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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Gunn, America’s favorite reality TV co-host, is known for his kind but firm approach in providing wisdom, guidance, and support to the scores of design hopefuls on Project Runway. Having begun his fashion career as a teacher at Parsons School of Design, Mr. Gunn knows more than a thing or two about mentorship and how to convey invaluable pearls of wisdom in an approachable, accessible manner. In this keynote session, Mr. Gunn will share practical tips he has learned in his lifetime of education and learning experiences, exploring themes like truth-telling, empathy, asking, cheerleading … and hoping for the best. Join us as Mr. Gunn opens Learning Solutions 2017 with surprising, moving, and often hilarious stories about teaching, learning, and life.

Are you looking for amazing ways to create content using your mobile device? In this session, you will learn how to use your phone or tablet to brainstorm, create audio- and video-based recordings, and animate, using several mind-blowing apps. You’ll leave the session feeling inspired, and you’ll have practical information to apply to one or more apps when you get back to your device. 

For years, the learning and development field universally agreed on the value of a learning culture. L&D professionals believe that a learning culture will help people grow, develop, and support the transformational needs of the organization. However, people have traditionally spoken about learning culture in very binary terms: Either an organization has a learning culture or it has nothing at all. This is incorrect. Every organization has a learning culture at a varying level of maturity. Your responsibility is to identify where your organization is and where it needs to be, and to help evolve the culture to support the pace and direction of the business.

In this session, you will explore how today’s learning professionals can help build a learning culture in their organizations. You will review the five levels of learning culture and identify where your organization currently stands. You will discover six ways to evolve your organization into a continuous learning culture. You will also identify both the processes and systems that should be part of your learning and performance ecosystem to support this evolution.

In this session, you will learn:

• What the five levels of learning culture are
• Tips on how to measure the maturity of your organization’s learning culture
• Six ways to evolve your learning culture
• How to identify processes and systems that your learning and performance ecosystem needs

Audience:
Managers, directors, and learning executives.

Technology discussed in this session:
Various technologies.

Whether you’re looking to showcase your work internally, seeking employment, or prospecting for clients, developing and maintaining an up-to-date portfolio will help you articulate what you do well. With a little forethought and planning, your portfolio can become one of your most valuable tools, opening up conversations and possibilities beyond your expectations.

In this session, you’ll explore the reasons why you should create a portfolio and how to effectively evaluate your design requirements for it. You’ll learn how to set realistic, achievable goals for your portfolio, and how to grow it over time without compromising confidentiality. You’ll then look at a variety of tools that can help you design and build this portfolio, and you’ll discuss what kinds of solutions you should consider including in it to best showcase your skills.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why you should create a portfolio, even if you’re not looking for a job
• How to identify the right things to focus on in your portfolio (and what not to include)
• How to plan the design and development of your portfolio
• How you can use your portfolio to get feedback on your work
• How to leverage your portfolio itself as a design example

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
WordPress and themes, web technologies (and IDEs), eLearning tools, and related technologies.

Traditional eLearning can be dull and demotivating, a reality that runs counter to human nature. People eagerly consume and comprehend new ideas whenever they find the content engaging. They want eLearning that leverages learners’ innate desire for autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

This session will explore the underlying reasons that learning motivates or demotivates learners. You will learn how to integrate motivating strategies into your learning content design. You will see examples of these strategies applied to specific course content, from simple interactions, knowledge checks, and gamification to broader decisions like varied delivery and completion options. You’ll learn methods to leverage the inherent desire to demonstrate mastery by creating social engagement opportunities to promote peer learning and an enhanced culture of learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• About what motivates and demotivates learners
• Principles for motivating through autonomy, mastery, and purpose
• How to encourage a culture of learning
• How to create interactive conversations that encourage autonomy
• How to create gamification that encourages mastery

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Captivate and Adobe Captivate Prime.

Are your virtual classes stagnant? Do you find you’re using the same tools—polling, whiteboards, chat—that you've used for years? Are your participants multitasking, despite your efforts to draw them in? Do you want to find new ways to engage your audience? If you need to shake up your approach to virtual classrooms, then why not look to the future and consider how new technologies and new mindsets will influence your virtual training's effectiveness?

In this session, you'll learn what's next on the horizon for virtual training, including the latest trends impacting it and how to prepare yourself and your organization for what's coming down the road. You’ll examine several interesting developments, including the implications of mobile devices for live online learning, the move towards short live learning snippets, and the impact of virtual and augmented reality on live online classes. By the end of this session you’ll leave with tangible ideas that can be immediately applied to help keep you in the know and ready for virtual training 2020!

In this session, you will learn:

• The latest trends in live online learning
• The impact of mobile devices on virtual training effectiveness
• How to apply lessons from virtual and augmented reality to your virtual training programs
• How to prepare yourself and your organization for future virtual training initiatives

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Mobile devices.

Many professionals in eLearning are attempting to use gamification and serious games to spark employee engagement and drive learning retention. Everyone is working to make the best serious game that will enhance the learning objectives and retain learning.

In this session, participants will talk about planning, developing, implementing, and supporting serious games for companies that have never gone down the route of serious games and gamified learning experiences. You will discuss what makes a serious game a success or a failure. You will also address the proper steps to take throughout each phase of the project to ensure success. Finally, you will learn about the best practices and pain points that Designing Digitally had to deal with when going down the route of gamification and serious games.

In this session, you will learn:

• Best practices of serious games
• What makes a good serious game
• The difference between gamification and a serious game
• What steps you can take to ensure a good serious game
• How to internally market a serious game
• How to get buy-in for a serious game

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

Your access to learning-related data has grown dramatically over recent years. But just because you have a large volume of data doesn’t mean it necessarily provides value. While tools like xAPI make it increasingly easy to acquire data about learners’ activities, this information provides little benefit if you don’t know how to design to acquire meaningful data, interpret that data, or improve your learning design based on what you’ve discovered.

In this session, you’ll dive deep into how data should shape your learning systems design, including exploring the basic principles of how to use data effectively and how to design to provide meaningful feedback. To do this, you’ll look at outside inspiration from fields that are already doing this well: user experience design (UXD), web analytics, and business intelligence. You’ll also uncover some of the pitfalls of data collection and analysis, discuss using both qualitative and quantitative data, and address the difficulties inherent in finding valid measurements of learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use your data analytics to improve course design
• How to design to gather meaningful data
• About the potential pitfalls of data interpretation
• Lessons, from fields like business intelligence and web analytics, about how to apply data principles to learning design

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

Technology discussed in this session:
xAPI and data analytics.

Implementing a video strategy is always tricky when juggling budget line items. There’s the risk of throwing too much money at equipment, and the risk of not making the right choices that will produce the level of quality your team expects.

In this session, you will learn of several choices for video production hardware and software at low, medium, and “Cadillac” price points. You will see examples of results from each solution. You will also see a full “kit” at each price point that can be brought back to your organization to build the best possible video studio.

In this session, you will learn:

• Ways to maximize your video budget
• About real-world results from different hardware and software combinations
• Answers to your video studio creation questions

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Digital video cameras, audio recorders, microphones, non-linear video editing software, and streaming video mixers.

Do you know how to create an effective diagram? Can you create a graph that tells a story? Because visualizing abstractions can improve comprehension and facilitate learning, an important skill in L&D is the ability to convey abstract concepts and statistics in a meaningful way. But if you don’t know how to design the best type of graphic to meet your learning goal, how will your explanation be a success?

In this session, you’ll explore how people perceive and process information visualizations. You’ll look at different types of information graphics and match them to the learning they best promote. You’ll also examine what goes into designing an information graphic, how to choose an appealing visual style, and some of the resources that are available for information graphic creation.

In this session, you will learn:

• How visual perception should influence the type of information graphic you choose
• How to match the graphic type with the learning goal
• A design process for creating information graphics
• Where to find resources for designing information graphics

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Information graphic creation and information graphic tools.

On time. Within budget. What they need (even if that changes!). These are moving targets, and yet you’re expected to deliver all three. The software development industry is embracing agile methods to address these issues, and there is much that the eLearning development world can learn from it. Agile provides a framework for adapting to change as it happens and working with the client to deliver content that learners need most.

In this session, you will learn about the agile project management methods adapted specifically for the instructional design and development “Lot Like Agile Methods Approach” (LLAMA) and how you can use them on the job. You’ll learn about the tools and supplies you need and how to choose a project to pilot. You’ll also see how agile supports estimating, planning, and managing tasks in an eLearning design and development project.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to build the business case for agile, LLAMA specifically, and iterative development with SMEs, project sponsors, and your own team
• How to kick off projects, create a shared definition of scope, and create action-focused eLearning that people actually want to take
• How to estimate and plan a project so you arrive on time and on budget
• How to build the environment to support an agile project team

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

Education and training departments work under tight budgets and deadlines. In this environment, the temptation to use images and media from the web increases, especially in light of the plethora of social spaces that are used to share such objects. But what can you use? Under what circumstances? And how do we give credit where credit is due?

In this session you’ll learn more about how you can use content you find online while still respecting copyright. You’ll start by taking a practical look at what copyright means to our industry, including investigating what content you can and can’t legally use in your work and how to give appropriate credit to creators. You’ll then explore a newer licensing option that makes it even easier for people to share and use content legally: Creative Commons. You’ll discover how this content license is particularly helpful when you have little to no budget, where to find Creative Commons-licensed content, and what ways you’re able to use what you find. This session will help you feel more confident that you’re using the media you find online the right way, and will even give you more sources for finding it in the first place.

In this session, you will learn:

• The basics of copyright law, fair use, and the TEACH act
• What Creative Commons (CC) licensing is, and what the different licenses mean
• How to find CC-licensed images and media
• How to easily and appropriately cite CC-licensed images and media

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

Technology discussed in this session:
None

Video can be a powerful tool in training, but many of the quality video tools are expensive and difficult to master. The average developer just does not have the budget, the skills, or (most importantly) the time to become proficient in a high-end video editing tool.

In this session, you’ll explore how to use Articulate’s Replay 360 to build high-quality yet inexpensive training videos with ease. The newest version of Replay has been enhanced to include many of the editing features normally reserved for the more expensive editors (cut, delete, split, silence, and mix). You’ll explore how Replay 360 can be used to record your screen, create picture-in-picture videos, edit existing video clips, enhance the content with transitions and lower thirds, and publish videos to Articulate Review or locally as an MP4 to insert into your course development software.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use Replay to record screen movements
• How to add picture-in-picture presenter video
• How to enhance the video output with transitions and lower thirds
• How to publish the videos in MP4 format for use in a learning module

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Replay 360 and Articulate Review.

Technology required:
Laptop running Windows and Replay 360.

The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) requires that employers provide “reasonable accommodations to qualified applicants and employees.” But many instructional designers worry that accessible content will be less interactive and thus less effective. Others want to do more but don’t know where to begin. In the end, many often just create a printable text version of the content and call it good enough. You can and should do better than that for your learners.

In this session, you’ll learn how one of the tools you may already use, Adobe Captivate, can allow you to create engaging and interactive modules that also meet ADA standards and/or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). You’ll find out more about different levels of content accessibility and see how to use the Captivate accessibility tools to achieve them. You’ll also look at real examples that show how to adapt custom interactions, the ways you can test a module for accessibility, and additional resources that are available to help you make your content more accessible.

In this session, you will learn:

• Best practices for creating accessible content in Adobe Captivate
• How to build slides and interactions that are accessible to users with visual, hearing, and motor impairments
• How to identify device limitations or issues that may affect the accessibility of your project
• What options are available for converting non-accessible interactions to accessible ones
• What other resources are available for building and testing accessible content

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers. Attendees should have a working knowledge of Captivate 8 or above.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Captivate.

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop running Adobe Captivate 8 or above.

Augmented reality has been around for decades, but it has recently resurfaced and become a hot topic. Every day you are bombarded with new solutions utilizing this idea. However, many of them just multiply the simplistic and common way of thinking. People used to associate AR with mobiles and glasses. Is this field really so limited? Let’s redefine augmented reality to find new ways of designing innovative and disruptive learning solutions.

During the session, you will learn to redefine and expand the meaning of augmented reality. You will see examples of solutions that are far beyond usage of mobile devices and AR-enabled glasses, such as a “day in the life of” (DILO) approach. You will break the connotation of AR with visual sense, which dramatically reduces creativity in this field, and learn how work and training augmentation can support your professional life.

In this session, you will learn:

• How augmented reality can support people development
• How to better classify augmented reality solutions (“on the fly,” “reflective,” “situational”)
• How to adapt AR solutions into the learning design process
• About curated materials for self-reading and reflections on AR

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Various AR-related technologies.

Sales training can often seem like the toughest nut to crack. You plan, design, learn new tools, hire consultants, and still you haven’t moved the needle. The sales team is the lifeblood of the company, generating revenue every day. The demand is high and the pressure strong. Those who are charged with training them face an equal challenge: improve productivity, accelerate deals, and enable individual and team success. How can you accomplish it, especially if you are a team of one?

In this presentation, you will learn about designing bite-size learning to meet the needs of the individual, driving training into the point of work. You will learn about establishing techniques to strengthen the sales core and capitalizing fingertip knowledge with mobile devices. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to make the most out of what you have (no tools, no budget, no team).

In this session, you will learn:

• How to design a blended learning solution from easily accessible tools
• How to recommend focused training solutions targeting the sales core
• How to create bite-size training modules to meet specific sales training needs
• Ways to customize training programs to respond to the unique needs of salespeople

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Social media, mobile devices, virtual instructor-led training, video modules, and animated PowerPoint.

Retention and engagement are two drivers you focus on when trying to design effective learning experiences. That said, it can be difficult to find solutions that manage to retain your audience’s interest, present the content you need them to know, test their knowledge, and adjust materials based on the results. But a blending of technologies is emerging that uses the pairing of attention-grabbing media with more adaptive approaches to achieve all these goals and more: interactive video.

In this session, you’ll find out how HTML5 interactive video allows for user interaction and assessment, which in turn can provide added depth and engagement to your content. By putting the audience in control of the video and providing quiz questions that change the course of the content depending on how they answer, interactive video can give your viewers more autonomy while also giving them personalized and targeted content. This session will help you learn how to design and develop these interactive experiences, which both keep your audience more interested and give them a better understanding of the content you want them to master.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why HTML5 interactive video can make your content more effective
• How interactive video can use adaptive learning techniques to boost retention and engagement
• How you can create video prompts that respond to a viewer’s actions
• How to gather data from your interactive videos to improve audience and course outcomes

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

Technology discussed in this session:
WordPress H5P.

Whether you are creating a new project, developing an app, or launching a new platform, come learn about the latest strategies in brainstorming, prototyping, and designing your experiences. This session will highlight tools, techniques, and workflows to help you kick off any project the right way. Learn how to communicate a concept, beginning with low-fidelity prototypes; gather user feedback; and translate into high-fidelity prototypes before you start development. Get pumped and ready to get ideas out of your head and make them reality!

Eight seconds: That’s the time you have to grab an employee’s attention. Five minutes: That’s how long you can hold it. Both are down by 50 percent in 10 years. Twenty-one: That’s the number of times people shift attention between smartphone, tablet, and laptop. What’s causing this attention deficit problem? Every day hundreds of emails, chats, texts, notifications, calls, and meetings compete for your employees’ attention. What tool can you use to grab and keep their attention? Training games. Games complement and improve the effectiveness of traditional training. Come learn more and play the Jump Game. High score at the session wins a $250 gift certificate.

Time is money, and so are happy clients! Come spend some time with the Articulate team and learn how you can speed up your workflow, help your budget, and increase your productivity with the tools in Articulate 360.

Workplaces are awash in email traffic, competing demands, and hard-to-maintain courseware, while businesses try to operate more responsively to the needs of both the marketplace and its stakeholders. To better work within this complexity and remain relevant to the business, L&D needs to rethink the methods it uses to support learners. While expensive, enterprise-weight solutions exist for this dilemma, there is a simpler approach you can consider that has shallower learning curves, stronger impact, and greater extensibility—Slack.

In this session, you’ll learn how just how easy it is to use Slack to build a learning and collaboration ecosystem. This social-collaborative tool enables real-time communication and is particularly positioned for success in L&D. You’ll discover how its capabilities extend learning from stand-alone offerings into micro-communications and context-related expert sourcing. You’ll also explore case studies on how Slack can be combined with the analytics functions available in the tool itself as well as through other services such as Google Analytics and Learning Locker for xAPI. This session will give you the keys to designing and managing your learning ecosystem in the workplace for improved performance or in higher education settings to support local or distributed student populations.

In this session, you will learn:

• The basics of the Slack platform
• The design fundamentals and practices needed to use Slack to support learning
• What measurement and analytics tools can help you learn more about your Slack ecosystem and how it functions
• What management/facilitation fundamentals you’ll need to grow and foster your learning ecosystem

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Slack.

With the financial advantages of big data gaining global attention, business leaders are recognizing the need for better reporting and improved accountability across all organizational divisions. New innovations are enabling unprecedented analysis of deep data and measurement of training effectiveness, business impact, and training ROI. The advanced data enabled by next-generation training will allow businesses to make smarter decisions and formulate competitive strategies based on robust and timely insights.

In this session, you will examine the high-level effects of more sophisticated learning designed for data analysis and discuss how to implement such a solution for your organization. The session will demonstrate a complete end-to-end case study of a highly engaging and effective learner experience, which simultaneously drives deep data analysis for business insights. You will learn about the process, roles, and skill sets required at each stage, and you will receive tools to assist in developing your own overarching strategies and communicating with your stakeholders.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the process, roles, and skill sets needed to achieve a robust learning measurement and analytics culture in your organization
• About tools to assist in developing a roadmap or strategy to redefine training as an effective, data-focused division driving business impact
• How to communicate the vision and requirements to achieve deep measurement to other stakeholders, business leaders, peers, and teams
• How to separate useful and meaningful data from the noise

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Enterprise infrastructure LMS and HRIS, LRS, the cloud, and analytics dashboards.

In order to transform the learning organization into a center of excellence, learning leaders must consistently and deliberately deliver measurable business value. But in most organizations, learning is an afterthought to the strategic process, relegated to a reactive, execution-only role.

In this session, you will learn how to align learning and development strategy with the objectives of the business to generate desired performance results. You will acquire a proven road map for alignment, enhancing your team’s ability to proactively affect optimal business impact. You’ll learn about the key performance indicators that directly align with specific business objectives and departmental goals. Most importantly, you will examine how to effectively prove and communicate the business value of learning to other departmental areas, in relevant and comprehensible terms that resonate with business leaders.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to craft key performance indicators for the learning function that directly align with specific business objectives and departmental goals
• How to develop learning curricula and strategies that deliver measurable business value
• How to effectively prove and communicate the business value of learning to other business leaders, in relevant and comprehensible terms
• How to develop a one-page learning plan to convey and align strategic goals across the organization

Audience:
Directors and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

When was the last time you heard a term in your business but couldn’t really say what it meant? “Performance support” is popping up more and more, but can you really define it? Share the basic concepts underpinning it? Describe the business results other companies are experiencing?

In this session, you will learn a “primer” in the traditional sense: “a small introductory book on a subject.” You will explore examples of performance support tools, including a short, contextual history lesson. Finally, you will explore the state of performance support tools and tech, whether your budget is shoestring or enterprise-level.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the power of performance support to extend learning beyond the classroom
• About the existing performance support body of knowledge related to methodology and architecture
• About performance support tools and vendors that can address all budgetary constraints
• Where to go for more information or to become a practicing performance support professional

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, project managers, managers, and directors. No prior knowledge of performance support is needed.

Technology discussed in this session:
Performance support vendor platforms: Assima, Ancile, Panviva, Ontuitive, Epilogue, etc.; performance support systems built with Panviva and Ontuitive; and tools like HTML5, xAPI, and SharePoint.

Education providers know that taking online courses isn’t the only way to learn. They want to invent new learning formats and experiences that better meet their members’ needs. However, the types of learning opportunities trackable by traditional learning management systems (LMSs) is limited. The Experience API (xAPI) specification is flexible enough to track a wide range of experiences, but it’s a new technology, and barriers to adoption still exist.

In this session, you will learn how the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) uses xAPI to collect learning data from high-fidelity medical simulations, giving you a roadmap to adoption within your own organization. See how, in its Difficult Airway Management live-learning course, CHEST uses xAPI to send activity statements from Laerdal simulators to a learning record store (LRS) in its CourseStage Health LMS.

In this session, you will learn:

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

Audience:
Intermediate to advanced developers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.). To gain the most benefit, attendees should be generally familiar with professional education, learning management systems, and SCORM. Technical and/or programming knowledge may also be beneficial, but is not necessary for comprehension.

Technology discussed in this session:
Experience API, REST, JSON, CourseStage QIE, CourseStage Health LMS, Moodle LMS, ADL LRS, Learning Locker, and Laerdal Airway Management Trainer.

The term “bench strength” is frequently used in relation to leadership, so it isn’t surprising that many organizations are keen to create development programs for their future leaders. However, many of these programs fail to adequately prepare employees for the demands of assuming a leadership role.

In this session, you will learn about Spectrum Health University’s experience in redesigning its leadership readiness program, Futures. You will learn about the difficult conversations and internal debates around how to develop immersive and engaging content, as well as how to select the right program participants. You will also learn how to utilize various skill sets across all team members throughout the design and development process. The session will explore various program ideas ranging from rotational experiences to immersive simulations and individual personalization via assessments, debriefs, and competency-based development plans.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to utilize all members of your team (not just instructional designers) in program development
• Why selecting the right participants leads to better learning experiences
• How to create “rotational” experiences in highly condensed time frames
• How to create "formal informality" to strengthen participant relationships

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Social collaborative platforms, online survey tools, and online assessments.

Very often, training is created in isolation. Stakeholders may believe that “one and done” constitutes a solution; however, in reality, training needs to be reinforced and scaffolded. The eLearning you create is one piece of the puzzle, but it needs a bit more to really stick.

In this session, you will look at the ways you can design learning for stickiness, then involve managers in the application of the learning afterward. The session will use experiential, discovery learning, and problem-solving techniques to help you ponder where you are today and consider how you can bring stickiness into your own systems.

In this session, you will learn:

• What makes learning sticky
• How to recognize problems with existing learning
• How to gain stakeholder buy-in for a more comprehensive solution
• How to articulate the tenets of the forgetting curve and describe ways to reduce its impact
• How to describe what learning transfer is and develop methods to ensure it occurs with any developed learning

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning management systems, microlearning, text reminders, and gamification.

Too many eLearning courses are just data dumps full of facts, details, and nonessential content. These kinds of courses also often lack the necessary context to explain how all this information applies to the real world, making them both boring and ineffective. eLearning should be redesigned to better reach the audience and share content with them in a way that’s engaging and practical. And one simple but effective way to do that is through interactive stories.

Interactive stories instantly add meaning to your content. In this session, you’ll explore how you can use them to redesign your eLearning lessons so they engage learners and help them actually use what they’ve learned. You’ll find out how to craft experiences that will make your audience better appreciate the content in your eLearning and have an easier time recalling and applying it in their day-to-day work. Furthermore, you’ll get to see real examples of interactive stories in use for compliance, sales, orientation, manufacturing, and other common training situations.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to find interactive stories that match the facts of your content
• How to construct emotionally driven content
• Why short and emotional interactive stories can be more effective than long, narrative storytelling
• How to identify and edit out unnecessary content so your stories can focus on the absolute musts
• How to cut your costs and develop interactive stories rapidly

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Demos will use Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, and/or HTML5.

Do you struggle with how to prioritize all of your training requests? Are you able to say no to some projects, or do you just take on every one that comes your way? Do you want to bring more rigor to the processes and strategies your team uses to accomplish your training goals? Then there’s a tool you’ll want to use to analyze your work and back up your decisions—data.

In this session, you’ll learn how to empower your team to make strategic plans and choices based on facts. You’ll look at how to determine what data will best support the decisions you need to make. You’ll then investigate how to collect and analyze this data in a dashboard to help you better recognize trends and identify areas of strength and opportunity. Finally, data is helpful, but only if you can share it with others effectively, so you’ll also get tips for how best to discuss your findings with your team and partners to get better buy-in and results.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to determine what data will best support your strategic decisions and project planning
• How to create a dashboard based on collected data
• How to recognize trends and identify areas of strength and opportunity in your department
• How to use this information to prioritize and analyze your training requests

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Microsoft Office.

Going to RFP (request for proposal) for an LMS can be a daunting process. With all the special protocols, the nondisclosure agreements, and the thick cloud of secrecy that envelopes all parties involved, it can be frustrating and isolating. But once you accept that there’s no avoiding the pomp and circumstance of the process itself, you can begin to strategically position your company to choose the right LMS.

In this session, you’ll find out how best to avoid the common mistakes that can be made throughout the selection process. You’ll get tips that can help you effectively communicate your needs to vendors, and you’ll learn how to wade through sales pitches to successfully evaluate your requirements. While this session can’t completely solve the complexity of choosing an LMS, it can make the process easier to manage and more productive.

In this session, you will learn:

• What steps to take before the selection process begins
• How to determine what you really need vs. want in an LMS
• Whom to involve in the process
• How to write concise RFP requirements that will communicate what you want to your vendors
• How to make the most out of your vendor demonstrations

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning management systems (LMSs).

If a picture can convey a thousand words, imagine how much more a video can convey. Videos are fast becoming a standard means of sharing knowledge and training information in organizations, but using them effectively has a number of challenges. How can you ensure they’re searchable, archivable, and relevant for your audience? How can you easily organize and manage these dynamic training assets, including user-generated content? And once you’ve created videos, how can you drive traffic to your online video portal so this content is actually viewed by the people who need it?

In this case study session, you’ll learn how to solve these questions through the experiences Synaptics went through as it launched its own internal online video portal to improve knowledge-sharing within the company. You’ll look at the project requirements, timelines, key stakeholders, and metrics of success you’ll want to consider for launching an online video portal project. You’ll then explore various ways to drive traffic and adoption to your site, as well as best practices to ensure your program’s success. (Hint: Don’t do some of the things Synaptics did!)

In this session, you will learn:

• What Synaptics’s experience can teach you about what to do and what not to do when rolling out an online video portal
• Best practices for launching your own online video portal
• How to design metrics of success for an online video portal project
• What the considerations and requirements for an online video portal project should be

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Panopto and Centrify.

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

In this session, you will learn the most current research regarding multimedia, visual design/usability, and assessment in eLearning. Framed as a story, this session will use scenarios in which research is used to make design decisions, and attendees will receive a list of places to look for current research to inform eLearning practices. You will receive a list of current research findings and assessments, learn how to identify how and where research is best cited for an SME, and learn how to apply findings to your design and development process.

In this session, you will learn:

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

Audience:
Novice and intermediate developers and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Science fiction has always challenged people to see their world in new ways, from a glimpse at an imagined “long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” in Star Wars to envisioning a potential future centuries from now in Star Trek. Movies like The Matrix, Inception, Minority Report, Blade Runner, and so many others have proposed mind-blowing ideas like alternate realities, parallel universes, transporter beams, and time travel. One of the many reasons this genre is so popular is that it poses a wide range of “what-if” questions and allows its audience to play with possible answers. But these ideas can do more then just entertain you—they can also inspire your work in L&D.

In this session, you’ll explore the ways sci-fi can help you rethink how you create your content, and you’ll find out where L&D and sci-fi have some fascinating points of crossover. Come learn how to create truly engaging eLearning by applying the best ideas of sci-fi to your eLearning designs, and have fun while doing it.

In this session, you will learn:

• New approaches to find the best “what-if” ideas and determine whether they can help you reach your learners
• How to engage learners with storylines that you can borrow from the best sci-fi
• Practical ways to apply concepts from science fiction to your eLearning designs

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
The concepts in this session are tool agnostic.

3-D virtual simulations give you the opportunity to create an immersive learning environment with interactive and engaging experiences. Articulate Storyline has emerged in recent years as a popular eLearning authoring tool, but it lacks built-in tools or methods to create 3-D virtual simulations.

This session will explore creative approaches and techniques to incorporating “pseudo” 3-D virtual simulations, as well as actual 3-D virtual simulations, within Articulate Storyline. You will learn about the benefits and drawbacks of Storyline for 3-D simulations, and how to decide upon and differentiate between “pseudo” and actual simulations.

In this session, you will learn:

• General information about 3-D virtual simulations
• About the pros and cons of using Articulate Storyline for 3-D virtual simulations
• How to incorporate “pseudo” and actual 3-D virtual simulations within Articulate Storyline

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline, Unity, BabylonJS, and WebGL.

YouTube is the world’s biggest online video provider and second-largest search engine—and that presents some amazing opportunities for L&D. But selling this free tool to stakeholders and gatekeepers in your organization can be a challenge, particularly if they’re having trouble envisioning YouTube used for purposes beyond entertainment. Do they need to see a working sample first? Do you?

In this session, you’ll not only discuss the benefits of including this tool in your existing strategy, but you’ll also take a hands-on approach and actually create a new YouTube channel from scratch. You’ll find out how to populate your new channel with sample content, secure it as appropriate for your organization, and interpret the video analytics you’ll be able to explore once people begin engaging with your content. You’ll leave with a proof of concept sample for how YouTube can work for your L&D goals, and everything you need to communicate this opportunity effectively to your organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the most important elements of a YouTube channel
• How to upload and share your YouTube channel’s videos
• How to maximize discoverability on YouTube
• How to lock down your YouTube content
• How to communicate the benefits and dangers of using YouTube at your organization

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
YouTube.

Technology required:
Google account, laptop running recent Chrome browser, and headphones with in-line microphone. Also recommended: accessible USB port and updated iOS/Android mobile device with at least 2GB of space.

Finding ways to make learning “stick” with technology is always a challenge. Augmented reality (AR) is one of those “make it stick” technology options available for education and training. However, AR can seem overwhelming, expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to use in everyday learning development. These assumptions cause developers to overlook the potential this technology holds for their learners.

This session will explore how easy it is to get started with augmented reality. You will be introduced to free development tools that you can use to create original AR content. You will leave this session with the knowledge to plan, build, and share your project with the community.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to plan out a successful AR element for use in your lesson
• About the necessary components of a successful AR project
• How to design your own AR project with free development tools
• About the possible interactions available with AR
• About multimedia assets that can enhance an AR project
• How to publish your AR design

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Apple devices, Android devices, Aurasma, AR Studio, and Entiti.

Participant technology requirements:
A laptop, an Apple or Android device, the Aurasma app, and the Entiti app.

Managing eLearning projects so that they meet requirements and finish on time and on budget can be tricky! Project scope might be a moving target, development never-ending, and reviews subjective at best. Sure, there’s a body of project management knowledge out there, but how do you determine just how much project management you need?

In this session, you will determine how best to manage your eLearning projects, what approach and tools are required, and how much effort is really necessary. You’ll review a straightforward process for objectifying, measuring, and evaluating eLearning projects. And you’ll consider how to do this work with the least amount of effort possible! After all, the goal isn’t good project management; the goal is good eLearning on time and on budget. Project management is a tool you’ll use to help get there.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to determine how much project management effort is required
• How to evaluate progress on your projects
• How to avoid scope creep
• How and what to communicate to project staff

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Project management software, including Microsoft Project, Trello, Asana, and Basecamp.

Do you have a large number of similar courses to develop in a short amount of time? Is it painful for you to build one-off custom courses for material that just changes slightly? Would you like to build an efficient course development template so that all of your courses have the same look and feel, can be rapidly produced, and still can be customized? JavaScript with Storyline is the answer!

In this session, you will learn how to make JavaScript calls from Storyline and how to manipulate various screen elements (button labels, characters, page titles) from variables within a JavaScript file. You’ll first look at a sample JavaScript file and learn how to build it using simple text editing tools. You’ll then explore an advanced way to generate the same file using an HTML form page and SQL database. You can apply these techniques to other course development tools.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to call JavaScript from Storyline
• How to manipulate internal Storyline variables from outside of Storyline
• How to write a simple JavaScript file
• About the power of JavaScript to rapidly make changes to a Storyline project

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers. This session will use Storyline for all demonstrations; however, the techniques discussed can be used with any course development tool that supports JavaScript. A basic understanding of variables and triggers in Storyline would be helpful.

Technology discussed in this session:
JavaScript, Articulate Storyline, Microsoft Notepad, Adobe Dreamweaver, and SQL.

When new hires start, they usually feel excited but overwhelmed by the volume of learning required to become job-ready. An easily accessible line manager has a significant positive impact on the learning curve; however, managers are often very stretched themselves with tactical responsibilities, which can result in the needs of new recruits being relegated. In this session, you will learn proven techniques on structuring an effective mobile program that fully supports your new hires. This includes blended learning activities, tracking progress via powerful reporting capabilities, and connecting new hires to a focused network of subject matter experts who can provide virtual check-ins and feedback.

Are you using a PowerPoint-based eLearning tool only using half of its capabilities? Do you wish that you could add gamification to your eLearning and/or classroom content, but you’re not a scripting or programming wizard? This session will explore several easy ways that PowerPoint-based eLearning tools can help you achieve gamification for your learning content without any typing of scripting/programming code. If you would like to learn some easy PowerPoint and QuizMaker tricks to achieve gamification, and you don’t have programming or scripting expertise, this session is for you!

Every organization is a complex ecosystem with a multitude of elements. Unfortunately, many L&D teams fail to take a holistic approach—or even recognize that L&D doesn’t own workplace learning on its own. Instead, they focus on their sphere of influence, which often revolves around formal training. Employees are left to struggle with mixed messages and contradictory priorities, which lessens the perceived value of L&D, stifles employee potential, and hinders long-term business growth.

In this session, you’ll find out more about what it means to take a people-first approach to workplace learning. You’ll start by exploring the components of a modern learning ecosystem, discussing how these elements support one another, and mapping these ecosystem components to familiar learning and performance tactics. You’ll then look at real-world examples of organizations that have applied this approach with measureable results. Finally, you’ll identify practical next steps you can take at your workplace to start the shift toward an employee-centered learning ecosystem.

In this session, you will learn:

• How a holistic, people-first approach to learning benefits your employees
• What the components of a modern learning ecosystem are
• How the layers of a modern learning ecosystem build upon and strengthen one another
• What guiding principles you can use to build your learning ecosystem framework
• How you can start the shift toward an employee-centered learning ecosystem

Audience:
Intermediate to advanced managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.). Participants should have a foundational understanding of the learning ecosystem concept as well as general experience in corporate enterprise learning and performance strategy.

Technology discussed in this session:
Enterprise social/knowledge-sharing technology, performance support technology, manager analytics/reporting dashboards, and behavior observation technology.

Rapid responses to “Code Blue” resuscitation events are critical to patient outcomes. MedStar Health has developed several training interventions over time to improve performance, but data from these activities were captured in disparate tools or not collected at all. Without a centralized method for analyzing data, understanding the impacts of different elements of the training program was not possible. This illustrates a common problem in blended learning approaches.

This session will describe MedStar Health’s journey in developing an ecosystem of tools to collect and analyze data from multiple training interventions, including eLearning modules, instructor-led training, a part-task training app, and in situ simulations. You will learn how the Experience API (xAPI) and a learning record store (LRS) enabled this approach, and about the successes and challenges encountered in adopting these technologies. The session will also illustrate how aggregating data from these learning experiences provides insights into training effectiveness questions, such as how usage of the mobile part-task trainer affects performance in high-fidelity in situ simulations.

In this session, you will learn:

• How xAPI can enable a flexible ecosystem of learning technologies
• How to analyze multiple components of a blended learning solution
• Why it is critical to formulate meaningful questions early in the planning process
• About the challenges of adopting an LRS and the resources required to do so

Audience:
Novice to intermediate project managers, managers, and directors with a basic understanding of xAPI.

Technology discussed in this session:
xAPI, Watershed LRS, mobile games, and Training Evidence Systems/xapiapps.

The National Park Service (NPS) had a milestone year in 2016. That centennial year didn’t just kick off a second century of stewardship of America's national parks—it also catalyzed a renewed focus for the NPS on employees. To better address the challenges this group faced, the NPS decided to shift its L&D paradigm to a broader learning and performance ecosystem approach.

In this case study session, you’ll explore the integration of ecosystem theory and practice as you learn how the NPS has worked with internal and external partners to transform from a traditional, training-based approach to a multifaceted ecosystem approach. You’ll learn more about why an ecosystem approach works, how to develop an ecosystem solution for your organization, and how to measure its success. You’ll walk away with lessons learned about ecosystem planning and implementation, as well as practical advice for getting started.

In this session, you will learn:

• How a learning and performance ecosystem approach aligns with contemporary challenges and opportunities for organizations, teams, and individuals
• How to build new capabilities to develop, manage, and measure the impact of ecosystem solutions
• How to mobilize the L&D community and its key stakeholders and customers around transforming the way we approach learning and development
• How to initiate the change with pilot projects and strong sponsorship

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

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

All too often, new learning theories and technologies come along with little or no vision for how they complement existing approaches and strategies. As each emerges, learning leaders are left holding the bag, trying to make these new approaches work. 70:20:10 is a great math formula to throw around, with few disagreeing with its premise. The problem is taking it from theory to reality and integrating it into your existing ecosystem. 

In this session, you will explore the fundamentals you need in order to integrate the principles of 70:20:10 into your existing learning strategy. You’ll discuss everything from tools to change management. You will also discover the new and emerging roles this changing landscape is creating.

In this session, you will learn:

• How 70:20:10 maps to existing learning theory and approaches
• About its impact on your current learning team and their roles
• About a change management strategy needed to make this a reality
• About examples of methodology that enable it

Most learning programs have the goal of supporting behavior change, even a change as simple as getting people to do their jobs better. Organizational learning traditionally measures desired outcomes in terms of “learning objectives,” which are fairly straightforward to identify. In contrast, identifying the root cause of behavior change problems is considerably more complex.

This session will examine the differences between analyzing learning objectives and diagnosing behavior change problems. You will explore behavior change from multiple angles, including why people do what they do today, why they may resist changing their behavior tomorrow, and more. You will leave this session with strategies you can use to diagnose behavior change problems in the organizations you support.

In this session, you will learn:

• Ways to identify the specific issues underlying difficult behavior change problems
• How to use research-based models to diagnose behavior change problems
• Specific strategies to address barriers to behavior change

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

eLearning professionals are expected to take on a wide variety of very different roles. Sometimes you’re the eLearning developer, graphics designer, narrator, or videographer. Other times you may act as the project manager, researcher, or even the department’s tech guru. It’s no surprise that this can be a daunting and sometimes scary prospect for those new to the industry, leaving them feeling insecure, overwhelmed, and unsure of where to begin.

In this session, you’ll learn 10 fundamental tips and strategies that can help any new eLearning professional survive their first year in the L&D field. These practical tips will range from visual design to content development, project management, and more. You’ll spend time learning about each tip in detail and then see specific examples of how they’ve been successfully applied in real life.

In this session, you will learn:

• Ten tips to help you become a more confident and successful eLearning professional
• About the importance of setting high expectations for your work
• Important things no one else will tell you when you start your first eLearning job
• How to cultivate continued success and confidence beyond your first year in eLearning

Audience:
Novice designers, developers, and project managers.

In the customer training world, L&D professionals often have difficulty convincing their customers to complete coursework. This audience consists of busy professionals who increasingly want training they can take at their own pace, on their own time. While in theory this approach has benefits for both companies and customers, in practice there can be real challenges in trying to convince customers to prioritize this non-mandatory training over their other pressing work tasks and deadlines.

In this session, you’ll learn techniques to overcome the barriers associated with non-mandatory training and motivate your customers to make taking your courses a priority. You’ll explore the strategies and tactics behind using incentives to encourage people to complete training and understand the different stakeholders who need to get involved in order to make them happen. You’ll also learn how to use data to assess the effectiveness of your incentives so you can adjust your approach when necessary.

In this session, you will learn:

• About specific incentives that can encourage completion of non-mandatory training
• Techniques for implementing incentives across different organizations
• How to use data to evaluate incentives
• About the pros and cons of using gamification as an incentive for completing coursework

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning management system (LMS) and gamification software.

In order to provide top-notch customer service, call center agents are required to master an ever-growing number of knowledge and skill sets during training, including sales skills, enterprise tools, products, and policies and procedures. As traditional assessments are often limited to isolated application, facts, or memorized data at lower-level thinking skills, they tend to fall short of testing whether the agents can actually apply their learning and perform on the job.

In this session, you’ll explore the benefits of using game assessments over traditional assessments in call centers, including how this approach can drive employee engagement. You’ll learn how to create game assessments for this environment that motivate employees with healthy competition and recognition for great performance. By the end of this session, you’ll have a repertoire of gamification techniques and methods that you can use to assess higher-order thinking skills and true on-the-job performance.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why game assessments are a great fit for call centers
• How games and game assessments can drive employee engagement
• How to create game assessments that motivate employees with healthy competition and recognition
• How you can apply gamification techniques to assess higher-order thinking skills and performance

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Segno Expertise learning platform, HTML/HTML5, and Articulate Storyline 2.

Acquiring, onboarding, and retaining new and existing customers is critical to the success of any business. The challenge most organizations face in this is figuring out the most effective way to engage and educate their customers at key points in the relationship lifecycle. The ability to manage the tactical requirements such as timing, learning programs, and customer behavior is critical to its success.

In this session, you’ll take a closer look at the online learning strategies that drive meaningful results throughout the customer relationship lifecycle. From developing a more effective onboarding process for new customers to increasing product adoption for existing customers, you’ll explore approaches designed to create a more engaged, educated, and active customer base. In addition, you’ll address strategies designed to foster customer acquisition, customer certification, and a host of other programs directed at key stages in the customer lifecycle.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to develop better relationships with your customers through online learning
• Strategies to improve onboarding and product adoption for new customers
• Tactical approaches that can improve customer engagement and satisfaction
• How to use online learning to connect with your customers at each stage in the relationship lifecycle

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning Platforms

Video is all the rage, but what constitutes good video? In the YouTube era, many developers have been taught to point their iPhone and shoot with little thought to aspects like visual composition, lighting, and editing. When you’re shooting video, a number of small, easily adjusted factors often make the difference between a quality video and one that’s unwatchable.

This session will explore a number of practical, immediately applicable tips to improve the quality of your online learning video. All of these tips are designed to be implemented with little to no cost. You’ll see how to shoot video (and screencasts) to minimize expensive and time-consuming edits. Whether you shoot video with a professional SLR camera or an iPhone, whether you edit with Camtasia or iMovie, you’ll find that these tips will help you create improved video.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to compose video shots appropriately
• How to “shoot for the edit”
• How to select outstanding background
• How to create quick green-screen backgrounds
• How to create professional-quality bumper graphics

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Video cameras (iPhone, professional, prosumer); video editing software (iMovie, Camtasia, Premiere); and green screens.

With so much of your design work focused on smooth navigation, creating engaging content, and crafting complex interactions, you may overlook a basic issue: Can people actually be successful with the course? Design flaws such as overload, ineffective use of multimedia (especially narration), and poor assessment items are just some of the ways an “engaging” course can still cause people to stumble.

Join this session to take a closer look at the most common, but also easily fixable, issues that can trip up learners. You’ll find out how context failures, interaction failures, attitude failures, or even reality failures can make an otherwise well-designed course ineffective. You’ll then discuss a wide range of ways that designers can avoid or correct these problems, helping to ensure that your audience can get the most out of your course.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to identify which tools are best suited to your audience, organization, and instructional goals
• How to better understand tools at their root so you can leverage them in more useful ways
• Ideas for partnering with your audience to create more user-generated content
• Ideas for overcoming resistance and common objections
• Hands-on tips for using these tools to create a solution for your workplace challenges

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

PowerPoint is often the basis for much of the training material you use and the eLearning and mLearning content you create, and yet it’s text-heavy, dull, and boring. This is not effective; it results in disengaged students and click-through eLearning.

In this session, see how you can revolutionize your presentations and other training material using visuals, diagrams, and animated sequences, with some helpful how-to guides and a collection of awesome PowerPoint tricks. You will see examples of the approaches in real-life training materials across a range of different topics and formats. Get inspiration to apply these ideas to your next training course or presentation.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to delight your audiences with compelling visual slides
• How to manipulate photos within PowerPoint (no need for Photoshop) so that they convey meaning
• How to use animation to tell your story effectively
• How to create, edit, format, and animate live graphs and charts quickly and easily

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Microsoft PowerPoint (2007 and later).

Searching for new and innovative ways to present content is an ongoing challenge for most instructional designers. If you’re stuggling with this yourself, you may want to consider using an inconventional option—comics and comic-style art. Comics are a great way to share content in an engaging and effective way, and their growing popularity has helped them grow in acceptance within L&D. That said, if you’ve never created comic-style content, it’s hard to know where to begin—particularly if you need assistance acquiring or creating your visuals.

In this session, you’ll find out what you need to know to get started with using comics and comic-like approaches in your projects. You’ll explore what ways the comic format works best for L&D and how to think about creating comics from an instructional design perspective, including specific approaches for leveraging comics in eLearning. You’ll then look at the production side and learn more about writing and planning, including how to storyboard a comic, as well as options for sourcing visuals if you’re not able to draw them yourself.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to apply the comic format to instructional design
• How to understand the differences of various approaches to comics
• How to plan and storyboard a comic to fit instructional design
• How to source comic art or source talent to create the visuals for your comics

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and managers. A basic understanding of instructional design principles is assumed; no visual design skills are required.

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Mobile learning is rapidly becoming a must-have for organizations big and small. For most designers, getting started is a huge hurdle they have yet to overcome. Considering all the new technology, platforms, authoring tools, and skills required to make it all work can paralyze even the best learning pros.

In this session, you’ll learn how quick and easy it can be to build mobile learning with skills and tools that you already have. If you have PowerPoint (yes, PowerPoint), you have everything you need to create visually appealing, interactive, and dynamic mobile learning solutions. Additionally, you will learn how to create mobile-friendly videos and interactive eBooks.

In this session, you will learn:

• About several types of mobile-friendly learning content that you can easily author from PowerPoint
• How to quickly and easily create mobile-friendly videos
• How to create interactive eBooks
• About easy-to-use templates to jump-start your mobile learning projects

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers with basic computer and PowerPoint skills.

Technology discussed in this session:
Microsoft PowerPoint, portable document format (PDF), eBooks (EPUB), and mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.).

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop with Wi-Fi capability, running Windows and PowerPoint 2013 or later.

With the frequent releases of eLearning products, it can be hard to keep up with all the new features introduced with every version. But if you don’t look into these updates, you could miss great new features that can make your course creation easier or even allow you to do brand-new things with the tool.

In this session, you’ll learn about the most useful new features in Adobe Captivate 9 that can help you easily create a wide range of attractive and instructionally sound eLearning. You’ll see a demonstration of how Captivate 9 can help you go seamlessly from storyboarding to responsive eLearning (and to everything in between). You’ll also learn how to use multi-state objects, free assets, effects, knowledge check questions, and more in the newest version of this eLearning development tool.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to create storyboards using Adobe Captivate Draft
• How to create responsive eLearning courses
• How to work with multi-state objects and effects
• How to download and use the free assets for Captivate

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers. Attendees should have a basic knowledge of Captivate.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Captivate 9.

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop running Adobe Captivate 9.

Many people in L&D work with technology that does their coding for them, enabling them to create something exciting without really understanding the code behind it. But if you don’t know how something works, then you can’t possibly control it, mold it, or make it better. The thing decides how it works, and you must simply abide. That’s why, even if you have no intention of making coding your full-time job, it can still be handy to have a basic understanding of how it works and when just a small amount of coding can make what you create even better.

In this session, you’ll explore what goes on under the hood of your courses and how your content actually works. Through looking at simple examples and learning a few basics of JavaScript and HTML, you’ll discover how easy it is to get started with coding and how even just a few basic skills can help you tweak and reshape your digital content in meaningful ways. By the end of this session, you’ll have a better understanding of what your pages are doing and how to make sure your content works for you.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why knowing what your code looks like can help you in the long run
• Why knowing how your content works can make you a better designer
• That JavaScript is not scary!
• How to write simple HTML and JavaScript
• About resources that can help you continue learning the basics of web programming

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers.

Technology discussed in this session:
HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and text editors.

When your organization is located all across North America, it’s no surprise that it can be a challenge to deliver in-person sales training events. Sylvan Learning needed to find a different approach, and the best option was a blended one. But while blended learning made strategic sense, the team still needed to find a way to use this approach to engage learners while still providing the same level of interactivity as an instructor-led event.

In this case study session, you’ll take a deeper look at how a blended learning, cohort approach to sales training can engage business owners and employees alike. Through the Sylvan Learning team’s experiences, you’ll find out how you can use individual coaching support, instructor-led webinar sessions, and ongoing learning opportunities to engage your audience even when you can’t be in the same room with them.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to provide sales training using a distance learning model
• How to support participants through a learning community after the initial training event
• How to use a cohort approach to training
• How to engage business owners in employee training by reporting results

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
LMS (Cornerstone) and webinar technology (WebEx).

When creating mobile learning, serious issues exist with the level of interactivity, adaptive screen layouts for multiple modalities, the time and resources needed to create the solutions, and the lack of a highly efficient method to update content that does not take significant time or a programmer.

In this session, you will explore the best practices for creating reusable HTML5 learning objects for mobile learning that rely on externalized content created collaboratively using tools like Google Docs. The best practices will include methods for creating solutions with adaptive designs, dynamic simulations, presentations, quiz engines, performance support tools, and more. All are built with technologies that allow for changes in minutes and automated localization by using simple spreadsheets (potentially wiki-based) to update and maintain mobile courseware without relying on third-party rapid authoring tools.

In this session, you will learn:

• How you can use HTML5 to create highly interactive reusable objects
• How you can construct these reusable objects to be fully adaptive using responsive design techniques
• How to tie reusable objects to external content for a more flexible, dynamic, and maintainable solution
• How to utilize wiki-based collaborative tools to make creation and maintenance of courseware efficient and open to all skill levels

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

Technology discussed in this session:
HTML5 and Google Docs.

In recent years, learning has moved closer to the workplace. Classrooms have moved out of corporate learning centers and into training rooms co-located with offices. Providers are delivering online learning directly to the desktop more than ever before. The next challenge is to move learning directly into the workflow. To do this, you need to move beyond course delivery and into a broader, more comprehensive and strategic approach that focuses not just on learning, but on performance and productivity.

In this session, you will learn about the six key components of a learning and performance ecosystem and see examples of how you can apply them in dozens of combinations to create learning and performance solutions. You will work through a sample scenario with your peers to analyze a problem and brainstorm a multifaceted solution that takes full advantage of the learning and performance ecosystem.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to describe a learning and performance ecosystem
• How to identify an opportunity for an ecosystem solution
• How to work with stakeholders and experts to define and prioritize factors that contribute to the problem
• How to identify the best way to measure success
• How to identify ecosystem components available to you
• How to apply components to create a solution

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

When one employee joined Purch, she was tasked with “mission impossible”: to build a learning organization from scratch for an extremely diverse workforce with limited manpower. After extensive analysis, she realized employees were learning much more from informal resources than conventional means. By transforming their mindsets and making smart investments in technology, Purch was able to create a learning organization that boosts engagement and contributes to a healthy learning culture.

In this case-study presentation, you’ll use Purch’s journey to learn about the changing learning habits and demands in today’s workforce—and what L&D professionals of all levels can do to address them efficiently. You’ll explore the benefits of capturing and accounting for informal learning activities. You’ll also get guidance on how to realign your L&D strategy and invest in new technology to support employees’ learning and help them perform better.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the changing learning habits and demands of today’s professionals
• How to adjust your learning strategy to include informal learning and invest effectively in learning technology that will assist you
• What benefits you can gain by recognizing informal learning activities
• What L&D professionals of all levels can do to take advantage of informal learning

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

You’re excited about the promise of an xAPI-enabled world, but you have a learning management system (LMS) and a host of SCORM-based courses that you need. You’ll need to make some strategic decisions, stay flexible, and manage the transition over time. What if you could get the most out of both an LMS and a learning record store (LRS) at the same time as you move to your next-generation learning and performance infrastructure?

This session will quickly review what an LRS is and how it’s different from and similar to the LMS you already have. You’ll review your options when it comes to LRSs and how they work (or don’t work) with your LMS. Will you work with a stand-alone LRS? A front-end xAPI solution with a built-in LRS? Or an LRS that is aligned with your LMS and your current learning infrastructure? The decision you make here is a crucial one as you plot your organization’s course toward your next-generation learning ecosystem.

In this session, you will learn:

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

Audience:
Intermediate to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors. A basic familiarity with xAPI will be helpful, as this session will not cover “what is xAPI.”

Technology discussed in this session:
The Experience API (xAPI), learning record stores (LRSs), SCORM, and learning management systems (LMSs).

Explore the results of a yearlong benchmarking study done with eight leading learning departments who have been implementing workflow learning for many years. If you’re struggling with the technologies, methodologies, change management, and approaches needed to grow your learning organization into an ecosystem that not only includes workflow learning, but places it front and center in your design, you’ll not want to miss this session.

In this session, you will discover five fundamental competencies you need in order to successfully migrate your organization to include workflow learning in the ecosystem. You will examine best practices and lessons learned that have emerged from this work. You’ll hear from members of the benchmarking team and be able to ask them questions based on their groundbreaking work. 

In this session, you will learn:

• About the five key competency areas of effective workflow learning
• About the Five Moments of Learning Need, which are at the center of the design and change
• New ways to organize your learning team to enable workflow learning
• About the opportunities and challenges you’ll face when making this journey

Audience:
Learning managers, directors, and leaders.

Instructional design focuses on only a small portion of the learning process—instruction. Much learning also happens through experience, supported by social feedback, content, and some formal instruction (70:20:10 sums it up). This broader approach that looks at the entire learning process goes by a different name: learning experience design (LXD). And while instructional design isn’t dead as a concept, it is finding itself being subsumed by LXD, allowing for a deeper perspective on how designers can provide the experiences that people need to develop job skills.

In this session, you’ll find out more about the guideposts on the path to becoming a learning experience designer. You’ll visit the key disciplines that inform LXD, including design thinking, user experience design, and cognitive science. You’ll also explore how to use technology, especially mobile and xAPI, to support and track learning experiences. Finally, you’ll walk through a simple process for designing learning experiences that produce measurable results. 

In this session, you will learn:

• About the key steps in becoming a learning experience designer
• How to apply design thinking, user experience design, and cognitive science principles to the design of learning experiences
• A six-step process for learning experience design

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

Technology discussed in this session:
General application of xAPI and mobile devices.

By creating a learner profile, you will be better able to avoid building training that is ineffective, undesirable, and lacking relevance for your learners. By doing research up front about all aspects of your learners, you will be able to leverage those details to create impactful training that will capture their attention.

This session will explore a proven approach to getting to know your learners in depth, answering questions like: Who are they? Where do they live? What do they do? What do they eat for breakfast? You will learn why this is important to all roles on a project (ISD, PM, GD, etc.). In addition, participants will build a learner profile on the spot using an audience member to create an actual learner avatar. Additionally, you will explore the potential downfalls of NOT performing a thorough learner analysis.

In this session, you will learn:

• About a proven approach to creating a learner profile
• How to create a learner profile
• About the benefits (to all team members) of a comprehensive learner profile
• What can happen when an adequate learner profile isn’t created prior to the start of a project

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

Since the 1970s, waterfall methodologies such as ADDIE have been accepted as the standard development approach for eLearning. Today, many organizations are required to keep up with rapidly changing content while also decreasing the time to deliver new courses. Traditional waterfall methodologies have become inefficient, and eLearning professionals have started looking to incorporate agile concepts into their processes to keep up with this new rate of change.

In this session, you’ll take a closer look at the compelling reasons to adopt agile concepts into your eLearning development process. You’ll find out how key concepts such as release planning, iterations, sprints, standups, and more can make your development more nimble and efficient. This session will also help you evaluate some of the basic principles of agile development to determine how you can adopt the ones that best fit your organization’s needs.

In this session, you will learn:

• How agile development concepts differ from the approaches you may already be using, and why it may be a good fit for your organization
• How exactly this approach can improve your efficiency, decrease the time needed to release new content, and increase stakeholder satisfaction
• How you can apply these concepts to your eLearning development process

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

You asked your voice-over artist for a natural, conversational recording, but what you got back is stiff and formal. You waste time going back and forth with voice-over talent about pronunciation or rewording. Too often, you need to re-record voice-over due to errors or confusion. You need a process to make your script writing more efficient and effective.

In this session, you will learn one proven technique you can use to avoid many voice-over script pitfalls, regardless of whether you use professional voice-over talent or record it yourself. You’ll also learn how to identify and correct common errors and how to adapt your writing style for more engaging, conversational narration. You’ll practice editing some sample scripts during the session so you can immediately apply what you learn. You will also receive a review checklist you can take with you and share with your team to improve the quality and consistency of your scripts.

In this session, you will learn:

• A proven technique to avoid many voice-over script pitfalls
• How to identify and correct common voice-over script errors
• How to adapt your writing style to create more engaging and conversational voice-over scripts
• How to format your voice-over scripts for easier, more efficient recording
• How to practice editing sample script segments

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, managers, editors, and course writers. Experience working with voice-over scripts is beneficial but not required. Novice and intermediate designers will gain the most, but experienced designers and writers will still pick up a few new tips.

To support development of a graduate course on serious games at DePaul University, a yearlong study examined the questions to be addressed by this new mode of learning and assessments. Can you encourage people to experience failure in the spirit of learning? Can you build reflection and feedback loops into the learning process? Can you help people further develop their capacities for social interaction and collaborative problem-solving?

This session will review the current research from Northwestern University, Temple University, University of Wisconsin, and Rosalind Franklin University on how serious games will provide a pathway to mastery, and illuminate why serious games are disrupting current training and development methodologies. You will learn about the important features of this new training and learning, including engagement and technology approaches, the time to mastery, and the latest examples of serious games.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to encourage adults to experience failure in the spirit of learning
• How to build reflection and immediate feedback loops into the learning process
• How to facilitate adults to further develop their capacities for social interaction and collaborative problem-solving
• How to use natural language acquisition technology to engage your learners

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

All groups within an organization need some way to demonstrate their value. However, unlike sales, L&D generally doesn’t have hard data to measure results. In the past, most learning departments have been limited to measuring only whether their users had accessed their programs—not the strongest metric of how their work contributed to the organization. But L&D isn’t the only group that faces these measurement challenges. Marketing also has similar barriers to finding data that shows its value, but some have found creative solutions to this issue. What can L&D learn from marketing when it comes to measurement?

In this session, you’ll uncover how the work of Nielsen, a company that specializes in marketing analytics, can help you rethink measurement in L&D. You’ll learn more about a Nielsen framework called “Reach, Resonance, and Reaction” that describes how consumers react to marketing campaigns. You’ll then explore how to apply this framework to L&D and get a broader perspective on your learning analytics. By the end of this session, you’ll have a new view on how you can measure and share the value of the work you do with your broader organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• What the Reach, Resonance, and Reaction framework is and how it applies to learning
• How to take a broader view of the learning process and how each part can be measured
• Which parts of the learning process have often been ignored by data analytics
• How to identify opportunities for capturing new data to support the Reach, Resonance, and Reaction model

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

Technology discussed in this session:
This session explores analytics from a platform-agnostic perspective.

Having an educated team isn’t just a best practice; it’s a requirement. The more educated the team, the healthier the bottom line. The challenge lies in keeping teams informed and wanting to learn more about their roles in the industry. With dry content centered around policies and procedures, how do you create a story that engages a learner and makes an impact? By using animated videos that are relatable and fun!

In this session, you will be introduced to animated videos with relatable, current, and fun storylines. You will see how one team turned a learning challenge into an eLearning style guide and design template for use internally and externally. You will learn how they worked with internal and external SMEs to create storyboards and scripts that focused on critical factors affecting their industry: compliance, quality, and efficiency.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to sketchnote and storyboard using Paper by FiftyThree
• How to capture the importance of using good audio techniques
• The basics of using GoAnimate
• How to create fun and engaging learning videos, even with dry and boring content

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
GoAnimate, Adobe Audition, Adobe Captivate, BranchTrack, Adobe Media Encoder, TechSmith Snagit, TechSmith Camtasia, and Paper by FiftyThree.

Creating effective learning experiences is not a job for a novice, although many novices are thrown into the role of instructional designer or developer. If beginners turn to the field’s expansive literature, which ranges from cookbook-style guides and blogs to scientific research, they are easily overwhelmed and typically turn to overly simplistic approaches. But even experienced professionals can come to feel they’re never able to do the job that should be done.

This session will explore the objective of simplifying the task of creating effective instructional experiences, without oversimplifying it. You will come away from this session with successful strategies that are responsive to research and best practices, but that simplify the overall task while addressing the fundamentals needed for highly effective instruction.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to continuously evaluate designs as they come together
• To avoid excessive content presentation as a means to achieve greater content mastery
• To challenge awareness goals
• To design backward (it’s faster, easier, and better)

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

With the business world changing at an ever-increasing pace, even L&D strategies that have served you well in the past may not be as effective in the present. At Aflac, one challenge was a traditional ILT approach to training that just wasn’t the right fit for the company anymore. The team knew that by aligning learning strategies and solutions to emerging technologies, they could not only make a bigger impact on the people taking their training, but also make an overwhelming impact on the company’s bottom line. And the change they made to do this was a shift to virtual.

In this case study session, you’ll find out more about the overall scope and ideology of Aflac’s strategic shift from ILT to VILT. You’ll explore their journey through this process, including the learning solutions explored and the best practices they learned from this process. You’ll also find out more about the resources, technologies, and strategies that helped them along the way. Finally, you’ll take a closer look at the business side of this shift and examine the overall ROI they experienced by adopting this new approach for training.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Aflac shifted from ILT to VILT and what they learned from the experience
• How to devise a strategy for incorporating virtual and blended learning solutions
• What the impact of VILT on a company’s bottom line can be
• How to identify a personal case for change within your own company

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Saba and Adobe Connect.

Organizations implement new software all the time, especially with the constantly changing technology landscape. A healthcare organization was tasked with training thousands of non-clinical associates, nurses, and physicians when it implemented a new electronic health record. The burning question was: How do you teach people new software in a way that sticks? How do you provide learners with authentic context to practice what they’ll actually do on the job?

During this session, you’ll learn innovative ways to move beyond the traditional “watch me do it” approach to software training. You’ll explore methods for engaging with SMEs to get the content you need and then turning that content into “sticky” interactions that teach software in the real context of how learners will use it on the job. You’ll walk away with artifacts, templates, and concrete ideas for creating performance-based software simulations and just-in-time performance support. And finally, you’ll be prepared to transfer these takeaways to your own pressing training needs.

In this session, you will learn:

• Concrete tips for building performance-based software simulations
• How to blend “watch it” and “try it” methods into meaningful software training
• How to design job aids that are clear, concise, and helpful
• How to gather end-user and SME input in focus groups and usability testing
• How to create a workflow across multiple instructional designers to ensure a consistent end product

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 2 and Screencast-O-Matic.

Webinar presenter shows up late? Someone’s dog won’t stop barking? Meeting room crashes? Audio problems? Virtual classroom issues like these can seem impossible to overcome when they’re happening live. The presenters of this session feel your pain and have been there too—and they’re happy to share what they’ve learned from experiencing these kinds of virtual classroom snags themselves.

Join this session to learn tested ways to mitigate, respond, and recover by planning for the worst. You’ll explore some of the most common virtual event horror stories, crises, and nightmares, and you’ll look at what specifically went wrong, how the issues were solved in the moment, and how the situation could be handled better next time. You’ll hear examples, have a chance to share your own horror stories, and leave this session with a better “plan B” for when your next virtual classroom doesn’t go quite as planned.

In this session, you will learn:

• About common virtual conferencing issues
• Strategies for recognizing and mitigating risk factors for your virtual events
• How to respond to problems, recover from disruptions, and reassess or rework your plan
• How to keep your cool in a crisis

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers, event producers, trainers, and training managers.

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

Technology required:
Wi-Fi–enabled laptop with standard Internet browser (e.g., Chrome, Firefox, Safari) and, optionally, the Adobe Connect Meeting Add-in.

You’ve put hours and hours into analyzing content, spent days painstakingly storyboarding your product and drafting the scripts, carefully thought about the navigation choices—and yet you’re still met with “Great, but can you make it look nicer/better/modern/pretty?” when you show it to your client or stakeholders. What more can you do when you’ve utilized sound learning theory and development strategies, but you’re still expected to be a graphic designer on top of it all?

In this session, you’ll explore how the combination of just a few fundamental principles of design can make what you create look more coherent and fluid, even if you’re not a trained graphic designer yourself. You’ll learn how to analyze existing design, identify areas for improvement, and understand what principles and strategies can help you achieve a more aesthetically appealing design. Whether you consider yourself to have an aesthetic eye or not, these principals will enhance the presentation of your content in a way that will impress your audience and stakeholders.

In this session, you will learn:

• Basic principles of design that can quickly enhance your visual design skills
• How to analyze existing content and identify the weak areas of a design
• How to use design best practices to improve those weaknesses
• How to break down efficient designs into the fundamental design principles

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Pages.

Participant technology requirements:
PC or Mac running PowerPoint or Pages.

You’ve seen it happen: Your eLearning project was making great progress when it hit the snag of the weedy review process. Stakeholders contributed feedback that needed to be addressed but that set the project back substantially. If only you had known sooner! While this is a common problem, there are steps you can take to ensure both that your stakeholders are heard from and that your projects move forward on schedule.

This session will give you the strategies you need to collaborate on reviews in effective and efficient ways. You’ll take a look at two paths a project can take: one where it is hit with unexpected feedback, leading to a ripple effect of production delays and redesigns, and another where the review process is clear and allows stakeholders an appropriate level of ownership of the learning product, shaping it into a more effective overall program. Through these scenarios, you’ll learn tips and techniques that will help you better leverage feedback while also mitigating the risk of production delays or rework. You’ll discover how simple shifts in your approach can leave you with projects that include important SME and stakeholder feedback, and still finish on time.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to identify risk factors for project delays
• About the importance of true collaboration and stakeholder buy-in
• How to execute review sessions that gain consensus and manage SME feedback
• How to establish effective boundaries for project feedback
• How to identify when key feedback is needed in your eLearning project timelines, and what the “point of no return” is

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

In L&D, keeping people engaged and interested in the content you’re sharing with them is one of your primary goals. But in order to ensure what you’re designing feels fresh and current, it’s important to look for inspiration not just within the L&D industry, but in other industries that have similar goals. And one of the most innovative sources you can look to is web design. Like in L&D, web designers need to catch and keep the attention of a busy and easily distracted audience, and the design trends that have sprung up in this industry can help you find new ways to reach the people you’re creating content for.

In this session, you’ll explore how to incorporate some of the latest web design trends into your eLearning to improve learner engagement and user experience. You’ll learn more about web trends such as flat design, full screen backgrounds, simplicity, cinemagraphs, and parallax/vertical scrolling, and how they all increase the opportunity for people to connect with content. Not only that, but you’ll also look at how these trends can be adapted for your own learning and performance support projects.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the advantages of borrowing from web design trends and using them as inspiration
• How to implement web design trends without losing focus on effective learning
• How to use visuals to direct attention to what is important
• How to adapt parallax scrolling and other web navigation trends to eLearning courses
• How to create opportunities to make emotional connections through good visual design

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
eLearning authoring tools such as MS PowerPoint, Adobe Captivate, and Articulate (general).

Have you always wanted to play Family Feud but are a bit camera shy? Now is your opportunity! Join this session during the expo reception, where we’ll be looking for audience participation to field two “family” teams. Topics may include best practices, emerging trends and technologies, and common pain points. A game of Family Feud wouldn’t be complete without each member of the winning “family” going home with a prize! Each member of the winning team will walk away with a Bose Wireless Speaker. Let’s play the Feud!