Like homeowners faced with the task of making home improvements, instructional designers might find themselves overwhelmed with the notion of making updates to an existing course. But what if there were five simple DIY steps to making renovations or additions to improve the overall usability, effectiveness, and look of your course?

Are we really able to tell how people use digital learning? How do we gain visibility that learning is being applied? Sophisticated tracking gives us the ability to gain insights from user behavior. By focusing on what we can successfully capture—such as time spent within the learning, what learning assets are most popular, and even user sentiment—it's now possible to gain a rich picture of the experience of learning. In this talk we'll explain why tracking is more important than ever, show you technology innovations that push measurement beyond the LMS, and demonstrate how to infer meaning from the data being captured to inform decision-making.

Keeping viewer's attention with video is a challenge. There are many barriers that might keep viewers from pushing the play button. If (and when) they've clicked play, do you know what keeps people watching? Why do they stop? What elements need to be in your videos to make sure they able to learn? The good news is that there are answers, best practices, and information to these and other questions to help you create videos that work.

For decades, learning & development has been wishing for "a seat at the table" with senior leaders. So, why is it so hard to get there? The reasons may be rooted in our legacy as a training function that taught workers to perform predictable tasks and repeatable procedures. Today's work is less predictable; more creative and fluid. Yet in many organizations, L&D's training legacy continues to impact our work processes and outputs, which, in turn affects how we are perceived.

Studies show that nearly 20 percent of the workforce is actively disengaged (Gallup). This problematic statistic has L&D professionals seeking new models. At the same time, the Towards Maturity Report (2018) shows that 61 percent of L&D departments have no policy cementing the way content is communicated and distributed in the organization. The development and use of high engagement communications tools has exploded in other industries. How can the L&D professional take advantage of the macro level trends in communications and media?  

Has one of your organizational eLearning investments been met with mixed reviews or low uptake from learners? Perhaps you're moving to mobile content for the first time, or expanding into a new international market where you don't have on-the-ground presence. Too often we plan, develop, and implement in a vacuum because we believe we don't have the financial resources to conduct targeted user research. Budget constraints keep us focused on solving problems and adjusting with our solutions rather than designing for different cultures, technology levels, and genders. To address the training needs of our audience, delight them with our content, and drive repeat engagement, it's critical we involve them in the process and leverage low-cost tools to make that happen throughout the process.

Many people in the eLearning realm are attempting to use gamification and serious games to spark employee engagement and drive learning retention. The biggest setbacks for are little-to-no planning, tough to pinpoint metrics, little-to-no implementation strategy, and insufficient or nonexistent post-deployment support.

How does the largest employer on the planet, Walmart, attract and develop a new generation of managers who have spent more time playing games than they have in the classroom? How does pharmaceutical industry leader Novartis quickly train hundreds of people on best practice production and aseptic procedures for a new leukemia treatment, where mistakes have life and death consequences? How does Fortune 200 healthcare leader DaVita train a global organization to see the world through the customer's eyes?

Making the workforce future proof is currently high on the agenda of all of us in training and education. In this session you will get an idea of how InnoEnergy uses artificial intelligence (AI) to bridge the skills and competency gap of engineers working in the sustainable energy field. You will learn the three steps that make the full cycle of the project: 1) Extracting emerging skills and competencies from industry reports and road maps, 2) Analyzing resumes of engineers who want to enter the energy sector or want to upskill or reskill their capabilities, and 3) Using the skills gap that emerges from the first two steps to come to an adaptive learning path in the third step of the process.  

If you were tasked with finding solutions to a curriculum problem, what might you do? Microlearning? Mobile learning? Gamification? Virtual reality/augmented reality? More instructor-led training? We're often tempted to turn to new technology or trends, thinking one of these must be what our approach is missing. Certainly these modes are useful, but how do we know if they're the right solutions until we know what the problems are? In this session you will learn to face the problems as our learners would, using empathy, and build the Design Thinking process from there. Only then can you create meaningful solutions that use the right mix of tools and technology to elevate your training.

One of the top challenges for learning professionals is getting managers to support learning. Effective talent development can positively impact employee engagement, innovation, and long-term growth. How can we make leaders own their role in employee learning? How are managers motivated to invest their time in developing their people, which often doesn't bring a return in the short run?

Adult learning principles state that adults learn best when content is relevant. So why do most virtual classroom lessons rely on lectures and slides? One of the most effective ways to ensure learning sticks is by getting learners involved, and scenario-based learning design does just that. We only have so much time to dedicate to formal learning, every moment needs to be impactful and relevant. Unfortunately, virtual classroom sessions tend to focus on getting as much content out there as possible, and leaving it up to the learners to figure out how to make it all work.  

Learners don't always want to sit through a formal training course, or simply don't have the time. Microlearning is a great way to deliver just what people need, when they need it. But, as a learning professional, how do you create it? While the idea of short learning sessions is great, they can end up taking almost as long as a full course to create, as you need high-impact video or interactive features to explain and reinforce key information quickly. It's important to be able to create microlearning efficiently, so that you ultimately have the time to serve the needs of all your learners with the full range of topics they need access to.

Everyone involved in training creation and delivery is managing at least part of a project, whether they know it or not. While many think of project management as only meeting a series of deadlines, it can provide you so much more than checkmarks on a calendar. Meeting deadlines is important to your success, but what if you could use basic project management techniques to create repeatable processes, improve communications with your stakeholders, and manage risks we all encounter? Best of all, what if it can make your job easier?