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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Mobile devices.

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Saba and Adobe Connect.

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.