In the 21^st century, it’s increasingly challenging to keep people engaged in content. Today’s learning professionals must employ new technologies to influence and change attitudes and behavior. Interactive video is one of those technology solutions that the market is gravitating toward, and for good reason. However, there are many different solutions out there, and not all are created equal. When instructional designers and eLearning professionals are selecting technology for their programs, where should they begin?

Employees learn many of their job competencies from one another. But it’s hard for a manager to know what they’re learning, from whom, and how well they’ve learned it. These informal interactions are almost impossible to track, and it’s hard to keep bad habits from spreading. If managers had a way to track and guide this informal learning, it would become a powerful part of employee development.

Mobile learning has tremendous value, but for many organizations, going mobile is a big step. That’s why, when trying to develop a mobile learning culture within your organization, often the hardest part is convincing internal stakeholders. Amid budget constraints, complex infrastructures, IT restrictions, and philosophical misalignment, how do you make a compelling case for mLearning within your organization?

Optical character recognition (OCR) technology can take your magazine article, brochure, or PDF, single out letters on the image, and put them into words, enabling you to access and edit the content. Similarly, facial recognition software breaks down an image and can provide data related to gender, age, and ethnicity. Couple these with interior location technology, and you have the potential for powerful organizational learning opportunities.

Text expansion is an inherent challenge with localizing any content. Accommodating the additional scripts or subtitles poses different technical and content challenges than do traditional eLearning courses developed using authoring tools.

Increasingly, companies must use innovate ways to add to the bottom line. Unlike previous disrupters in mobile and eLearning, Gear VR, powered by Oculus, takes video experiences to the next level. Where does virtual reality fit into an organizational learning strategy? How does an organization effectively move forward to maximize its capability?

Performance on leadership development competencies, like coaching, influencing, and speaking skills, has an ineffable quality difficult to capture in words. If you want to explain what’s great and what to work on while evaluating participants, you or they will miss something in the translation from behavior to observation to words on a page.

Concise visual metaphors facilitate the best learning. Think back to high school, college, or a meeting where you experienced that “aha” moment while someone was drawing on a whiteboard. How can you reproduce this learning experience online with a small budget and without an art degree? Whiteboard-style recordings can be just as effective as the fancy Flash or HTML5 videos you might produce with more expensive software.

Undefined business processes, untested and incomplete systems, continually changing requirements, and scope creep—sound familiar? One or all of these conditions can wreak havoc on a project and cause it to continue on well past its targeted end date. How do you develop content for a project that continually evolves? How do you maximize limited resources under these conditions? How do you survive the project that never seems to end?

This session addresses learning designers’ challenges with determining which type of performance support is suitable for a given audience, their role, and the tools they have access to in their work environment. At the Bank of Montreal, access to technology-based performance support varies widely and affects how learning and transfer materials can be designed.