As the Spectrum Health University adapted to an ever-evolving health care landscape, the programs and offerings from the organization needed to change as well. Through an analysis of brand, audience and offerings, and a desire to more closely align with the organization’s new strategy, a sizable challenge was undertaken to reimagine the corporate university with the use of social collaborative platforms and the deployment of micro-learning resources.

In this case study formatted session, you’ll learn about the discussions and debates that helped enhance the offerings to Spectrum Health. You will learn how the organization created a solution to help control both messages and content related to training and development. You’ll see how the university expanded outside of leadership development; the corporate university provided an ideal way to partner with others throughout the organization in a more formalized way.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why you should periodically refresh your branding and marketing efforts
• How to have tough conversations about people, purpose, quality vs. quantity, and prioritization
• To challenge the notion of if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it, and always be focused on continuous improvement

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Social collaborative platforms (Jive), learning management systems (SumTotal), video production tools, iPads, and eLearning development software.

Netflix knows what you want to watch because its algorithm interprets audience data and weighs those insights against the content in its library. With each like and click, Facebook continues to build an empire around the idea that social media can be as personal as your name. Every experience is catered to the individual, except the way employees are trained. Calculating the ROI for employee development can be costly and difficult, yet with the 21^st century economy becoming more dependent on knowledge workers, on-demand skill development is critical to success.

In this session, you will learn the fundamentals of adaptive learning and the power of employee engagement. You will explore how personalized, adaptive learning works and how it can keep employees engaged. You’ll see how personalized, adaptive learning has the potential to deliver the development that employees need and when they need it, along with the learning analytics that give their organizations the insight to justify their investment.

In this session, you will learn:

• What makes learning personalized
• How adaptive learning inference algorithms make training more effective
• How scaling adaptive learning cuts profit and loss
• Why mastery learning is important to a personalized learning system

Audience:
Novice to advanced managers and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

JetBlue University (JBU) has recently built a hotel for its employees going through training, and is in the process of implementing a new learning management system with a social learning component. Several of JBU’s workgroups are adopting iPads for use in their workflows. With all of these new opportunities for use in training, JBU needed to look at its current learning landscape, and determine if the current strategy supports where it wanted to go in the future as it relates to training and employee performance.

In this session, you will learn how JBU worked to determine the type of learning culture to transition to and how it helped each operational workgroup’s college to create their own learning strategy to support this culture. You will learn about the process to determine each colleges’ needs, which methods and media support those needs (particularly how it relates to informal learning), and how a budget was created for the tools and resources to support the new culture.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to transition to a different learning culture
• How to implement informal learning into regulatory and non-regulatory training programs
• The process to get buy-in for informal learning from skeptical leadership
• How to start with the need, rather than the tool/media, when building a learning strategy

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

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

By now, learning professionals are likely convinced that curation should be one of their skill sets, and many articles have offered them advice on essential tools and the qualities of good curation. But the articles assume that everyone knows how to search for material on the Internet and how to find and vet a solid set of learning resources to recommend. It’s usually not as easy as typing keywords into the search box and picking a couple of items off the first few pages of results.

In this session, you will learn useful techniques to find the best learning materials using Internet-based tools. You will gain valuable tips and tricks, including: how to apply search techniques, how to use social sites to locate relevant links, how to uncover caches of resources from organizations, and how to find people with specific expertise. You will learn high level strategies for vetting finds, as more and more clients and learners are relying on learning professionals to help them find resources at the point of need.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to apply browser search tips to find and curate learning resources
• How to search social bookmarking sites (Diigo, Pinterest) for useful links
• How to find experts and resources in an unfamiliar field
• How to get past the filter bubble
• How to vet materials in a field that is not your area of expertise

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

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Many learning and development (L&D) organizations today are well positioned to enable executives within their enterprise to drive change—rapidly capitalizing on emerging changes in technology, process, and skill. However, not all executives outside of L&D view it as an essential, foundational partner. In fact, according to a recent survey of senior learning professionals conducted by the Human Capital Institute, a great challenge facing CLOs today is gaining executive buy-in and overcoming the view of L&D as a cost center.

In this session you will gain practical tips, guidance, and job aids to help learning leaders find their purpose and communicate it to stakeholders in a way that gains support and enhances their value. You will learn how to establish a compelling vision, quantify your value to the business strategy, and fully engage all stakeholders to strengthen their impact. Finally, you will learn how you can motivate global participation, show a pattern of value, and demonstrate results that can positively affect the bottom line.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to gain buy-in from stakeholders, including key executives
• How to inspire and mobilize global participation
• How to establish and demonstrate a pattern of value delivery
• How to leverage data and analytics to define your value trajectory
• How to measure the value of learning to the business
• How to create a communications plan in support of learning initiatives

Audience:
Project managers, directors, and senior leaders.

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Every workplace has a culture. However, the real culture within an organization often doesn’t resemble the mission statement and core values posted in the hallways and on the company’s website. And, if eLearning or knowledge is included in the company’s values, this tends to refer to limited, formal training events, or tuition reimbursement. Learning professionals must understand the foundational impact their efforts can have on the organization and its culture—everything from the way work is done to how employees relate to customers.

In this session, you’ll explore the value of continued learning as the foundation of a strong workplace culture. You’ll evaluate the traditional influences on organizational culture and how learning can positively influence these elements. You’ll also explore the simple ways some of the world’s most successful companies, including Google, Pixar, Kaplan, and Atlassian, have leveraged the value of learning and performance improvement to transform their cultures and position themselves for long-term success.

In this session, you will learn:

• How learning impacts the elements that make up a typical workplace culture
• How to assess the relationship between learning and culture in your organization
• Methods used by some of the world’s most successful companies to position learning as a cornerstone of their cultures
• How to adopt an organizational approach to learning that empowers every individual employee
• Practical steps you can take to begin strengthening your organization’s culture through continued learning

Audience:
Novice to advanced managers and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

A multinational industrial manufacturing company recognized that it had excessively high inventory costs. The executive vice president of quality systems engaged a L&D organization to see whether they could help. L&D conducted a thorough needs analysis, harvested knowledge from experts, and developed a solution using five ecosystem components: performance support, knowledge management, access to experts, social networking and collaboration, and structured learning.  

In this case-study session, you will explore the analysis and design methods used and view the product of this innovative learning and performance ecosystem project. You will learn a proven process for analyzing business problems and how L&D can break free from providing training solutions and meet the needs of a broader ecosystem.

In this session, you will learn:

• How L&D reframed a training project into an broader ecosystem project
• How a level IV business metric was identified
• A proven process for analyzing and prioritizing different aspects of the business problem
• How the ecosystem solution addressed the problem
• Valuable lessons learned

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

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

Traditional approaches to learning and development are no longer responsive enough to continuously build and refresh the capabilities and skills that organizations and employees need. So workers and business leaders are increasingly looking beyond what their L&D departments have to offer. And those learners are choosing to learn and develop in different ways from a much more diverse range of sources. Meanwhile, most L&D infrastructure is still geared for the same old thing: creating, managing, and delivering formal training.

In this session, you will be provided interactive and concrete survey data on how workers learn. You will learn three ways to connect L&D requirements with learner expectations: priorities, investments, and methods. You will see why it is critical to attract and retain the best and brightest and why there is a great need for employers to create an atmosphere where continued L&D can take place.

In this session, you will learn:

• How employers really learn and what they want
• What the wisdom of the crowd can teach L&D professionals about learning
• Three ways to connect L&D requirements with learner expectations: priorities, investments, and methods
• Three steps to leverage the new learning ecosystem to make L&D more efficient, effective, and agile

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

Technology discussed in this session:
TED Talks videos; consumer social networks like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn; MOOCs; and the top 25 tools employees use for learning.

Organizational learning’s transformation is being driven by two forces: technology and the need for business agility. In the industrial era of the last century, training was the default for organizations, as information was not easily accessible and many work tasks were repeatable. Today the opposite is true; information is plentiful and easily accessed and routine work is being automated, creating a greater need for creativity and problem-solving skills. With employees being increasingly comfortable with job movement, social connection must be the new centerpiece.

In this case study session you will learn how the 70:20:10 principle was made evident and a framework applied to reimage organizational learning from training-focused to social-centric at Systems Made Simple. You will learn how data was used to shift the direction of organizational learning and reshape L&D’s role from course makers to performance consultants. You will see how a reimage strategy leverages new and current technology to increase social and informal learning. And finally, you will learn how to identify and partner with willing conspirators to advance the transformation. Lessons learned will be shared throughout.

In this session, you will learn:

• The 70:20:10 principle and its alignment to today’s wirearchies
• To identify the right approaches and technology through work and culture analysis
• How to communicate with stakeholders by letting data drive decisions
• The power of consistent messaging to change mindsets
• The importance of applying frameworks over prescriptive methods

Audience:
Project managers, managers, directors, and CLOs.

Technology discussed in this session:
Jive, SharePoint, Lynda.com, and join.me.