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Learning Guild
The Learning Guild is a community of practice for those supporting the design, development, strategy, and management of organizational learning. As a member-driven organization, the Guild produces a countless number of resources all devoted to the idea that the people who know the most about making learning successful are the people who produce learning every day in corporate, government, and academic settings. Our goal is to create a place where learning professionals can share their knowledge, expertise, and ideas to build a better industry—and better learning experiences—for everyone.
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All Learning Stage Sessions
SELR101 Industry Leader Panel: The Future of eLearning Development
eLearning Rockstars
The eLearning industry is changing quickly, and it can be hard to keep up. Put that on top of ever-evolving tools, mobile vs. desktop development, xAPI integration, and other feature requests, and it’s enough to make you want to throw your computer out the window. But what if you knew what the tool developers had planned for the near future?
Read MoreIs your online training boring? Are you having engagement issues? Are your learners not passing their training? There is a problem these days—learners prefer online training, but budgets are low and training is often dry, making it hard to stay engaged. But even with online training, the learner is often alone, not stimulated by other people around them. Distractions are easy and infinite with social media, smartphones, and the internet at your fingertips.
Read MoreWith the constant changing and evolution of technology, you need to know what is possible and how to determine what is a fit for your audience.
Read MoreSMNX101 4 Freedoms for eLearning Success: Vistaprint Case Study
Management Xchange
It’s a common story: An organization implements a proprietary learning platform that promises to meet the company’s every need. This pairing seems to be a match made in heaven... until it isn’t. Gone are the days of a “one-size-fits-all” solution. In today’s rapidly changing eLearning ecosystem, companies require a flexible solution that can be customized to meet a plethora of needs—from onboarding to PD to eCommerce and more.
Read MoreLearners aren’t just taking courses at their desks anymore. They’re on their phones and tablets looking for quick reference info, performance support content, product guides, and more. And they need your content to look great and work perfectly—because they don’t have time to troubleshoot.
Read MoreSXAPI101 The Crawl, Walk, Run Methodology for Adopting Learning Analytics
xAPI Central Showcase
xAPI, big data, and analytics for learning and development have been revolutionizing the way training professionals build and evaluate their development programs. Implementing learning analytics for the first time can be a big task—especially where there are many business systems from which you need to collect data. Having a clear process to implement can help accelerate the outcome L&D has been waiting for: tying learning activities to quantifiable business outcomes.
Read MoreSXAPI102 Identifying Competency Gaps with xAPI Analytics and Dashboards
xAPI Central Showcase
A high-consequence pipeline operator in the US delivers a large number of safety and operations–focused training using test scores to document compliance and understanding. With pure SCORM content, their insight into the performance of users at an objective level was limited. Even though students passed the test on a topic, some objectives were failed regularly, identifying issues in content, test design, and training processes.
Read MoreSTRS102 5 Activities that Maximize Impact for Instructor-Led Training
Strategic Solutions
Instructor-led training is where over 50 percent of employee development happens. But it’s difficult to achieve employees’ buy-in if their direct managers aren’t sold on its importance. It can also be hard to capture and measure employee engagement in the session—especially when there are hundreds of instructors running sessions. It’s even more difficult to ensure behavioral changes stick long after the session ends. This session will introduce five practical tactics you can incorporate today—fast activities that increase manager buy-in before training, maximize engagement and learning during training, and magically transform into employee-created job aids after training.
Read MoreLearners are only as good as the environments they operate within. Their access to learning, the level of support from managers and executives, and the quality of the training they receive all impact performance and results.
Read MoreSalespeople are learning organizations’ problem children: often remote and on the go, “too busy” for training, and quick to dismiss anything that doesn’t immediately help them. Yet constant product and sales tool releases, nonstop market evolution, and rapid competitive moves mean sales teams stand to benefit from effective learning more than any other function! And moving the needle on sales effectiveness yields enormous ROI.
Read MoreYesterday’s employees view development and training as an isolated activity outside their daily routine, but today’s employees are pushing organizations into uncharted territory where informal, engaging, interactive eLearning must be incorporated into their lives when and where they need it. Most employees don’t have the time to click through slides or courses that are not engaging or interactive, but how do you take your legacy content and reimagine it quickly?
Read MoreYou’re charged with a high-stakes, high-visibility learning challenge. Perhaps you need to prepare an entire hospital staff to work effectively on day one of a move to a new hospital building, or you need to get a salesforce ready to sell a new product line. How do you do it? There’s no quick fix, no single method that will get full impact. You need to create an integrated learning strategy.
Read MoreYou’ve heard that VR training experiences have a proven higher retention rate, with retention gains reaching 75 percent in comparison to standard video, eLearning, or textbook training. What you need to know is how to create and deploy VR training quickly and cost-effectively with the systems you have today.
Read MoreMelissa is a rising star at your company. She’s been promoted five times in as many years, and is on track to join your leadership bench program. Unfortunately, she just gave her two weeks’ notice. Capturing the knowledge of exiting employees is just one of the ways you could be using video but probably aren’t. Join this session to explore six real examples of how companies are improving their learning strategies with video. You’ll also explore trends driving the use of video, and how you can tap them within your business.
Read MoreMillennials and Gen Z are entering the workforce at an accelerating rate. These incoming generations’ expectations from their training media are very different from those of previous generations. Virtual reality training offers a potent tool to address the media and learning needs of these younger generations. However, since VR is still an emerging technology, there is a lack of data and case studies and many misconceptions surrounding cost and best operating practices.
Read MoreSMNX103 Implementing Digital Learning at Dell Technology
Management Xchange
Learn how large enterprises have successfully implemented digital learning and measured results. Find out how Dell Technologies addressed its digital transformation and upskilling needs with EdCast’s learning experience platform (LXP). The presentation will also highlight how EdCast’s AI and machine learning solutions increase learning relevance and overall engagement at Dell.
Read MoreSTRS103 Learning Ecosystem Success: 5 Plain and Simple Smart Hacks
Strategic Solutions
Learning is an intrinsically human activity that happens in many places and in many ways. It doesn’t matter how great or feature-rich any one learning system is; learning will never happen in just one place. The modern learning ecosystem not only recognizes this reality but embraces it to support the learner wherever and however he or she learns best.
Read MoreDig-It! Games had a maintenance headache with a dated Cold Fusion data collection system and some data reporting into various applications in the cloud. The data was siloed and lacked any form of normalization to make it interoperable for aggregation and analysis. It was time to change old practices for new, and after a requirements gathering exercise, the team decided to prototype with xAPI. Existing xAPI profiles provided a solid baseline of verbs and activity types, etc., but xAPI contextual data lacked any form of structure. Most industries have a common vocabulary and standards, but xAPI profiles do not address context.
Read MoreSXAPI104 Beyond the LMS: Using xAPI to Measure Help Platform Usage
xAPI Central Showcase
The learning experience (LX) team at LLamasoft meets the learning needs of customers as they use the company’s software to solve problems. Prior to this project, they had limited insight into how internal and external users navigated the help system, and they were unable to analyze whether, and when, users watched the videos the team produced. Without this information, they could not measure the utilization and reach of their tutorials. They wanted to know whether this was a worthwhile investment of time, and whether users found the videos useful. Upon further evaluating the help platform, they realized that this lack of visibility extended to search terms and page views.
Read MoreSTRS104 Frictionless Learning Ecosystems: What Are They, and How Do You Create One?
Strategic Solutions
Companies spend billions of dollars trying to understand consumer behavior, but the L&D groups in these same organizations may not be leveraging those insights and strategies to reach their learners. If you look at your learning solutions as a product that you want your learners to consume, where are you creating friction that discourages those learning consumers? And what can you do about it?
Read MoreSMNX104 Get Organized and Prosper: Project Planning for the Instructional Designer
Management Xchange
It’s the job within the job—in addition to designing and developing amazing training solutions, instructional designers often must also plan, organize, and manage their projects. This can be a daunting task, as projects have many components and moving pieces to stay on top of in addition to the actual design and development work.
Read MoreSEMT104 CANCELLED: What Is It, and Why Should I Care? A Deep Dive on Emerging Tech in L & D
Emerging Tech
With the technology landscape changing rapidly, questions are posed to L&D to answer how emerging technologies could be leveraged to improve learning and development across organizations. You may be an emerging technology guru and able to answer these questions easily, or you may be like many of us and struggle to find the time to do your research on every emerging tech trend in L&D.
Read MoreThe idea of creating motion graphics in programs such as Adobe After Effects can be daunting, time consuming, and expensive—but it doesn’t have to be! If you have Articulate Storyline, you have the power to create memorable motion graphic videos that are quick and inexpensive to produce.
Read MoreSELR104 Training That’s “Lit”: Engaging with Generation Z Learners
eLearning Rockstars
Sigma Chi Fraternity’s existing, traditional learning methods for incoming pledges weren’t received as well as hoped. Young learners reported the training was too long, too “boring” and not “lit.” What changes could Sigma Chi make that would truly connect with Gen Z pledges while still effectively preparing them for their membership in the fraternity?
Read MoreSELR105 Using Games to Make Your Training More Effective
eLearning Rockstars
Employee training expenses in North America exceed $70 billion each year. Unfortunately, much of that learning is passive, dull, and uninteresting—in other words, not effective. An alternative to this type of training is to provide active, interesting, and engaging instruction—in other words, effective instruction. This session will showcase how game-based training motivates learners, improves retention, and drives better business results.
Read MoreTechnology is driving every aspect of business, and learning is no exception. Driven by an always-on, mobile culture, learners today have an “instant gratification” mindset and are easily distracted by email pings, text message buzzes, and fitness tracker updates. For instructional designers and other eLearning pros, this means every second counts when fighting for attention, focus, and retention. How do you arrest attention away from everyday distractions and deliver engaging content?
Read MoreWhen it comes to developer training and software training, many of today’s most common training methods—self-paced, instructor-led, and more—have not kept pace with the needs of the modern learner. In a world of shrinking attention spans, how do you deliver software learning that ultimately keeps your learners focused and engaged?
Read MoreOne of the keys to making effective training videos is to gather feedback from stakeholders and colleagues along the way. However, the headaches associated with this process can frustrate and deter even the best content developers. The process can take longer than desired, feedback can be provided on the wrong areas, and often feedback comes at the last minute, causing a major rework way too late.
Read MoreSTRS105 Is a Learning Content Management System Right for You?
Strategic Solutions
Modern learning and development (L&D) organizations make it a priority to improve employees’ skills and enhance knowledge—not yearly or monthly, but continuously. These successful organizations have moved away from disconnected, rigid courses and instead enabled flexible, multipurpose, agile learning content. By ensuring their learning content is rich, dynamic, and personalized, they provide their teams with the tools to drive their own learning. As a result, the value of every content asset is maximized and production is streamlined. But many organizations have struggled for years to find a way to enable this dynamic learning. Often, learning content is stored in silos, making it difficult to find and reuse. Reviewing and updating courses is time-consuming, creating derivative courses is problematic, and version control is a nightmare. Distributing learning content in multiple formats (SCORM, PDF, EPUB, HTML, XML, etc.) requires painstaking rework. Sound familiar?
Read MoreLMS, move over. LRS, you are so last year. LXPs, or learning experience platforms, are the new kids on the block. This session will highlight an emerging category of digital learning tools, the learning experience platforms, and help you to draw your own conclusions about what an LXP really is and how it could be useful in your context.
Read MoreFor an enormous number of organizations, training requirements are still driven by urgency, the need for rapid development and deployment, and the need to meet regulatory and management compliance requirements. Many organizations are still in transition from face-to-face training and manual tracking systems. This session will describe the simple procedures and best practices you can enact that will work with any training platform while reducing your risk of failure.
Read MoreSXAPI106 Closing the Loop: When Learning Experience Meets Work Experience
xAPI Central Showcase
Halliburton is one of the leading global oil and gas services companies. It has more than 50,000 employees and 14 product service lines, which means any improvement in efficiency is a major win. Its oil and gas exploration clients and internal Halliburton employees use Landmark software to identify drilling locations and make technical decisions on how to drill, an activity that can take up to 40 percent of their work time. That’s why it’s so important to help these users learn how to best use this software: so they can not only find the best locations for drilling and make the best technical decisions, but also identify them more quickly by leveraging everything the software has to offer. In order to develop resources to help these users, it’s important to be connected to the field and to understand how people are working and learning. The better you understand the process as applied in reality, the better you can evaluate the data and see if you are missing anything.
Read MoreWhat is innovation? How do you recognize it? Most importantly, how do you continuously innovate in your training design and pedagogy? Come find answers to these questions and more, and walk away with new ideas that will help you drive innovation in your training and development programs.
Read MoreCurious about how to keep up with constantly changing technology? Wondering how to shift your learning programs to be more relevant and useful for today’s learning? Not sure how to plan for the future workforce? This session explores the evolution and new frontiers of learning technology—innovations that are making learning more immersive, contextual, and relevant for learners both today and in the future.
Read MoreeLearning has traditionally been overly complex. Learning management systems are clunky and hard to use. eLearning content must be created by experts, meaning that the turnaround time for creating content is extensive, with trainers unable to edit and update content with ease. As a result, trainers often resort to “boring” training resources, such as PDFs, Word docs, and videos. The result is a repetitive learning experience and a disengaged learner.
Read MoreBeing 508-compliant is meant to make your courses more accessible, but creating 508-compliant courses can be very difficult. Different requirements, changing definitions, and clarifying expectations will add hours to any project.
Read MoreGet moving and mingling with Yukon Learning, host of the DevLearn 2018 Expo Reception! You’ll have a great time navigating the Expo Hall in this fun-filled Yukon Scavenger Hunt. Discover various clues, all building up to a secret and the grand finale for a chance to walk away with the grand prize: a sleek new iPad loaded with some awesome freebies.
Read MoreSXAPI201 Creating a Data-Driven L&D Team—an xAPI Case Study
xAPI Central Showcase
From an organization-wide executive directive to become more data-driven, a retail corporate L&D team took an internal look at their own data practices. Realizing that they had an overwhelming lack of transparency into their learning initiatives and a great amount of data that had gone unused, the team developed a transformation vision to create a single system of record for learning to enable observability, granularity, and accountability for all team members. The team was committed to the vision of xAPI; however, the data and information they needed in order to make actionable change for their learners was locked away in non-interoperable formats, and they recognized the need to develop a data strategy and implementation plan.
Read MoreArticulate knows that eLearning developers face big challenges. You’re asked to create engaging courses for any device, develop gorgeous eLearning on a budget, and get projects approved on a tight schedule. And you may not have access to the budget, resources, and support you need to do your best work.
Read More10:00 AM Thu, October 25
Track: Management and Strategy
The eLearning industry is constantly changing. It can be difficult to keep an eye on what advancements are coming while also trying to manage current budgets and technology restraints.
Read MoreLearners don’t always want to sit through a formal training course, and they often simply don’t have the time. Microlearning is a great way to deliver just what people need, when they need it, to maximize effectiveness. But, as a learning professional, how do you create it?
Read MoreAre you looking for amazing ways to use your mobile device to create content? Learn how to use your device outside of your typical apps and email to discover new ways to create, brainstorm, and improve your learning development workflow.
Read MoreSMNX201 Give Your Organization the Freedom to Innovate
Management Xchange
Highly customized learning platforms may sound like an inherently good thing. But what if those customizations are patching holes rather than tailoring the performance of your learning solution to your organization’s needs? These kinds of patches and workarounds can hinder a learning professional’s ability to innovate. In the rapidly evolving world of digital learning, the freedom to innovate is essential for a sustainable, scalable, and efficient learning program.
Read MoreSMNX202 Perception to Reality: Proving Your Training’s Value
Management Xchange
In a world of perpetually shifting priorities and uncertain outlooks, it’s important to prove the value of your work to your clients and stakeholders. We rarely have the resources we need to do effective analysis before and after training, which leads many in management to view training as just an expendable expense rather than an investment. How can we, as learning professionals, change that reality?
Read MoreWith more than one million new crew members hired every year in the US alone, it is imperative for McDonald’s to onboard new hires efficiently and effectively. However, new hires were spending more than twelve hours studying processes and procedures in back rooms with printed binders that could double as doorstops before learning in the restaurant with peers and managers. McDonald’s recognized the need for a new approach to their training program.
Read MoreDid they learn it? Do they know it? Can they do it? Most organizations use assessments as part of talent development initiatives, promotions, compliance, onboarding, or recruitment. The stakes are substantial: Decisions made based on the results can impact both the reputation and financial well-being of the organization, as well as the lives of its employees.
Read MoreeLearning and instructor-led classroom training both have inherent strengths and weaknesses. Why not take advantage of the best of both worlds?
Read MoreSTRS202 Successfully Implementing an LCMS: eXact and Merck Case Study
Strategic Solutions
One of the most challenging issues for organizations is how to undertake digital transformation successfully. Adopting new technology to address content and learning challenges can be high on internal agendas, and therefore it is imperative that the enabling technology is able to deliver successful outcomes to an organization. It is essential to anticipate the challenges that might lie ahead, in order to optimize potential efficiencies and measurable benefits. This session will provide a guide for those who might consider embarking on such an internal transformation—and you will be given the background on how Merck progressed on its innovation journey.
Read MoreA hospital system had an instructor-led course that they needed to move online, but wanted to keep aspects of the learner-to-learner communication that was possible in the instructor-led course. The organization asked the SmartBuilder team to replicate this functionality in an online course by allowing learners to see live statistics showing how other learners answered the same questions. xAPI allowed the team to provide an innovative solution to this challenge.
Read MoreOften, employees have no simple way to find relevant information in the flow of their work. Printed or digital information can be difficult to find and search through, all while seconds and minutes are ticking away with an unresolved problem or need—resulting in a missed opportunity with a customer, a failed process that slows down a team’s productivity, or a larger issue that requires more resources to solve later.
Read MoreSometimes you have to get creative to gather the data you need for your digital learning project. xAPI opens up the ability to track all sorts of activity that happens outside the LMS, but sometimes the “how” of getting that data calls for a bit of creativity.
Read MoreThis session will explore often-overlooked game elements that focus on the story—the narrative—which can take surprisingly little time to craft, but can make all the difference. You’ll explore a proven model with examples that demonstrate these elements in detail. Core concepts from the hero’s journey apply to all incredible stories—from Rocky Balboa to Indiana Jones, these elements are the reason people care to dedicate their attention.
Read MoreThis session will look at the eight big challenges that gomo’s global customers have highlighted when developing and delivering eLearning at scale.
Read MoreShort videos—less than two minutes in length—or long videos chunked up into short, digestible bits are retained longer and are more frequently shared and consumed. Creating, managing, and updating short, digestible content has become a challenge in most organizations. The desire is to be able to create content by anyone, anytime, and deliver it in an exciting and digestible way.
Read MoreFor thousands of years, knowledge has been the catalyst for growth, providing organized groups of individuals a competitive advantage. Awareness, insight, and discernment became essential for groups to progress and lead, and that same principle shapes today’s successful organizations. One of the main challenges that organizations face is aligning business objectives with employees’ ambitions. Clustering individuals and calling them a group doesn’t necessarily guarantee they’ll meet learning goals or the company’s expectations. The assimilation of knowledge depends on many factors, and even when you can granularly customize training, you still need to make it applicable to the collective goal.
Read MoreSubject matter experts (SMEs) are the keepers of knowledge and know-how, but working with them can be a challenging experience. How do you get the SME to share their knowledge and know-how with you? What should you do if the SME provides too much information—or not enough?
Read MoreVirtual reality technologies are finding new ways to enhance our ability to perceive the world that surrounds us. With the focus being on the learner experience, VR offers opportunities to organizations that implement VR into their training toolkit. This session explains how to create an effective VR learning game from an organization that has built from them from the ground up using the VIVE and the Rift.
Read MoreSoftware and system simulations created in tools such as Captivate are a great way to engage learners and provide visual demonstrations. But when developer access to live systems is limited or system updates are frequent, creating and maintaining such simulations can be time-consuming and difficult. But what if there was a way to simulate simulation?
Read MoreThe whole industry seems excited about xAPI. It’s a spectacular option for gaining deep insights into learner actions—or opening up the learning environment entirely. Exciting stuff indeed. Getting excited is easy; getting started is another story. How do you get started with xAPI? How can you use the rapid authoring tools you’re already familiar with to tap into the reporting potential of xAPI?
Read MoreDo you find that the pressures of rapidly changing technology and the need to support a nontraditional, remote workforce require rethinking how work is done in your organization? Is it challenging for your organization to keep up with the needs of your audience due to restrictive, outdated procedures, tools, and skill sets? For the talent development function, emerging workforce needs raise important questions when it comes to strategic planning.
Read MoreSXAPI204 Case Study: Tracking and Analyzing US Army Training with xAPI
xAPI Central Showcase
This US Army Basic Rifle Marksmanship case study began in 2013 with a white paper discussing training challenges. There was no uniform mechanism for collecting the available data from the various proprietary live ranges, and data was often abstracted to the unit level. They wanted to find better ways to provide meaningful feedback and training at the individual level and have the ability to securely aggregate data sets for analysis. If data from live fire exercises could be captured, correlated at the individual level, and made easily available for data mining, then the US Army could benefit from a wide array of analysis focused on live fire training. In addition, trainees could receive relevant and timely feedback: not only detailed training records, but also automated feedback or remediation based on their results delivered on-demand.
Read MoreKraft Heinz is the world’s fifth-largest food and beverage company, with over 200 brands in nearly 200 countries. The company needed a way to effectively disseminate information and train its workforce regarding its products, while also ensuring that the solution could dynamically change due to the short shelf life of the content.
Read MoreEveryone’s talking about microlearning, but what does it really mean to your organization? Is microlearning destined to simply mean sub-10-minute videos, or is there more to it?
Read MoreWith so many options at your fingertips, it’s easy to spend hours and hours wading through countless images, backgrounds, interactions, and templates. It can seem overwhelming and bottomless. If you aren’t careful, you can get distracted and lose focus.
Read MoreTraditional eLearning receives very little employee attention. In fact, extremely low (2 – 20 percent) completion rates for ongoing training are common in the industry. Learners often dislike eLearning and avoid it as much as they can. It is clear that a fundamental shift in eLearning is needed to increase employee engagement, enhance learning, and improve performance.
Read MoreDo you find yourself getting stuck using the same patterns of delivery without thinking about whether it is helping your audience or whether it’s the best fit for a challenge?
Read MoreSMNX205 Keeping an Agile Workforce in the Digital Age
Management Xchange
2:15 PM Thu, October 25
Track: Management and Strategy
Digital transformation is accelerating at an exponential pace. While it disrupts old ways of doing things, it also opens up new avenues of innovation, efficiency, and connectivity. As complexity increases, you have the opportunity to use tech to support your performance, to learn, share ideas, and innovate. This requires thinking differently about how you digitally design your learning and interactions. Agility depends on it.
Read More