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.

Creativity is at the heart of both learning and the work of learning professionals. But what happens when technology changes the paradigm? In this keynote session, you will learn from Glen Keane, a 38-year veteran of Walt Disney Feature Animation. Perhaps no industry has been disrupted by technology more than animation, as the hand-drawing of the past has been almost completely replaced by computers. Mr. Keane will tell how he embraced these changes, rather than resisting them, and how he took what he knew of animation and used technological change to enhance his creativity. See examples of creativity and innovation in practice as Mr. Keane shares how his art has evolved from hand-drawn to computer animation, and how it continues to evolve into the growing space of virtual reality.

Analysts and L&D experts agree that there is a massive shift happening in the world of learning technology. Data suggests that the LMS category is in the late stage of eLearning’s product lifecycle, but what’s next? Analysts like Ambient Insight, Brandon Hall, and Bersin by Deloitte are in agreement that the market can expect to see rapid migration to “more efficient knowledge and learning transfer products.” Join this session to learn five key reasons why the LMS is failing L&D organizations; the role that the LMS can still play in a modern learning ecosystem; and when to consider a full replacement of the LMS vs. selecting add-on technologies to help modernize. You’ll also hear about examples of organizations that have successfully made the shift.

Your goal is to provide learners with a terrific learning experience on whatever device they might be using. But spending countless hours tweaking content for various screens when there’s a fast-approaching deadline doesn’t seem like a great solution. Help is on the way! In this session you’ll find out how mobile eLearning development just got easy with the hot new apps in Articulate 360.

Let’s face it: we all need a little help sometimes. Whether you’re a manager, an instructional designer, a developer, a programmer, or some combination—no matter what your role is, sooner or later you need to choose an authoring tool to develop eLearning content. But how to decide? In this topic, we’ll discuss various criteria and decision points to help you figure out which authoring tool is the best fit for you. At the end of the presentation, attendees will be provided with their own essential checklist to help them choose.

The Internet is a terrific knowledge repository. The sheer size of the content stored on the web is unimaginable. Within organizational intranets, the amount of content that is available is also impressive, but is it good content? Is it the right content for the right purpose? Is it up to date? Is it understandable? The more you have to ask these questions about online content, the less efficient your search for the right information will be. Even more of a concern is that you might be more likely to find bad content, act on it (believing it is correct), and suffer the consequences

In this session we will explore the rationale and challenges of content curation and review a number of strategies for assuring your content is curated appropriately. You will learn the importance of becoming a good content curator in addition to being a good content creator, and find out how curators are less focused on finding more content than on making sure they have the right content. Finally, you will learn more about the focuses of content curation: accuracy, relevance, usefulness, and value of knowledge assets.

In this session, you will learn:

• What content curation is and why it is so critical to learning and performance
• The relationship between content curation and the learning and performance ecosystem
• The role—and limitations—of technology, users, and authors in content curation
• Eleven content curation challenges
• Seven approaches to doing content curation work

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

When a new LMS administrator joined Whole Foods Market, she found herself in a decentralized organization right in the middle of scoping out a new LMS implementation. In only six months she would need to take this project from the early stages all the way to a systems launch. While not everyone may face this exact situation, if you’re considering implementing a new LMS, chances are you’ll experience many of the same pain points and challenges she had to face to make the launch happen.

In this session, you’ll learn more about how Whole Foods Market made this quick LMS deployment work and what those experiences can teach you about implementing your own new LMS. You’ll get insight into the steps you’ll want to take to help your LMS launch run smoothly, including how to plan and manage the transition from a legacy system, conduct stakeholder interviews, assemble your launch team, create standard operating procedures, and gain the buy-in you’ll need for a successful deployment. In addition, you’ll explore how to navigate the unique challenges and opportunities you may encounter when implementing an LMS in a highly decentralized and collaborative organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to rapidly deploy a large-scale learning management system successfully
• Tips from agile methodologies to establish roles and responsibilities, prioritize your high-value elements, and start releasing slices as soon as possible
• How to modify your stakeholder interview process to ensure the right configuration decisions are being made for the organization as a whole
• How an LMS content audit can help you set standards in a solutions blueprint
• Why you need to define basic system governance

Audience:
Novice to intermediate project managers, managers, and LMS (or other platform) administrators.

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning management systems (legacy systems and new systems), Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs.

Knowledge retention for traditional training events is often low. Don’t worry about it. Instead, invest where all learning and performance support really happens—the classroom (10 percent), from colleagues (20 percent), and on the job (70 percent). The magic happens when you can develop and maintain all content in one effort and use it everywhere; that includes at your fingertips—when, where, and how you need it. 

In this session, you’ll discuss why this “magic” works and how it can satisfy any workforce, wherever they work and however short their attention span. You’ll uncover how performance support is personal to what people are doing and who they are. At the end of this session, you’ll not only know why learning at your fingertips is so effective, you’ll also walk away with examples and models of how it can work in any organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• About examples of specific organizational victories and failures
• About scenarios to satisfy all aspects of workforce enablement—conceptual learning and procedural enablement and compliance
• About the maturity model for workforce performance support

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

“If you taught them this, why don’t they do it?” Educational services staff at Saint Vincent Hospital got tired of hearing this question and started looking for a new learning paradigm for the institution. They found a solution in performance support. By blending learning opportunities and performance support for associates before a class, during a class, and on the job, organizations are able to significantly impact job performance.

This session will discuss the principles of performance support (PS) and the process of gaining institutional buy-in for PS. You will learn the benefits of providing PS across a learning ecosystem and how PS was successfully blended into the learning continuum for several projects. Finally, you will examine the metrics used to measure the success of the implementation. Details will be provided and examples will be shared.

In this session, you will learn:

• The difference between job aids and true performance support
• The benefits of providing performance support throughout the learning ecosystem
• Steps to implement performance support throughout the ecosystem
• Potential metrics for determining the success of the implementation

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Ontuitive’s LearningGuide Manager.

Convincing sales professionals to take the time for career development is an age-old challenge. They just want to sell! However, for them to be most effective at their job they need development—especially at the beginning of their careers. So how do you provide the in-depth sales development content that they need in a way they’ll actually engage with?                                

In this case study session, you’ll find out how Guardian Life and Rapid Learning Deployment worked to overcome this hurdle by rethinking their roadmap. You’ll explore the new approach they used to give their financial representatives a better understanding of a three-year development plan through their LMS, including detailed curriculum plans and support resources at various stages in their career. At the end of this session, you’ll have new strategies that will help you inspire sales professionals to engage with their careers and use your development content to move them forward faster than before.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Guardian Life created a visual roadmap for learning and development
• How this roadmap was designed and implemented in a modern LMS
• Why and how Guardian Life staged the rollout of this roadmap
• What data they used to measure and show their results

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

Technology discussed in this session:
LMS.

eLearning and instructional professionals constantly crave new approaches to design, and they regularly grapple with how best to incorporate design thinking into their workflows. Many experienced designers find themselves struggling to enhance usability, influence perception, and make better design decisions. For the instructional designer, the ability to add techniques that “teach through design” can validate creative prowess and yield enhanced interactive and visual solutions in learning materials.

In this session, you will learn advanced design methods that can elevate your approach to design thinking and expand your design vision for better learning and education products. You will explore and discuss how advanced-level design approaches and contextual design process abilities are part of the critical skill set instructional designers command. By attending, you will build your advanced conceptual utility and discover new ways to enhance learning experiences.

In this session, you will learn:

• About advanced design-thinking approaches embedded across design disciplines
• About contextual design methods to influence perception and usability
• Strategies for teaching through design
• How to think and teach through design by adding 10 new advanced techniques

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

While instructional design and effective learning approaches are paramount in eLearning, aesthetics can’t be ignored either. That’s because the page layouts and overall design of your projects influence both your client’s feelings about the quality of your work and your audience’s confidence in the course. But most instructional designers and developers aren’t trained graphic designers, leaving them at a disadvantage when it comes to building professional, modern eLearning projects.

This session will help you break down what goes into great eLearning design and layout, and then show you how to easily use those components in the rapid development tools you’re already using. You’ll start by examining professional page layouts and learning how to identify the different design components and effects that make them effective. You’ll also take a close look at simple tips for creating basic graphics, and examine how object movement and transitions can assist your design. You’ll then take these techniques and find out how specifically to apply them in rapid development tools to build graphic elements, add movement, and increase the visual appeal of the content you create.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why it’s important to add visual appeal and polish to bland-looking eLearning
• How to identify and incorporate modern design techniques in your eLearning courses
• How to create graphics using rapid development tools and PowerPoint
• How to design and build pages with thoughtful movement and transitions using rapid development tools

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers. Attendees with basic experience in rapid development tools and/or PowerPoint will get the most out of the session.

Technology discussed in this session:
Modern design themes on the web; rapid development tools (primarily Trivantis Lectora and Adobe Captivate); and Microsoft PowerPoint drawing tools.

Many L&D professionals have found that the traditional approach to online courses doesn’t always generate consistent quality when it comes to learning outcomes. Because of this, it’s tempting to try new approaches to solve this dilemma, such as gamification and other strategies. But without a deeper understanding of how to apply these new approaches in a meaningful way, you could end up just using superficial applications of them and miss out on their ability to increase knowledge transfer.

In this session, you’ll learn more about how Remote-Learner has been able to take persuasive technology and gamification techniques and align them to proven instructional design approaches. You’ll review the company’s research into the impact of designing with persuasive instructional strategies. You’ll then find out more about the methodology it used to design and develop learning experiences that leverage the strengths of gamification to support a true transfer of knowledge

In this session, you will learn:

• What Remote-Learner discovered in its research into persuasive instructional design
• How gamification can be used as a persuasive strategy
• How to go beyond surface applications to take advantage of gamification’s strengths in knowledge transfer
• What designing with the intent to persuade learners and support knowledge transfer can look like
• What Remote-Learner learned from designing eLearning using persuasive instructional strategies and implementing them using the Moodle platform

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Moodle and approved add-ons.

Social and informal learning are happening in your organization. The degree to which they happen varies due to context, tools, and culture. Regardless, each is a significant factor in individual, and therefore organizational, performance—too much so to ignore. The 70:20:10 principle and framework approach addresses these issues, but making this vision a reality has been a difficult undertaking due to traditional views about learning.

This session will explore the idea of “catalytic mechanisms” as first described by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. Catalytic mechanisms are not single events or initiatives, but shifts in one area that bring surprising results in others. You’ll explore what these look like, the impact they have, and how you can use them to more naturally shift and sustain behaviors toward increased collaboration and cooperation and encourage learning as byproduct of doing.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the relationship between the 70:20:10 principle, model, and framework
• How each 70:20:10 component informs and empowers the others
• About the components of a catalytic mechanism in a learning and performance context
• About common catalytic mechanisms that unconsciously hinder organizational learning
• How to create small catalytic mechanisms to shift away from training dependency

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

Video is rapidly becoming a much more common method of learning delivery than it was even a few years ago. But when you get started with video, it’s important to recognize that you can’t just use the exact same approaches you used in the past for creating eLearning or ILT—this medium has its own unique design rules. To use video as effectively as possible in L&D, you need to look at how this medium really works—from a neurological and a practical point of view—and how that affects the way you design content for it.

In this session, you’ll learn more about how exactly your brain learns from video. Based on both recent scientific insights and practical experience, you’ll find out what research suggests to do (and not do) when producing a video for learning, and you’ll learn about the ways this medium can use storytelling and emotion to engage viewers and put their brains to work. You’ll also get an up-to-date overview of the most important design principles for effective learning videos. With the techniques you learn from this session, you’ll be able to create videos that people don’t just watch all the way through, but also learn more from.

In this session, you will learn:

• What makes an instructional video effective
• How the brain processes images and videos and what that means for the videos you create
• What techniques make “talking head” instructional videos more human and trustworthy
• How best to convey abstract concepts with video
• Why you should answer the question of “What’s in it for me?” directly at the beginning of your video

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Video, interactive video, learning management systems, xAPI, YouTube, and Vimeo.

Support for Flash continues to erode. Mobile browsers stopped playing Flash years ago, and reports suggest the end of full support for Flash in Google’s Chrome browser is imminent. More and more, it’s becoming obvious that Flash is not a long-term solution. But if you have Flash content in your online training materials, what can you do about it other than completely rebuild?

In this session, you’ll explore options for displaying your Flash content going forward so you can avoid having to re-create it from scratch. You’ll look at how you can capture your existing Flash content and convert it to a more future-friendly format. You’ll also learn how to provide a video fallback for your Flash presentations. To help you move forward, you’ll then find out how you can use the HTML video player to do much of what Flash does today.

In this session, you will learn:

• How tools can capture the output from your Flash presentations and convert it to video
• How to provide a video fallback for browsers that do not support Flash
• What some of the alternatives to Flash are in modern HTML
• How to control video playback with “track” files

Audience:
Intermediate to advanced designers and developers. Attendees should have an understanding of the basic syntax of HTML; further understanding of the HTML tag, and its option, will be helpful.

tag, and its option, will be helpful.

Technology discussed in this session:
HTML.

Virtual classrooms are increasingly popular due to the ability for learners from any location to access education in real time with a teacher, and to participate in an environment that simulates a face-to-face classroom. However, a major area of concern has emerged: the tendency for learners to multitask, rather than remain attentive and focus on the content being delivered.

This session will discuss results from a doctoral study that investigated whether learners are multitasking and whether this affects the teaching and learning that occurs. You will explore evidence that learners are multitasking and why this can affect teaching and learning, including a reduction in performance levels and an increase in errors. You will also look at how this behavior leads to a reduction in knowledge retention and an increase in time taken to complete tasks. You will learn strategies for both facilitators and attendees to combat this issue and maximize the learning experience.

In this session, you will learn:

• Solutions and strategies to encourage learners to remain focused, including instructional design, professional development, support, and guides.
• The importance of including nine virtual classroom interactions
• What the future holds for virtual classrooms, including concerns, improvements, and possibilities

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Virtual classrooms, including Adobe Connect and Wimba.

L&D personnel, from learning leaders to instructional designers to technology innovators, all face a common challenge: how to secure executive buy-in for the tools and resources necessary to create powerful learning experiences.

In this session, you’ll learn how to outline a personalized game plan to get the resources for your specific learning organization model or tool. Whether you are creating an entirely new learning ecosystem or just gaining support for a new learning tool within an existing ecosystem, you will learn the “know, sell, and measure” strategy that successful L&D personnel use to gain commitment for learning solutions. You will explore your own learning model using the nine components of a learning ecosystem, learn techniques of getting and giving information for securing executive commitment to necessary resources, and provide proof of success with measurement.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to speak the language of business
• How to influence without authority
• How to get critical information using consulting techniques
• How to deliver relevant information with impact
• How to gain commitment with negotiation techniques

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

L&D practitioners have always struggled with extending the learning experience to help make workplace learning less of a one-time event and more of a long-term process. Social tools are one way to shift this approach, offering great opportunities for increasing our reach before, during, and after formal training. But sometimes when using social tools in the same ways we use them in our personal lives, we miss opportunities to leverage them differently to support extended learning and engagement with our audience. There's so much more that these tools have to offer than just asking people to join discussion groups!

In this session, you'll look beyond traditional approaches and instead dive deep into innovative and surprising ways that familiar social tools like Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat can be integrated into your own work. You’ll rethink your approach to proprietary/internal social tools as well. As you'll see from real workplace examples, these tools can span a wide range of uses, including supporting traditional training, making rules and processes clearer, supporting organizational initiatives like onboarding and branding, and even just helping learners engage with you and with each other. You’ll then put this knowledge to work right in the session by using one of these tools to start building your own new social solution.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to identify which tools are best suited to your learners, 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 learners to generate 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 and intermediate designers and developers

Technology discussed in this session:
Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, and proprietary/internal social tools.

Technology required:
Computer or mobile device you can access social networks on.

In today’s device-rich world, it’s absolutely essential to make your eLearning courses available on all devices, irrespective of their varying screen sizes, in the best possible manner. Creating responsive courses helps you achieve this goal.

During this hands-on session, you will learn how to create responsive eLearning courses with ease using Adobe Captivate. You will also learn about the best practices to tweak content for a specific device and use the in-product preview to see how the course will appear on various screens. And finally, you’ll learn to publish the course as a single project and automatically deliver the most appropriate experience for the learner’s device.

In this session, you will learn:

• About basic steps to create responsive courses
• Best practices to determine the size and position of objects
• Best practices to preview and publish responsive courses
• Best practices to create responsive interactions

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers with basic Captivate development skills.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Captivate.

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop running the latest version of Adobe Captivate.

2-D video is an important and engaging component of training programs and curricula around the world, but learners see only the linear path the video projects. What if you created a more immersive world for your learners, and gave them control of what to focus on and explore, by allowing them to see everything around them?

In this session, you will explore the use of 360-degree video in training development. You will learn what it takes to capture and edit 360 video on a budget, and how you can view and share your 360 video content with the world. Additionally, the session will cover how mainstream editing programs are adopting 360 workflows, and you will experience examples of 360 video that are being used for training and development in industries today.

In this session, you will learn:

• What it takes to record and edit 360 video
• How to view and share 360 video
• About existing 360 video training uses and examples
• About the strengths and weaknesses of 360 video in training development

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.). No prerequisite knowledge is needed.

Technology discussed in this session:
360-degree video; Adobe Premiere; and the GoPro Hero4 and SJ4000 action cameras.

How do you take a traditional learning experience like new hire training and radically reimagine it for today’s learner? More importantly, why should you want to change your approach? There’s a growing consensus in the L&D industry that new employees learn more on the job than they do through formal learning events. Nonetheless, L&D is in a unique position to shape the experience of new employees from day one, which presents a prime opportunity to create a lasting impact as they begin their new roles.

In this session, you’ll learn how to plan and execute a transformation of your new hire experience. You’ll find out how to leverage the best in ed-tech to design a new-hire program that reflects how people learn not only at work, but in their daily lives as well. You’ll look at how this approach should change your design, such as how techniques like interactive video can connect new employees to both company culture and to experienced employees, and also go beyond tactical learning design techniques to better understand how to package and sell your new-hire vision to key business stakeholders.

In this session, you will learn:

• How video-based narratives can drive adoption of company culture
• Strategies for planning and executing a large-scale new-hire transformation
• Authentic ways to facilitate co-creation of knowledge among new employees
• Techniques for connecting new employees through social communities
• Tips for selling your vision to key business stakeholders

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Interactive video.

Great design and intriguing media can do a lot to add clarity and interest to your content. Unfortunately, these things aren’t the easiest to include when you don’t have a design background or the budget to hire someone who does. But does this challenging situation mean that professional-looking design and media is completely out of reach? No. It just means you need to find inexpensive options to help you out.

In this session you’ll explore the wide range of cheap (and even free) tools and resources that you can use to create polished projects. You’ll look at inexpensive options for acquiring pre-created design assets and media, including a few completely free sources. You’ll then look at what budget-friendly tools are available help you create your own well-designed content on your computer or mobile devices. This session will concentrate on tools that aren’t just cheap, but also easy to use regardless of your design experience. You’ll then finish with a selection of resources that can help you further build your design skills.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why cheap doesn’t always equal poor quality when it comes to design tools and resources
• Which free and cheap web-based tools can assist you with design
• Which budget-friendly apps can be used with your smartphone or tablet to create your own media
• Where to find inexpensive images and media for your projects

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

Technology discussed in this session:
A wide selection of web-based tools (such as Infogr.am, Adobe Spark Video, and Canva) as well as apps (including Retype, Composition Cam, and Quik).

Is it possible to use virtual reality and augmented reality for your organization’s training on a budget? In this session, you’ll explore some amazing virtual and augmented reality training examples, bust some common myths about the hot new platform taking the consumer technology world by storm, and learn how you can integrate virtual and augmented realities into your training in a practical, powerful, and cost-effective manner.

This session is a regulatory training case study focusing on a competency course that works on any device, tablet, or PC and provides xAPI analytics and competency data. This approach allows for third-party hosted training to be distributed through content providers by integrating to LMSs using SCORM, AICC, or APIs provided by the LMS or other systems. Along with diagrams of the same approach with multiple Riptide Elements clients, the session will focus on the case study as an innovative solution for food safety team members who manufacture and supply FDA-regulated products around the world.

In this session, you will learn how to create and deliver formal and informal learning content with a single holistic solution. Come see a demonstration of the product that Brandon Hall rated the Gold Winner in the performance support category. You will also hear how companies are consolidating their content development, management, and delivery systems to a single, easy-to-manage global solution to address a wide range of learning and performance support needs.

Whether for an individual or an organization, learning is fundamentally about change—change in knowledge, in understanding, in wisdom, or in behavior. And change is challenging. It’s hard to change and to grow, and people often resist it. Anyone, therefore, who is in a learning leadership position and seeks to help their people and their organization grow must understand the dynamics of change.

In this session, you’ll first review common approaches to promoting and implementing individual and organizational change, as well as why they often fall short. Then you’ll flip the script to a more effective approach, summarized in seven action principles and illustrated with a variety of case studies and real-life stories. You’ll leave this session with a deeper understanding of the dynamics of change and with practical insights into how you can facilitate better and more effective learning-based change in your organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• How and why common approaches to promoting learning-based change fall short
• A more effective approach to promoting change, based on an understanding of the whole person
• Seven principles to put into action that can create more effective and lasting change and learning
• A deeper appreciation for the dynamics of change and learning

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

Today, all learning is a blend, whether by design or because the individual learners have made decisions to pursue and develop personalized learning paths. While that’s great for them, it can be problematic for designers of the learning experience. Designers aren’t always as successful as they can be because they try to implement new tools and design techniques without understanding how to integrate them into the larger blend or support personalized learning paths.

Are you ready to be the architect of the full blended learning experience? You need to understand the difference between eLearning, virtual learning, and mobile learning. You need to gamify, curate, and moderate. And you are responsible for managing the experience for your learners, no matter what their personal learning environment looks like. This session will explain what you need to manage, including influencing the mindset of your organization to support mobile, global, and multigenerational audiences; identifying the skills needed to support techniques like virtual facilitation, gamification, and curation; and determining the right toolsets for your programs.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to influence the mindset of your learning organization, changing from a “push training environment” to a “push learning environment”
• Which skills you or your team need to develop in order to design and build the best learning experiences
• About the most appropriate toolset for your design, including virtual learning, eLearning, and various microlearning tools
• How to enrich your personal learning network with resources to help you grow as a “learning experience architect”

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

Technology discussed in this session:
eLearning, virtual learning, mobile learning, gamification, curation, moderation, and globalization.

Modern learning and development strategies often seek to leverage peer-to-peer learning in one form or another; strategies include workplace collaboration, social media-based learning, personal networks, peer mentoring, and communities of practice, among others. L&D professionals may find, however, that promoting peer-to-peer learning is not as easy as enabling communication technologies and assigning roles. Learning leaders are sometimes surprised by inactive enterprise social networks and weak peer-to-peer support for learning.

This interactive session will discuss specific strategies for cultivating a peer learning community, including when and how to leverage technology and other community supports to enable and amplify peer-to-peer learning. Drawing from research and case studies on successful learning communities, the session will provide specific recommendations for cultivating social learning among employees who need encouragement and support to effectively engage peers as learning partners and resources.

In this session, you will learn:

• About key factors that influence the formation and strength of a peer learning community
• Specific strategies for cultivating a peer-to-peer community to promote learning
• About the responsibilities of community managers and sponsors in successful community-building efforts
• About potential barriers to peer-to-peer learning and strategies to mitigate them

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.) who have some experience with the challenges of promoting social learning in organizations.

Technology discussed in this session:
Enterprise social networks, sharing platforms, learning spaces, and public social media.

Real-life examples of using xAPI in practice are hard to find, making the move from concept to practice very difficult. As the conversation around xAPI shifts from “just imagine” to “just do it,” designers and developers need more practical examples to build upon.

This session will cover how to use the Experience API (xAPI) in an enterprise environment. You will learn how to tie together multiple systems to evaluate performance of users and utilize predictive analytics to automatically identify performance gaps. With xAPI as the common language for learning systems, opportunities open up for learning professionals that did not exist in the past, and this session will focus on utilizing xAPI for the five moments of learning need.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to apply xAPI within the five moments of learning need
• Lessons from integrating xAPI across enterprise applications
• About a use case for xAPI that you could use within your organization
• How to start sifting through the big data of xAPI and applying it to Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation
• How to apply examples of xAPI to job role assessments

Audience:
Intermediate to advanced designers, developers, and directors. This session is designed for attendees who know what xAPI is, and are looking for ways to go beyond the traditional analytics with SCORM.

Technology discussed in this session:
xAPI, electronic performance support systems, and learning record stores.

The ability to plan and execute successful events, promotions, and incentives is a key skill for any sales professional. But, what if your salespeople are dispersed? How can they get the support they need when they need it? How do they know if they’re making the right decisions? And, most importantly, how can an organization ensure that these sales events are worth the investment in the first place?

In this session, you’ll dive into details of a learning solution created for just this type of audience—Xfinity indirect account executives who primarily supported external retail partners. You’ll learn how the L&D team worked to solve this issue with thoughtful training and performance support. You’ll look at how they began assessing the situation with a targeted survey, walk through their design process, and see their final output: content that included engaging live-action video, an interactive training guide with embedded support tools, and an online game that measured whether the audience was ready to begin planning and executing their own events. Through exploring the process used to design this content, you’ll gain ideas and approaches for creating your own blended learning solutions.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to position a survey and ask the right questions for maximum results and input
• How to approach designing a self-paced learning solution to support a dispersed audience
• Options for using interactive PDFs to serve as both the foundation for training and on-the-job performance support
• Tips for planning and executing learning media, such as live-action video with actual employees and online “choose your own adventure” games with customized video feedback
• How this learning solution drove sales results, increased leader buy-in, and fostered audience engagement

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

Technology discussed in this session:
SurveyMonkey, Adobe AfterEffects, Adobe InDesign, and Articulate Storyline 2.

With tight timelines and rapid development tools, people on your team often find themselves on the hamster wheel of endless production. Out of context, this production machine seems very much alive and in sync with corporate needs. But is it? A six-word story experiment asked people to share their experience with corporate training—and not a single one of these stories offered a happy ending. Even with only six words, stories can weave an intricate web of emotions and events. What if you could capitalize on the power of story to redirect the efforts of your team and bring out everything human about your organization?

In this session, you’ll find out what an instructional story is and learn the three most powerful aspects of story that can transform your organization. Using instructional story design and a variety of technical options, you’ll address corporate learning needs with a wholistic approach, integrating technology, people, and information. Your organization will never be the same.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the difference between vignettes and instructional stories
• About the fundamental concepts for instructional story design
• About the three most powerful aspects of story for transforming organizations
• How to experiment with various technical and non-technical approaches of story distribution
• How to develop an action plan for building relationships that add to the corporate story

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

Technology discussed in this session:
PowToon, Aurasma, Poll Everywhere, survey tools, internal/external social sharing platforms, social brainstorming, email, xAPI, and a whole host of simple, complex, free, and expensive tools that can be used in new ways for instructional story design.

Storyboarding an eLearning project is a process. There is no right or wrong way to document the design of eLearning, and there is no rule that a project even needs to use the storyboarding process in some circumstances. Because of this, the choices for storyboarding techniques and procedures can be overwhelming if you’re new to the process, and it’s no surprise that some people decide to skip it entirely. But storyboarding can, in the long run, help your project development run smoother, encourage buy-in from your stakeholders or clients, and allow you to create projects you’re more satisfied with—it’s just a matter of determining a storyboarding process that works for you.

In this session, you’ll look at the essentials of eLearning storyboards and find out how to get started yourself. You’ll explore how storyboards are not just three-column documents or a deck of slides—they are a collection of documents that define every aspect of your project. This session will show you many of the storyboarding documents and procedures you can consider using in your own work, from a main storyboard that documents the instructional design to style guides, visual modeling, and more.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the essential documentation that goes into a storyboard
• About various storyboard documents that address different aspects of an eLearning project
• How style guides are an essential supporting storyboard document
• Why assessment storyboards are independent of the main storyboard

Audience:
Novice designers and developers.

In retail banking, like many regulated industries, the entry-level customer service employees have complicated jobs combining relationship skills, compliance with complex regulations, and adherence to frequently changing policies and procedures. Conventional wisdom still says these skills are difficult to learn effectively with online learning technology, particularly if the learning is self-directed.

In this session, you will learn how Capital City Bank turned a once burdensome onboarding program into one that engages and motivates new tellers. See how they tackled the onboarding challenge with a self-directed online learning experience that meets all five “moments of learning need,” offers intuitive performance support, provides career path opportunities for all tellers, and reinforces corporate culture.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to structure a single online learning journey intuitively for performance support, compliance training, and new-hire orientation
• How to apply gamification and communication approaches to attract and motivate participants in your own learning programs
• How to create personalized experiences
• How to create custom content on a budget

Audience:
Intermediate designers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Intrepid Learning’s learning experience platform—desktop, mobile, and tablet views.

eLearning authoring tools like Articulate Storyline 2 and Presenter are powerful applications to enrich eLearning experiences. Yet most companies suffer from “PowerPoint Conversion Syndrome.” Therefore, learning experiences continue to be “death sentences” of boredom because courses are just PowerPoint decks full of text and bullets, driving engagement way down.

In this session, you will learn design tips and strategies used by elite professionals in the craft of eLearning with Storyline 2 and Presenter. Whether you are a trainer or instructional designer (or even none of the above), looking for fresh ideas on how to leverage animated characters in your eLearning courses, or simply want to see what these applications can do, this session is the one for you.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Storyline2 character states are used in animation
• How to identify pros and cons of illustrated vs. photographic characters
• How to personalize eLearning with character states and variables
• How to access Articulate Presenter’s built-in illustrated and photographic characters, and how to import stock and other imagery to liven up text slides
• How to apply innovative techniques using characters and scenarios to make assessments more interactive and engaging

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 2 and Articulate Presenter.

LMS rollouts are never easy, but add a global implementation and a tight timeline, and this challenge could seem insurmountable. But Intuit didn’t want to just meet the basic requirements of this LMS rollout—the company also wanted to see how a more user-centered design approach could make this system more approachable and enjoyable for its audience.

In this case study session, you’ll find out how Intuit made its LMS rollout succeed. You’ll take a closer look at the best practices, common pitfalls, and critical insights that the team learned from their experience with designing and delivering an award-winning learning program around their LMS implementation. In addition, you’ll see how delivering a high-quality user experience was a key part of their plan, and you’ll explore the necessity of thinking of your users first rather than last when launching an LMS.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Intuit launched an LMS within 60 days (and what you can learn from its journey)
• Critical tips on how to get buy-in from key stakeholders, including leadership and IT
• How to build a vision for your LMS implementation
• About the importance of building a user-focused experience

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning management system (LMS) design.

In a world of fragmented content consumption and constant distraction, how do you get your audience’s attention and keep it? To open the door to learning, you have to put them in the driver’s seat and create an emotional connection with authentic dialogue. Behavior beyond surface-level content engagement requires emotional investment.

This session will examine interactive video as a powerful tool in this shifting landscape. You’ll learn that you don’t have to choose between making an emotional connection or providing information; you can have long-format content without massive drop-off. You’ll learn how you can speak to an individual instead of generically addressing an audience. With the rapid development tools available for interactive video, you can focus on how to make your content authentic, relatable, and engaging instead of worrying about the technical details of creating and deploying it.

In this session, you will learn:

• Three ways to change your thinking about your content to break through the clutter
• How interactive video helps get your users to critical emotional mass
• How to take advantage of the “gratitude effect” to drive action and desired behaviors
• About the rapid development tools for interactive video in the marketplace today
• How to derive data and insights that enable you to justify your content investment

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

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

What do you do when your organization goes from doing just a handful of webinars here and there to an average of more than one virtual event a day, spanning over a dozen project teams—in just a few months? How do you acquire the platform, find the people, and build the processes to meet rapidly growing demand? A team at Advocates for Human Potential figured it out along the way.

This session will explore how the organization pulled it off when demand for virtual events more than tripled over the course of a few months—from the early weeks and months of operating in silos with inadequate tools, to scrambling to find willing event production staff among existing employees. You will see how they learned through trial and error to successfully establish a virtual solutions function, and slowly but surely built a cohesive, scalable process and team.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to minimize event risk despite inadequate staffing or limited platforms
• How to identify supporters and team members who can help share the load
• How to bridge the gap between technical expertise and content expertise
• Tips for building an effective event process
• How to demonstrate your value to gain support in the organization

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Connect, Adobe Connect Event Management, integrated audio, phone and VOIP audio, general collaboration and messaging tools, general calendar tools.

Today’s technology promises access to learning content to everyone, everywhere, but can your content really deliver on this promise? Stuck in inflexible pages, much of today’s learning material is trapped in traditional formal-learning vehicles like courses or presentations. Your content—and the budget, time, and effort you spend creating it—needs to do more to be as effective as possible.

In this session, you’ll learn to think less about “courses” of content and more about the components that give content its value and meaning. You will focus on designing and creating content that can be used to help learners at multiple times of need, from initial formal learning through to application on the job. The session will cover instructional design processes for planning single-source, multipurpose content, as well as development strategies to ensure that your learners can find and use this content no matter what device they choose or need to use.

In this session, you will learn:

• Strategies for evaluating what content your learners need in order to carry out their roles
• How to develop and deliver content that is structured, interconnected, and searchable—making it ready for multipurpose use
• Instructional design approaches to help you plan for single-source, multipurpose content
• How to kick-start a learning and development process in your organization that supports single-source, multipurpose content creation

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Responsive design, mobile learning devices, single-source design platforms, and content repositories.

The increasing technical demands of eLearning development are putting pressure on instructional designers. Gig artists (such as Fiverr.com) seem like the perfect solution to get work done.

This session will cover lessons learned from using gig artists for eLearning assets. After attending this session, you will: be better equipped to accurately plan for projects using gig artists, understand the risks and benefits of this approach, and know how to communicate with artists to get what you want the first time.

In this session, you will learn:

• What a gig artist is
• About the risks and benefits associated with working with gig artists
• How to communicate with the artist to get what you want the first time
• How to plan for projects using gig artists

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, and project managers.

You need images for your eLessons, and you can’t find exactly what you want. Or if you do find the right one, it costs money that you don’t have in the budget. Or you want to create the images yourself but don’t think you have the artistic talent to do so.

You don’t need to be a graphic designer with fancy software to make professional-looking images. In this session, you’ll learn how to use PowerPoint to create slick images. You’ll use effects like 3-D format, shadows, 3-D rotations, merge shapes, and animations to create a peeled sticker, rotating gears, glass balls, puzzle pieces, a winding road, silhouettes, infographic icons, and more. You’ll also learn how to export PowerPoint animations to MP4 videos and single slides as an image.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use PowerPoint effects to make professional-looking images
• How to create MP4 videos from PowerPoint animations
• How to create puzzle pieces, peeled stickers, glass balls, winding roads, infographic icons, and more

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers with basic PowerPoint knowledge.

Technology discussed in this session:
Microsoft PowerPoint.

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop with PowerPoint installed.

Want to create highly effective and engaging eLearning content, but have a limited budget? A wide variety of high-end digital learning design tools have features that promise to produce visually stimulating experiences, but they come complete with an equally high price tag.

In this session, you will learn the tips and tricks you’ll need to create powerful digital learning solutions on a dime. You will learn methods of designing and developing multi-device-compatible solutions including DIY videos, interactive activities, applied learning exercises, and gamification—all guaranteed to drive business results without driving up your cost.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use existing resources to create videos, graphics, and audio
• How to utilize an internal FTP or intranet to structure digital learning tools
• How to create graphics and animations in PowerPoint that you can synchronize with audio or embed within a video
• How to create and track applied learning exercises with free survey software
• How to use a free video capture tool to incorporate YouTube videos into your learning content
• How to create HTML5-compliant content compatible with multiple devices and operating systems

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers. Attendees should be proficient in PowerPoint and have a basic understanding of the following: learning management systems (LMSs); SCORM files; SCORM development software; and image, video, and file formats (like PNG, MP4, MP3).

Technology discussed in this session:
Microsoft PowerPoint, Windows Movie Maker, GoAnimate, HTML5, YouTube, and eBooks.

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop running PowerPoint and Movie Maker.

Our training team faced a serious challenge when we inherited a nation-wide network of manufacturing sites with no formal on-boarding programs. The current training most people were doing was overwhelming, with new employees expected to go through over 200 procedural documents, dozens of PowerPoints presentations, and site-determined on-the-job training. No surprise, this chaotic approach led to low moral, high turnover, and numerous production errors. We knew we needed to rethink this on-boarding, but how?

In this case study session, you’ll find out about the process our training team developed to build a new on-boarding learning infrastructure—the ABGs—and how you can use this process in your own work. You’ll look at how we assessed our current state, built new learning strategies, and developed our programs through deployment and evaluation. You’ll also get tips on relationship building with your SMEs, gaining leadership buy in, and overcoming training obstacles in a large corporate setting.

In this session, you will learn:

• What the “ABG's” we developed to build a learning infrastructure are and how they can help your work
• Ideas for how you can create interactive on-boarding
• Tips for innovating within existing methodologies
• How to scale your solution for multiple audiences
• Options for supporting your employees after on-boarding

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline, Albert mobile app.

For years Flash was the dominant tool for creating slick, professional-looking animations. But with Flash now on its way out and HTML5 becoming the new standard, what should you be using to create your custom animation projects? Have you heard about Adobe Animate? This tool is Adobe’s replacement for Flash Professional; it will allow you to create the same kinds of detailed animations, but now with new features as well as an output that’s compatible with the technology and devices your audience is using to view your content.

In this session you’ll explore the basics of Adobe Animate. You’ll look at how exactly you can use it in your projects and what kind of work it can best enhance. To get acquainted with the tool, you’ll get a quick tour of the interface, view samples of content created with it, and discuss best practices for using Animate effectively. You’ll even see a real-world demonstration of how to create an interactive element that you can easily incorporate into existing eLearning projects.

In this session, you will learn:

• The basics of creating animated content with Animate
• Best practices for working with Animate
• How you can use one piece of Animate content in many products and environments
• How to add Animate content to Captivate projects

Audience:
Novice designers and developers.

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

Take an in-depth look at the tools, designs, and technologies you should focus on in learning today, and at what’s just around the corner. This session will dissect technologies that will enhance learning and show you how to integrate them into your solutions. What can you learn from the buzz and new tools appearing in the consumer and corporate environments, and how can you take advantage of them to help your users learn? This fun session will give you dozens of ideas and reboot your brain for fresh perspectives on how to enhance your learning today.

Microlearning is a very potent tool to drive knowledge retention and behavioral change. This session will show you how to take advantage of what research says about gamification and microlearning, how to apply it to the employee journey, and how to correlate learning with performance measurement and learning paths.

As more corporations adopt virtual training, the challenge of how to keep participants actively engaged and learning continues to grow. Technology drives these virtual sessions and can inhibit or advance learning based on the tools offered, the instructors’ knowledge of the technology, and their desire to offer more than a lecture-based program. Until recently, technology allowed only a one-dimensional approach to virtual training; now, technology has expanded virtual learning capabilities beyond what can be accomplished in traditional classroom settings. Explore the possibilities of conducting virtual learning sessions that are activity-based and focused on the learning environment.

Growth, attrition, and change in the fast-paced, deadline-driven work environment all pose challenges for staff development, and relying solely on formal training efforts is no longer realistic. Given these challenges, how can an organization support development for staff in a fiscally responsible and effective manner? What technologies and strategies can help support this learning, as well as knowledge creation and transfer among staff?

In this session, you’ll explore a model that has been successfully used at the University of Wisconsin–Platteville to support a culture of learning for performance excellence and encourage a growth mindset among staff. You’ll learn about the strategies the team applied to overcome common obstacles to learning and development and to improve knowledge creation and transfer. You’ll find out about the challenges, successes, and lessons learned throughout their process of developing and implementing this model, and you’ll explore the technology they used to support knowledge management efforts on a shoestring budget. This session will give you the steps and best practices you’ll need to inspire a culture of learning at your own organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the challenges of staff development in a fast-paced, dynamic work environment
• About the model the University of Wisconsin–Platteville used to support a culture of learning and a growth mindset
• Tips for developing a culture of learning, including strategic timing, effective knowledge sharing, and fiscally responsible talent development efforts
• Strategies and methods you can use to overcome obstacles to learning and development
• About technology tools you can use to support knowledge management

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Microsoft Office 365, Plone, Intervals, Knowledgebase, Oracle PeopleSoft, Brightspace by D2L, Kaltura, Blackboard Collaborate, and Skype for Business.

Enterprise employees need critical information on the job at the time of need. How do today’s learning professionals leverage mobile technology and deliver the right content to the right users at the right time? They have to take into account the complete user experience, including user context, device capabilities and limitations, mobile interface design, and more. How do all of these variables translate into effective mobile performance support?

In this session, you will learn a foundational strategy and guidelines for effective performance support in the digital age. Binders, printed product bulletins, and laminated sheets are being replaced by mobile technologies, including hands-free devices such as watches and smart glasses. You will examine how user-centered design can produce training deliverables that resonate with users and can greatly affect performance support requirements. The session will also explore new technologies and design disciplines such as industrial design and deep learning. You will learn about real-world case studies in sales and retail performance support and the lessons learned.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the essential principles needed for effective performance support
• Why mobile technology allows for unprecedented performance support
• How to analyze and evaluate a target audience for strong user experiences
• How the environment affects the user experience, and how to design for the right context

Audience:
Novice designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.). Attendees must have a willingness to change existing processes and habits and to embrace new technologies and realities about today’s learners.

Technology discussed in this session:
Cloud-based prototyping solutions and mobile application rapid development softwares.

When Nielsen took on the task of investing in a learning ecosystem, the team wanted to do more than just launch it; they also wanted to know whether it was effective. But how would they measure the success of this new approach? User research told them the key was that people wanted to find what they needed quickly, and if they didn’t know what they needed, the system should direct them to the right content. So with the metric of success decided, the next challenge was how to measure it.

In this case study session, you’ll learn how to measure the success of any learning ecosystem through Nielsen’s journey. You’ll find out more about how the team tracked the results they were aiming for through “speed to relevance”—a metric that measures the time it takes a user to find relevant learning content. You’ll uncover how this metric was calculated automatically by the system, as well as what it told the team about their learning ecosystem. You’ll also learn about solutions Nielsen put in place to improve the average speed to relevance by 70 percent.

In this session, you will learn:

• Techniques for improving the usability of a learning ecosystem
• How to use the “speed to relevance” metric to measure the success of the learning ecosystem
• How Nielsen improved its average speed to relevance by 70 percent
• How to create the speed to relevance metric

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning ecosystem.

The world is at a tipping point: Technology connects people, social approaches build community, and the “social age” drives ever more change. But what if people can’t cope? Failure is seen at an individual, organizational, and technical level. How can people become resilient and truly socially dynamic, fully adapted to face the ever more diverse and disruptive challenges they face?

In this session, you’ll explore how emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and semantic engines will intersect with evolved social approaches to learning and leadership to create more resilience in the system. You’ll also be introduced to the notion of buffering, which is an approach to avoid catastrophic failure, and is where organizations should be looking in the next three to five years. This session will be of interest to those with an eye on the future, willing to explore possible future states and to help their organization make wise choices around technologies and approaches.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the notion of resilience and its importance for organizations in the social age
• What it means to be socially dynamic
• Ways to face new challenges in the social age
• How emergent technologies may interact with social approaches to learning and leadership
• About approaches to avoid catastrophic failure

Audience:
Intermediate to advanced designers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.). Participants should have curiosity and a willingness to engage in conversation.  

Technology discussed in this session:  
Wearables, geolocated technologies (beacons, adaptive and co-created systems, e.g., Waze), augmented technologies, and conversational channels (Yammer, etc.).

Neuroscience is one of the hottest topics in training and education, so it’s no surprise if you’re drawn to this research as a source of wisdom for your learning designs. Yet despite its promise, neuroscience is a fairly young field. Questions remain. Are neuroscience findings valid? Are they relevant to learning design? Are they useful?

In this session, you’ll take a closer look at the research on neuroscience and what it actually shows (or doesn’t show) about how people learn. You’ll debunk myths, pinpoint misconceptions, and get practical advice for how to approach neuroscience recommendations. The session will utilize challenge questions, research briefs, guided discussions, and opportunities for practical reflection to enable a deep and informed review of the latest neuroscience research revelations.

In this session, you will learn:

• What the research says about neuroscience and learning
• What the research says about neuroscience beliefs
• How to approach neuroscience findings from a practical perspective
• What other sources of learning research are of critical importance

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

Outsourcing of T&D is becoming more frequent, providing a large gap for freelancers to fill. But deciding to move to freelancing means you’ll need to find answers to a wide range of business concerns that you likely never had to worry about as an employee. What kind of business should you establish? How can you thrive in a competitive landscape? What do you need to put in place to protect both your new business and yourself?

In this session, you’ll learn the core concepts that every freelancer should know as they begin their new business. You’ll find out the basics of selecting the type of business to form and the business insurance you should consider when you get started. You’ll explore the kinds of work you can take on by looking at the pros and cons of direct and subcontract-type work. You’ll also discover why a webpage and a portfolio are vital to your ability to market your services.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the two types of freelance work and the pros and cons of each type
• About the three types of insurance you should consider having as a freelancer and what each type covers
• Why you should register as a business, and about the different types of businesses you may register as
• About the benefits of creating your business webpage and portfolio

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

Imagine leading a national division that’s hiring hundreds of people a year. You have a structured onboarding program and the jobs are attractive, but there are high levels of attrition and the onboarding program is being applied inconsistently. Local managers are also inconsistent in how they take responsibility for onboarding their new hires and say they’re too busy to change. How do you shift what you’re doing to make your onboarding more effective and help retain new employees?

In this session, you’ll explore the options Comcast and Prosell Learning considered in this very situation, and the components that came together to provide a successful solution to their challenges of distance, distribution, and accountability. You’ll learn more about how they leveraged technology to provide a 24/7 accessible platform for learning materials, alongside a mentorship program that gave new hires check-ins, feedback, and support. You’ll also find out how they solved for the technical challenges of deploying new technology, as well as the company culture hurdle of defining and getting buy-in to new levels of measured accountability.

In this session, you will learn:

• How new mobile technologies can provide targeted and convenient learning moments
• How managing change is an integral part of new initiatives
• That local leadership coaching activities can elevate performance and accountability
• How mobile technologies can work alongside an LMS and other enterprise technology to provide a nimble learning experience
• How collaboration and learning support can deliver higher performance than solely self-directed solutions

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Web app, SaaS, and performance support technology.

Building an effective and efficient learning strategy for your organization is a complex undertaking. That’s why it can be extremely difficult to know where to start, particularly if you’re creating a brand-new approach. What resources do you need, and how should you prioritize which goals and challenges to go after first?

In this session, you’ll learn how to navigate the massive amount of data and ecisions needed to build an organization-wide learning strategy from scratch. Using a three-phase process, you’ll explore how to understand the greater context of your organization, how to unearth the hidden pain points your organization may not even know it has, and how to build a logical and affordable approach to address both the urgent needs and the long-term vision of your organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to survey stakeholders to get a realistic view of the organization
• How to align your learning strategy to organization goals
• How to prioritize the projects your team will pursue for the most meaningful results
• How to share and discuss the challenges—and innovative solutions—of implementing learning strategy

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

As technology changes day-to-day life, it is fascinating to imagine what the future will bring. For L&D professionals, however, it’s very hard to keep up the pace. What technology will be trending and will change the way people live and learn, and what technology will be nothing but hype? Has augmented reality really disrupted learning? And how about virtual reality and wearable tech?

This session will discuss some of the latest technologies by exploring some really cool free or inexpensive tools and apps that can be used as learning amplifiers. Those tools and apps could change the way L&D supports learning and can have an impact on your employees. After this session, you will be on top of the latest trends and technologies, and you’ll see the benefits of adopting those tools as a verified learning partner.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the latest tech trends for learning
• About 10 free or inexpensive tools
• About the benefits of technology for performance
• How to embrace technology as a learning partner

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Wearable tech, augmented reality, virtual reality, and iBeacons.

Web video is seeing massive growth, and learners are not only consuming video but also making it. The literature indicates that there is an abundance of both underuse and overuse of videos in learning environments. Long, not engaging, and ill-prepared videos are very common.

In this session, you will learn about implementation strategies that have been effective for embedding video into the learning environment, based on sound learning and cognitive theories, using researched data and best practices from professionals. You will explore specific findings about best practices such as length of a video, how to best use captions, and which types of video to use for education and training. The answers can greatly help instructors, training professionals, administrators, instructional designers, and students in determining the best use of instructional video.

In this session, you will learn:

• How people can learn better and faster with video
• How cognitive load can be reduced through video
• How multimedia theory can be used for video production
• How video can enhance a teacher’s presence
• How video captions can help reinforce content

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers and developers.

It is every company’s goal to have an onboarding experience that gets new employees up to speed quickly and helps them truly understand the company’s brand. When a team at Coca-Cola Beverages Florida looked at what they could do to innovate their onboarding and make it more effective, one new technology came to mind: augmented reality (AR). AR can create immersive experiences and let people add new layers of content to the world around them. Could it also work to help new hires become contributing team members as quickly as possible?

In this session, you’ll learn more about Coca-Cola’s experience with AR technology in its onboarding while also building strategies for leveraging this technology in your own training and performance support projects. Using apps available on your phone, you’ll be able to experience a portion of the Coca-Cola onboarding experience firsthand. You’ll then explore the lessons learned from the development of this project, get tips for how AR could enhance training at your own organization, and find out what tools you might want to start developing with.

In this session, you will learn:

• How you can use AR apps to enhance training experiences
• How Coca-Cola Beverages Florida has used AR apps in its own new-hire training
• What the challenges and opportunities are for incorporating AR into L&D projects
• What tools are available for people new to developing AR content

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Augmented reality apps such as Aurasma, Layar, and Blippar.

You’re finally getting started on managing your first mobile learning project. While mobile is new to you, you’ve managed many successful eLearning projects in the past. How different could it be? Well, as it turns out, quite a bit. There are a number of key differences and several new land mines that you’ll need to avoid. So where do you start, and what process do you need to follow to successfully build your first mobile learning project?

In this session, you’ll look at the project management steps involved in developing a mobile learning project, using a real case study as an example of what to do and what not to do. You’ll not only hear the story of this project, but also get to examine a sample mobile learning project plan that includes the documents and templates that can make this process run smoothly, including front-end analysis, specifications documents, budgets, a change management plan, a development plan, an implementation plan, and a project evaluation. You’ll leave this session prepared for the unique challenges of mobile learning project management.

In this session, you will learn:

• About project management considerations for a successful mobile learning development project
• How to transition the project to a delivery and deployment team
• How to frame and pitch a mobile learning and/or app business strategy
• What elements and requirements you should include to make a successful business case for mobile
• Best practices for implementing mobile learning

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Project management tools and developer review tools.

Last year, the US National Park Service (NPS) gave a presentation at Learning Solutions Conference regarding its newly designed Common Learning Portal (CLP), which provides integrated access to formal learning, informal learning, and social learning materials via an intuitive interface. The CLP has now been deployed.

This session presents an overview of the portal implementation and the successes and challenges with the CLP since it was deployed. Speakers will share details on adoption metrics and discuss plans moving forward to incorporate xAPI and other new functionality. The session will also provide background on how NPS drove adoption and education for the CLP and the important role that change management played as part of this effort. This detailed case study focuses on the design, build, operations, and enhancements of this cutting-edge learning system.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the entire “design, build, populate, maintain, enhance” effort for this cutting-edge tool
• The best practices and lessons learned regarding the design and deployment of the learning portal
• How NPS is using this technology to integrate formal, informal, and social learning materials
• How the CLP is leveraging social learning via communities of practice and “people search” functionality

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Open-source technology (WordPress) and cloud hosting. The CLP interfaces with a series of additional systems, including the NPS LMS and third-party sites and systems.

Animation and movement can be key features that help the learner pay attention to what’s important on the screen. When done well, motion and animation can be effective tools to leverage; but when done poorly, they are a waste of development time and a distraction to the learner.

In this session, you’ll tap into the latest techniques in Articulate Storyline for creating movement that matters, building a foundation for simple movement up to more extravagant gaming. You’ll explore some of the lesser-known uses for transitions and animations, including using the “push transition” effectively and designing animations within states. This session will also introduce two new Storyline 360 animation features: “orient shape to path” and “object intersection” triggers.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to build a variety of animations, transitions, and motion paths
• How to use triggers to control motions
• How to use motion to trigger other events in Storyline
• About some of the lesser-known and creative animation and motion features

Audience:
Intermediate to advanced designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 360.

Technology required:
Laptop running Articulate Storyline 360.

Virtual training participants notoriously multitask during live online sessions, which means they miss out on learning opportunities. In addition, there is a common misconception that an online presentation is the same thing as virtual training—it’s not. So virtual classroom designers and facilitators struggle to capture the attention of their audience and keep participants engaged throughout a session so that learning transfer can occur.

In this session, you will learn specific ideas for interactivity and engagement in virtual training sessions. You will learn activity ideas in five categories: openers, games, technical topics, interpersonal skills, and closers. The session will start with activity ideas that begin before a virtual class, in order to set the stage for success. You will learn a successful design process to use when creating virtual classroom activities. You will also learn how to creatively use common virtual classroom tools to engage online participants and learn many activity ideas that you can immediately use.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to open your virtual classes with activities that immediately engage attendees
• How to increase participant interaction using six common platform tools
• How to apply three key questions to classroom activities when converting them to virtual
• At least 10 new ideas for delivering content in the online classroom

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Connect. Platform-agnostic strategies will also be discussed.

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop running a web browser that can connect to Adobe Connect, or a mobile device with the Adobe Connect app.

Content curation is all the rage, but what does it mean, really? There are different types of curation strategies that work differently in different organizations. The strategy you adopt affects scoping of your design and development work. It also affects the level of effort required to contextualize it to your learners so that it is relevant and meaningful to them and changes their performance, in their role, in your company.

In this session, you will explore how content curation can become a part of the entire performance improvement picture. You will see how to present content curation as a meaningful part of the learning portfolio, and you will learn the approaches that have worked so you can immediately take them back and apply them in your workplace.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to describe the different types of curated content, internal and external, and how the type of content will drive how you can use it
• How to apply a simplified model for assessing how curated content fits into your overall learning strategy
• How to scope the design and development work when using curated content to make it relevant in your organization
• How to explain research and citation etiquette, legal considerations for using curated content as part of your learning plans
• How to identify strategies for contextualizing curated content for your organization

Audience:

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

Technology discussed in this session:

SharePoint and sites with public domain content, including YouTube, SlideShare, Creative Commons, and others.

You create and develop rich content for your organization, but learners often don't engage with learning and development unless it’s assigned in a specific learning plan. This lack of awareness can hinder cultivating and creating a culture of learning.

In this session, you will learn how to socialize your learning and development content using social media, thought leadership, and content marketing. The session will cover various ways you can use social tools to build engagement and use of learning content. You will also look closer at how to market your L&D department and content through a monthly communication platform.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use social media to engage your audience
• How to distribute a monthly communication platform
• How to socialize your learning department in any industry

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Mobile phones, laptops, Microsoft Sway, Canva, Snapchat, Instagram, Articulate Storyline 2, and GoAnimate.

The busy nature of the retail setting makes it a challenge to find ways to extend learning beyond formal training. While this time crunch is real, there’s also a real benefit in being able provide ongoing support for newly learned skills, as this practice and reinforcement can allow people to master new skills faster and with more accuracy. So how do you balance this with the constraints of a busy environment like retail? The solution is one that can seamlessly blend into people’s job responsibilities, providing the guidance they need at the moment they need it—performance support.

In this case-study session, you’ll take a closer look at how Sears Holdings Corporation effectively developed and launched a low-cost performance support system into their retail organization. You'll learn about the development side of this project, including how they were able to create a budget-friendly performance support solution. You’ll then explore how its ultimate solution was integrated into its associates' work interface, providing them with quick, just-in-time access to performance support information. Finally, you'll see how they measured the business impact of this project, including through tracking patterns in usage reviews, reduced upfront training time, and decreases in error rates. You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of how performance support can work in the real world and ideas for how you can begin to craft your own performace support solution.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Sears Holdings Corporation determined the key components that needed to be a part of its performance support system
• What to consider when developing a cost-effective approach to performance support
• How to allow for continued content updates to your performance support solution
• Options for measuring the business impact of performance support

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

Technology discussed in this session:
POS performance support system.

Sales employees are successful only if they have time to sell and, more importantly, can complete the process to close the deal. But it takes a long time to get a new salesperson up to speed on a company’s sales procedures, applications, forms, deadlines, and more, and during this process it can often feel to them like drinking from the information firehose. How can we help them quickly get the information they need to do their job well while also preventing them from being overwhelmed by content?

In this session, you’ll explore a powerful tool for addressing this dilemma and improving sales: performance support. You’ll look at how, by implementing performance support, you can walk your salespeople through every step in the company’s process, provide a single source of truth for them to get everything they need to do their job, and ultimately help deliver the signed deal.

In this session, you will learn:

• How performance support can decrease training time for new sales hires while also reducing errors
• How performance support can reduce questions from new hires on policies, systems, etc.
• How to use this solution to provide a single source of information for new and experienced sales reps and ensure consistency
• How to design your performance support solution to provide the right information at the right time

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

It has been a bit of an uphill battle for clients and learning professionals to make the shift from content creation to curation. You should always be looking to see what exists before you get into creating or customizing new instruction.

In this session, you will learn how to navigate the shift from mostly creation to mostly curation from an instructional design, stakeholder, and learner perspective. The session will provide solutions to questions such as: How do people learn from simply viewing a video or reading an article? What if you need a customized approach for learners’ specific needs? Is curated content a fit for everyone? And if most of the content provided is curated, what will be customized?

In this session, you will learn:

• How to shift to a curation mindset
• How to start a design with curation in mind
• How to integrate curation with creation effectively
• How to address common misunderstandings and myths about curation
• How to address concerns of IDs, stakeholders, and learners when it comes to curating vs. creating

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Degreed, River, Learner Community, and possibly Mobile Coach.

The benefits of collaboration are well known, and today the tools available to extend collaborative efforts across time and space (geography) are plentiful. However, merely having collaborative platforms doesn’t necessarily mean collaboration will happen.

This session will discuss successful, rapid learning design collaboration in a virtual remote work world. It will focus on roles, tools, and communication to leverage design capabilities to rapidly develop virtual learning aids and performance support. Examples of projects at various stages of development may be shared during this session (from storyboard to launch) to illustrate the process while discussing best practices. This session will explore collaborative instructional design in a virtual environment—specifically, how instructional design teams can work collaboratively while members are in geographically separate locations.

In this session, you will learn:

• About various communication tools that are advantageous to remote teams
• About best practices for remote collaboration
• About pitfalls to be avoided during remote collaboration
• Why clear delineation of tasks and roles is critical to project success
• About the benefits of remote collaboration

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

Keeping employees engaged isn’t easy, especially in today’s easily distracted and multitasking workforce. And that’s where a solid gamification strategy comes in. Rather than approaching gamification by applying cookie-cutter, meaningless game mechanics to a program, you need to use a proven process to create cohesive, challenging, and collaborative gamification experiences.

In this session, you’ll look at how gamification design concepts, when applied properly to your learning programs, can inspire your employees to take action in ways that matter to your business. If you want to see sustained engagement, you need to realize that you have different motivations for playing than most of the people you encounter. To address that, this session will help you identify your own motivation profile so you can anticipate what elements will be missing from your design, where disengagement is likely to happen, and where the strategy is likely to fall apart. You’ll then look at a strategic approach to using gamification in a way that’s right for your content and your audience.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to identify your own motivation profile so you can anticipate what elements will be missing from your design
• How to increase learning and engagement through key concepts found in game design and behavioral psychology
• How to add the right game mechanics to training
• How thoughtful gamification can promote engagement, meaning, mastery, and autonomy in your workforce

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

L&D professionals often search for detailed, credible learning measurement coupled with an engaging and highly effective learning experience—a pairing that can be achieved only by revisiting L&D’s approach to creating content. By embracing the adaptive learning methodology, while continuing to leverage the sound instructional design principles and emerging technological innovations that have helped you succeed in the past, you can achieve a new level of training sophistication, intelligently adapting the learning experience to each learner based on their actions, decisions, and abilities.

This session will explore what true adaptive learning is, how deep learning measurement contributes to this approach, and how to leverage this methodology to enhance training engagement and effectiveness within your organization. To go beyond theory and into application, you’ll dive deep on two advanced case studies that show how adaptive learning has successfully been used in healthcare and finance. You’ll also discuss the emerging role of the learning architect and the importance this role will have in the future.

In this session, you will learn:

• What true adaptive learning is, including why it’s a crucial component in the next generation of training
• About the principles of adaptive learning that create highly effective and cognitively engaging training content
• How to avoid common pitfalls by identifying the keys to achieving deep learning data and avoiding the shortcomings in shallow measurement techniques
• How to communicate the value of better training design to business stakeholders

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Adaptive training development tools and big data technologies (including IBM Hadoop and various processing libraries).

Most eLearning designers and developers are starved for information about the efficacy of their solutions. Many of the existing models for evaluation and measurement aren’t easy enough to implement; and when they are implemented, they aren’t providing quality data.

In this session, you’ll learn more about why evaluation isn’t as effective as you want it to be and what you can do to improve it. This panel of experts and practitioners will look at the shortcomings of current evaluation models, discuss practical alternatives and solutions that can work right now, and debate what L&D professionals can look to do differently in the future.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why evaluation is so difficult right now
• What methods can be applied immediately to improve the feedback loop
• About evaluation options provided by new technologies and new methodologies

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

Spurred both by the growing popularity of video among learners and the availability of the production tools, learning professionals are increasingly producing their own videos. Most, however, quickly learn that video is very different from eLearning. Creating videos that can have a real impact on the workplace requires building new skill sets, and that journey begins with learning more about video scripts. Scriptwriting is essential to creating effective media but is often where workplace videos stumble, with script missteps adding time to the filming and editing process or even preventing a video from making the full impact intended. That’s why, before you pick up a camera and start filming, it’s vital to understand how to create a script that works.

In this session, you’ll explore what makes a truly great video script. You’ll start by examining the inherent characteristics of video and discuss why you need to take these into account when writing scripts. You’ll then find out about the elements of a well-written script and how to take optimal advantage of the microlearning video format. Dialogue and narration are key components, so you’ll look at specific techniques to increase engagement through conflict, contrast, and pacing, and you’ll review actual script samples to see how you can put these techniques into action right away. Finally, you’ll learn simple, easy-to-implement tips and tricks to extend the useful lifetime of any video product.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the characteristics of a well-written script
• How to write to take optimal advantage of the video format for workplace learning and also for mobile viewing
• How to increase audience engagement in your video through conflict and contrast
• Tips and tricks that can increase the lifetime of your videos

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

If you’re using Adobe Connect only as a glorified conference calling service, you are missing out on some of the coolest collaborative and customizable features available for live online sessions. Like all webinar software, Connect can handle the basics: application sharing and chat-style messaging. But this object-oriented platform blows away other webinar software in flexibility and clever setup, as well as providing outstanding communication resources behind the scenes.

Learners who interact with trainers and other participants and who experience effective instructional techniques, like those you can create in Connect, report better webinar experiences. Join this session to see how you can leverage standard Connect features such as custom layouts and breakout rooms, as well as after-market tools that expand functionality way out of the box.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use multiple pods to create unique, personalized learning activities in whole-group and breakout activities
• About behind-the-scenes features that every trainer and event producer needs to know
• About after-market pods and file types that can make your online sessions stand out
• Tips, tricks, and techniques you can use to amp up your next online session

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Connect.

Mobile learning has come of age to address the need for easy-to-access training on the go. Organizations face many challenges from app developers in meeting their specific needs and implementing a solution that meets learners’ needs in a large organization.

This session will share one team’s journey from identifying their learners’ needs for offline and easy access to training to the realization of building mobile learning apps in a large organization. You will examine how to overcome challenges and how to build support and drive adoption for mobile learning. Finally, you will see a demo of their solution and receive guidance on how to begin your mobile learning application development.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to evaluate your readiness for mobile learning application development
• How to define the benefits of a pilot project to gain stakeholder support
• How to overcome challenges of mobile learning application development within a large organization
• About the advantages and disadvantages of working with external developers
• How to describe an effective strategy for driving adoption of mobile learning

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

Technology discussed in this session:
An iOS mobile learning application.

With custom development, you can break out of the box and do more than what your standard eLearning tools can do. This requires a new skill, though: knowing how to direct web developers to create custom eLearning. What do you need to know to speak their language without having to learn to code yourself?

This session will cover the basics of code terminology to empower you to manage and direct your developers and know what is possible and what is not possible. You will explore different types of code available for the different types of projects you may need to develop. You will learn what kinds of developers you need to hire and how to guide them to create awesome custom learning experiences.

In this session, you will learn:

• Code terminology
• Basic terms and concepts
• What kind of developer you need for what kind of project
• The purpose of various files in a web project

Audience:
Novice designers, project managers, and managers.

Animation can enhance learner engagement, but who has the time to learn to animate? Storyline 2 has great illustrated characters with many poses and expressions, yet when you need your character to do something not in its lineup, what are you to do?

In this session, you will learn how to use Storyline 2 illustrated characters and Microsoft PowerPoint to edit the characters to create evocative animatic-type animations. You will learn how, when used in combination with an effective story, you can enhance your learners’ engagement by illustrating your content with more targeted, styled characters and smoother animation. To enhance the experience of this session, create a five-minute story or script that introduces two characters and includes some dialogue.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to export illustrated characters from Storyline 2
• How to import characters into PowerPoint
• How to edit the characters’ features, expressions, poses, hair, and clothing
• How to import the characters back into Storyline or another development tool
• How to create a short animatic illustration

Audience:
Intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 2 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2010.

Participant technology requirements:
A laptop running Storyline 2 and PowerPoint 2010 or later.

Are you looking for ways to improve your visuals but lacking the resources to splurge on expensive software? Have you tried Snagit? While many people have heard of this budget-friendly tool and know its basic functions for capturing screenshots, they often don’t know that Snagit also has powerful editing features that can allow you to easily create eye-catching visuals.

In this session, you’ll learn more about how Snagit’s editing tools can give you more options for creating and tweaking your graphics. You’ll explore how to use the tool’s image effects; take basic and advanced screen captures; get tips for editing screen shots and photographs; and find out ways to streamline your workflow by customizing capture profiles, the tool menu, and output. Getting to know a few advanced features of this tool will have you creating professional-looking visuals in no time.

In this session, you will learn:

• About Snagit’s editing tools, image effects, and capture profiles
• How to take basic and advanced screen captures
• Tips for editing screenshots and photographs
• How to streamline your workflow

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
The most recent version of TechSmith Snagit.

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop running TechSmith Snagit (can use the free trial).