Have you ever watched a really engaging web-based conference session and wondered, “How’d they do that?” When slides or polls appear or videos pop up and play automatically, it’s not magic! There’s a person behind every action who must click, type, or drag to make things happen. And learning how to use these features when you run your own webinars is surprisingly easy.

Audio can be one of the most powerful tools in your toolbox when it comes to creating effective and impactful eLearning. Bad audio, however, can be one of the most destructive tools—distracting the learner and making your course feel unprofessional or unfinished. Don’t let your courses fall prey to bad audio. There are easy steps you can take to create high-quality audio without big-budget voice talent!

When new technology hits the market, there is often a push to incorporate it into all upcoming projects. You may hear statements such as “We need a GoPro video” when what the speaker really means is, “We need a high-energy, action-oriented video.” When you know what is needed, not just what is wanted, you can make informed purchasing decisions to help ensure that the efforts are high-quality and in budget.

As communications and technologies continue to change, there is increased pressure on corporate workers to keep up with these changes, learn on the job, improve time to competency, and increase productivity. In addition, demographics are changing. Older workers are retiring, resulting in a loss of valuable internal corporate knowledge, while organizations must continually hire new, less experienced workers to replace them. There is a need to capture and share the knowledge that helps new workers improve performance and continue to learn over time. Using social media at work can be a compelling solution to this dilemma, offering informal learning solutions on a just-in-time basis.

When they go right, video projects can go incredibly right! But when they go wrong, they can go very, very wrong. The stakes are higher with eLearning in video form because of the costs, expectations, and limitations in making updates to content.

You are trying to reach the untethered modern learner: someone who rarely comes into the office and won’t sit for any eLearning module longer than five minutes. These learners want learning and performance support to be on demand, like Netflix, and conveniently located on their mobile devices, like Airbnb and Uber. To reach this audience, you want to encourage their learning to be as habitual as checking their phones. So why not provide effective learning experiences through a simple, easy and habitual tool they use every day: Short Message Service (SMS)?

eLearning has fallen behind other sectors in developing engaging, immersive experiences. While the world of advertising is continually exploring new ways to affect people’s habits and decisions, eLearning developers often focus purely on knowledge acquisition. This session will explore how the psychology of marketing can affect the efficacy of eLearning.

Some of the best training out there looks like it was developed by a single designer, regardless of how many people worked on it. But often when more than one learning professional is in the mix and there aren’t established design standards, even with the best of intentions the final product suffers from inconsistency and results in training that looks hodgepodge. The bigger the team, the worse that inconsistency can become. Consistency is key—and the solution resides in detailed style guides, design documents, and templates to make your work look polished and professional.

Yesterday’s sales enablement strategies are no longer enough for the “new normal” that most L&D professionals face. The marketplace grows more competitive each year, and the regulatory landscape is always shifting. Trainers must help reps become trusted partners to their customers, and that means moving beyond just features and benefits selling.

Simulations can provide learners with safe environments in which to learn how to use new skills through practice and failure. When done well, they give people the opportunity to get things wrong and learn from that experience in a way that has little to no risk involved. They can also be deeply immersive, replicating the actual experience of doing something in a realistic and engaging way. Because of this, they can be incredibly effective tools for learning. But how do you create simulations on your own, particularly if you’re on a tight budget?

Captivate’s newest responsive player is built on HTML5 and JavaScript, which opens the door for you to access its code directly. This allows you to go beyond the default features in this tool and make your own customizations. But what kinds of hacks can you actually do with JavaScript, and how do you get started?

iBeacons allow learners to interact with their environment in new ways that were not possible even five years ago. While many learning professionals are aware of iBeacons and their disruptive possibilities, many do not understand the fundamental concepts or how to implement the devices in their training programs. Beacons can be used to provide location context in eLearning and create low-bandwidth augmented reality experiences.