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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

Audience:
Managers, directors, and learning executives.

Technology discussed in this session:
Various technologies.

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning Platforms

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

Audience:
Learning managers, directors, and leaders.

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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

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

In this session, you will learn:

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

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

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.

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.

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.).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.).

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.

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.

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.

Autodesk’s learning ecosystem is vast, extending far beyond the walls of the corporation to help customers use its tools most effectively. It’s no surprise, then, that driving this change internally at a company-wide scale has been a complex undertaking. There are lots of silos to bridge in order to serve customers well, holistically, and seamlessly.

In this session, you’ll learn from the frameworks and principles Autodesk has used to connect, improve, and envision the future of its customer learning and community ecosystem. You’ll explore concrete examples of project successes, obstacles, and failures along the way so far. You’ll also look in detail at the research-based design process Autodesk used to understand its customers, their problems, and how Autodesk could help them. Through exploring this journey, you’ll discover how to stitch together a learning ecosystem that improves customer experiences, strengthens your communities, and drives customer success.

In this session, you will learn:

• About new frameworks to describe learning ecosystems
• How a big company can undergo massive change to orient around customers
• Why it’s important to anchor what you create to customer needs and dynamics
• How content and community strategy interplay to help make customers successful
• How technology architecture and governance models can support this kind of change

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Microservice architecture, APIs (including xAPI), community platforms, content management platforms, and engineering software.

Traditional training requires an event mindset and often stays in the learners’ brains just as long as the event. Hilti needed to find ways to transfer knowledge that builds skills, and then to retain that knowledge until the point of application.

This session will explore how a conservative company journeyed into the technology wilderness and came out with a new mindset. You will see how Hilti embraced the social age, committed to changing its own behaviors, and aimed to ensure the success of the organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• About collaborative learning technology theory
• About collaborative learning technology in action
• How to create action plans for defining appropriate projects to target
• How to create a learning technology stakeholder map for decision-makers

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers. Participants should have knowledge or experience with responsive development tools accessible via app or PC.

Technology discussed in this session:
Collaborative learning technology.

In nature, an ecosystem refers to the combination of a community of living things, the non-living elements that make up their environment, and the many ways in which those individual elements interact. In order for an ecosystem to thrive, the individual components must connect and support one another, balancing each other so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Ecosystems exist in the workplace as well. Understanding the structure and dependencies of an organizational ecosystem can help you build a better learning and performance strategy.

In this session, you will examine the expanded scope of a learning and performance ecosystem, examining the numerous components that contribute to learning and performance improvement. You will also explore how these individual components can be combined into a single cohesive strategy in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the relationships that exist between your workers and their environment
• The numerous components of a learning and performance ecosystem
• How the environment contributes to performance improvement
• How to build connections between individual components to form a single organizational strategy

Audience:
Managers, directors, and learning executives.

Technology discussed in this session:
Various technologies.

Do you have a difficult time estimating how long a project should take? Do you typically go over your project time estimates, or have some projects that take a lot less time than you thought they would? Would you like to hold your team accountable to realistic time estimates, but don’t have the data to support it? If so, you need a new time-tracking approach so you can more accurately determine your time estimates for training projects.

This session will help you become stronger at creating precise and realistic time estimates for your projects. You’ll look at how to break down the time tracking requirements for your team. You’ll then see how using an Excel-based time tracking system can help you analyze your past projects to better understand the real time tasks take and more accurately create bottom-up time estimates. These skills will help you provide clear time estimates to your team and stakeholders for each training project and prevent you from committing to project timelines you actually can’t deliver on.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to break down your time tracking requirements for your team
• How an Excel-based time tracking system can help you create accurate project times
• How to analyze past data to determine comparative and bottom-up time estimates
• How this process can help you provide more precise project time estimates to your team and stakeholders

Audience:
Novice to intermediate project managers and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Microsoft Office.

It can be difficult to motivate employees to learn. Often, they either don’t think the materials apply to them or they believe they don’t need to know anything more to succeed.

This session will demonstrate a program developed to encourage and track employee learning. With a focus on continuous improvement, it rewards employees for all learning that pertains to their job, including reading articles and books, watching videos, and attending conferences. You will learn how, in a self-paced environment, employees are able to choose when and what they learn and tailor their learning to their specific job needs. This allows them to excel at their current job and prepare for their next step.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to encourage employee learning
• How to track all employee learning
• How to reward learning
• About systems that are available to accomplish tracking
• About the benefits of recognizing all types of learning

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Absorb LMS, Degreed, PC, and mobile.

Global. Digital. Mobile. Agile. Disruption. The business landscape is changing rapidly. New technology, new industries, new entrants, new customers, and an evolving workforce are sparking new expectations for every company. How do you respond? Can you advance human performance through innovative design?

In this session, you’ll discover how BMO Financial Group is addressing this changing landscape by building a leading, end-to-end learning and experience design ecosystem. The BMO team’s approach uses design thinking, nimble processes, and the right combination of engagement, design, social, learning, and communication levers to meet business needs. You’ll explore BMO’s journey to make this strategy come to life, what has changed, and its early proof points of success.

In this session, you will learn:

• What the role of the designer is in advancing human performance
• How to break down the silos between learning, design, and communication to create new employee-focused solutions
• How to bring design thinking to life, to prototype, and to hack with curious experimentation
• How to use a design community of practice to drive new capabilities and spark innovation

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

Technology discussed in this session:
This session will focus on new design approaches and channels vs. specific technology platforms.

Status update. Touch base. Weekly meetings. Scope creep. Project plans. Tasks. Milestones. Deliverables. All these things can overwhelm you when managing projects—but they don’t have to! It turns out there are ways to juggle and advance your numerous projects while at the same time maintaining a semblance of serenity.

In this session, you’ll find out more about the project planning techniques and tools that can help you manage and streamline your course development and projects. You’ll examine how both planning and communication contribute to project management, how dashboards and timelines work to bring order to chaos, and what real examples of these plans look like in easy-to-learn software like Smartsheet and Google Docs. You’ll walk away with tools and approaches to streamline your project planning, preserve your sanity, and take charge of your projects.

In this session, you will learn:

• Strategies for planning and communication when working on collaborative content development projects
• How to create a project status dashboard to keep stakeholders up-to-date
• How to create a high-level project timeline for your SME partners so they stay on track without getting overwhelmed by details
• How to create a project plan with milestone deadlines and tasks that align with a course development process

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

Technology discussed in this session:
Smartsheet and Google Docs.