-B model was used to assist in designing this VR behavior change intervention. In addition, we'll discuss the concrete, evidence-based results from this study and others regarding the effectiveness of VR for learning and development. While this particular study was designed to determine if there was a significant difference in healthcare students' empathy and confidence levels after participating in a virtual reality dementia simulation, the study results and tools can be generalized to empathy and confidence in many career paths including but not limited to customer service, human resources, diversity and inclusion, or sales. As well, the Behavior Change Wheel that will be discussed can be leveraged to create effective interventions for any desired behavior change.

In this session, you will learn:
  • What VR is
  • Why VR is preferred for teaching empathy
  • Why VR is effective for improving confidence in a job-related skill
  • How to use the Behaviour Change Wheel to design effective behavior change interventions
  • How to use VR in your training programs

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
VR

Cindy Plunkett

Director, Learning Design & Development

PointClickCare

With over 20 years' experience in instructional design, development, and project management Cindy Plunkett is the Canadian eLearning Conference Executive Director, part-time professor in the faculty of education at Ontario Tech University, and co-creator of the Educational Technology for Health Practitioner Education course at the University of Toronto's department of Family and Community Medicine. Cindy has worked with three of the largest academic teaching hospitals in Canada on high profile projects like the SEME program, and has experience speaking and facilitating both nationally and internationally.

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1022 Automate the Boring Stuff; Focus on the Fun Stuff

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Friday, October 30

It's the end of the day and you still need to add a dozen users to the LMS, send them login credentials, and then run the grade reports your boss asked for. If only you had budget to hire someone to do all the mundane administrative work that comes with running a training department, you'd be able to focus on what you do best—building training. The training team at BlueCat was barely able to keep up with day-to-day operations until they came up with a solution: let the robots do it!

In this case study discover how BlueCat used simple automation tools to help make up for a lack of manpower. You'll learn about the types of tasks that can be automated, the infrastructure needed to support automation, and the immediate cost savings that can be achieved. You'll then learn how you can auto-generate video content and deploy cloud-based apps to automate administrative tasks common to many training departments. You'll leave this session ready to automate all the boring stuff so that you can focus on the fun stuff—building best in class training.

In this session, you will learn:
  • What types of administrative tasks can be automated
  • What infrastructure is needed to enable automation
  • How to calculate the ROI generated by automation tools
  • How to build and implement an automation strategy
  • How to auto-generate video content
  • How to use APIs to connect cloud-based apps

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers, senior leaders

Technology discussed:
Learning Management Systems, Salesforce, BambooHR, Python, Adobe After Effects, Amazon Web Services

Kristian Chartier

Technical Lab Developer

Amazon Web Services

Kristian Chartier, a technical lab developer at Amazon Web Services, is a learning technology enthusiast who prides himself on building industry-leading eLearning that pushes the boundaries of what's possible. Kristian is a winner of the Governor General of Canada's Academic Medal with expertise in eLearning, LMS design, and gamification.

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1023 Streamlining Branching Scenario Planning and Design

1:00 PM - 1:45 PM Friday, October 30

Branching scenarios can be a great solution for giving people an opportunity to practice making relevant decisions. While they can be a valuable experience for learners, building branching scenarios can be time-consuming and challenging. If the first decision point has three choices, and those three each have three choices, and then those three have three choices, suddenly you have 40 slides after only three decisions for the learner. The complexity of that structure grows exponentially and can be tricky to manage as an instructional designer. Additionally, SMEs who are accustomed to working on traditional eLearning may be uncomfortable with branching, and you may be unsure how to get good stories and examples from them. It's easy to feel overwhelmed in the process of planning and designing branching scenarios. What you need is a better process for creating them.

In this session you'll learn how to streamline your processes for branching scenarios, from initial planning through writing and creating a functional prototype. You'll start from the beginning by analyzing the problem you're trying to solve and identifying your objectives. You'll learn what questions to ask SMEs and other sources to get stories and examples to incorporate in your branching scenario. You'll learn tactics for eliciting responses from SMEs if you're "stuck”. You'll get tips for planning the flow of your scenario, including comparing different branching structures of varied complexity. You'll see how the free, open-source tool Twine can streamline the process of planning, writing, and prototyping branching scenarios. You'll learn the advantages of writing one complete path in the branching scenario from start to finish before fleshing out the alternative paths. You'll learn how to give learners opportunities to correct their mistakes in ways that both deepen learning and simplify your design. By the end of this session, you'll have a streamlined process for planning, designing, writing, and prototyping branching scenarios that can then be built in any authoring tool you want. This streamlined process will help you save time and make the complexity of branching scenarios more manageable.

In this session, you will learn:
  • What questions and tactics elicit relevant stories and examples from SMEs
  • How to use Twine for planning, writing, and prototyping branching scenarios
  • How giving learners opportunities to fix mistakes can streamline branching design
  • How to use different branching structures for scenarios
  • What to write first in a branching scenario

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers

Technology discussed:
Twine



Christy Tucker

Learning Experience Design Consultant

Syniad Learning

Christy Tucker is a learning experience design consultant with over 20 years of experience helping people learn. She specializes in using scenario-based learning to engage audiences and promote skill transfer to real-world environments. She has created training for a wide range of clients, including Fortune 500 companies, nonprofit associations, state and local government agencies, universities, and more. Christy has been blogging about instructional design and eLearning for over 15 years and is a regular speaker at industry conferences and events.

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FS16 The Next Decade of Instructional Design: A Guild Master Panel

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Friday, October 30

As we enter a new decade, our thoughts naturally ponder what the future may bring for our work. The long term impact of the pandemic only adds weight to how our field may be changing.

In this closing session for the DevLearn Digital Experieince, we've invited three Learning Guild Masters to share their unique perspectives on how the world of instructional design is changing. We'll explore not only the drivers of that change, but also the new skills that we will require. Join us for an interactive discussion that will help you prepare for the future of our work.

In this session, you will learn:
  • How the world of instructional design is changing
  • What the drivers of change in our field are
  • How we can prepare for the future of instructional design

Audience:
Designers, developers, managers


Session evaluation

Connie Malamed

Founder and Mentor

Mastering Instructional Design

Connie Malamed helps people learn and build instructional design skills at Mastering Instructional Design. She is a consultant, author and speaker in the fields of online learning and visual communication. Connie is the author of Visual Design Solutions and Visual Language for Designers. She also publishes The eLearning Coach website and podcast. She was honored with the Guild Master award in 2018 for contributions to the learning technologies industry.

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