The prerequisite to effective training retention is gaining the attention of students once they have left the training environment. This is not a trivial challenge! Employees ignore emails, never visit web portals, and forget about apps installed on their phones. How can you gain access to their attention to reinforce important training?

Interviewing is a common way to gather information and a widely used approach in learning and development, HR, and marketing research. Capturing this information on video for analysis and reuse is a good way to extend the life of captured content. However, many people don’t know what makes one interview more effective than another in what they capture and the questions being asked.

Learning organizations jump feet first into emerging trends without the right people, in the right seats, on the bus. The result of this approach is waste. Video production requirements go beyond the basic understanding of consumer electronics and, within the intersection of learning and development, can result in a considerable learning curve for quality production outcomes.

Practice makes perfect. Few would argue with that statement, but how do you provide enough time for ongoing practice and meaningful feedback with time-crunched employees?

The use of online video has become an essential part of teaching and learning. At the same time, it is challenging to provide accessible video accommodations for audiences across platforms and languages. Google thinks that all video material should be universally accessible—why not caption?

Organizations transforming their businesses for new digital platforms and marketplaces need to make such transition as effective and painless as possible. During the rollout of new software platforms, companies need to continuously monitor the impact that new digital procedures and processes are having on workforce acceptance and customers’ engagement. More effective and intelligent solutions are needed to make companies cross the digital chasm—without falling into it.

Two of the most popular technologies used to engage learners today are video and mobile. Videos are becoming increasingly interactive, even on mobile devices, but developing these videos can be complex. Where does an organization start?

The explosion of mobile devices has revolutionized the web design world, which has shed approaches based on centuries-old printing methods to embrace a new grammar of design, responsive web design (RWD). But the world of learning has not caught up. Like learning any new language, working in RWD means learning to think differently. Thinking differently, though, gives you an opportunity to change how you design learning experiences for the better.

For many organizations, the front-line staff would most benefit from mLearning, yet challenges arise when this audience has different levels of technological adoption and is geographically dispersed. For all learners, mLearning needs to be intuitive, effective, and simple. How can L&D professionals make the best possible mLearning solutions that truly deliver on the learning objectives?

L&D is vital to the continued growth of any organization, but how do you develop relevant content that your employees can relate to? And how do you keep your employees engaged and involved in the process of learning?

Let’s face it: Learning content is getting out of control. Designers and developers can’t find anything and end up reinventing the wheel. This is a symptom of content overload, a condition as organizations try to make content more bite-sized, modular, and mobile to meet the needs of modern learners. Learners are experiencing it, too. As organizations adapt learning strategies, content strategy must follow.

Mobile first is the standard in today’s learning and development industry. Companies need ways to be able to reach their sales reps wherever they are. Many companies do not have the means to develop device-agnostic mobile applications for learning in the time frame needed to provide just-in-time learning. Mobile messaging can offer a just-in-time learning solution without the development time.

The 70:20:10 model holds that 70 percent of learning happens informally on the job. However, there are a lot of distractions at work that inhibit the amount of learning that can be achieved—deadlines, coworker interruptions, meetings, etc. Also, since learning is an afterthought when performing your job, it’s a fairly inefficient process, especially when compared to the other 30 percent, where learning is typically the overarching theme.

Many people accept that the way to extend learning solutions to the moment of need is through performance support. But while L&D professionals recognize the value of this approach, actually knowing how to take existing projects and transform them into solutions that truly support people in the moment can be a challenge.

“If you taught them this, why don’t they do it?” Educational services staff at Saint Vincent Hospital got tired of hearing this question and started looking for a new learning paradigm for the institution. The solution was found in performance support. By blending learning opportunities and performance support for associates before a class, during a class, and on the job, organizations are able to significantly impact job performance.

We all know that video is an incredibly effective learning method. Learners can remember up to six times more from trainings and classes that incorporate videos than they do from those that don’t. Many trainers, however, are not sure how to most effectively use videos; simply showing clips is not the best method. In fact, it’s a missed opportunity!

With its shift of learning away from information overload delivered in large chunks to learning in more manageable increments within the context of work, performance support is already an improvement on traditional methods of training. Looking to further improve learner performance, in this session we’ll discuss the possibilities of imagining “support” as “learning” with insights from psychological and neuroscience research. Building on unconventional notions about the nature of memory, constructing learning methods on a “remembering” curve, and attending to the learning environment are just a few of the opportunities we will explore in this open conversation with panelists.

Well-rounded eLearning courses leverage multiple elements to enhance learning.  These may include video, audio, activities, text, and images. How do you ultimately know whether these elements, in particular the complex activities and videos you crafted, are in fact enhancing understanding? How can you better determine whether there is a relationship between the activities and end-user performance?

Video is eating the Internet. We’re consuming and creating more of it than ever, and 64 percent of consumers identify as binge watchers. But these trends don’t just apply to entertainment content—they’re having a huge impact on learning, and learners’ expectations, too.

Learning practitioners strive to understand the real-life environment of experts as much as possible. But getting access to really see how people do their jobs when they are in a more technical or hands-on role (e.g., construction, refinery, or factory work) is difficult. Often, learning practitioners can’t use video or real-life images because of safety or clearance constraints. This poses a challenge as they try to create impactful learning materials.

If your organization is going through change, you’re probably doing a lot to make sure your people are prepared—videos, emails, tools, learning, meetings, etc. The problem is motivating people to care enough before go-live (before the moment of apply) to engage in those helpful experiences. Here’s an example of how you can elevate your change initiative above the noise and get your people to want to get ready.

With more companies taking advantage of satellite offices and field employees, recognizing the differences in their needs from on-site teams is crucial. Their physical distance from training and marketing teams means they can’t easily access key information, and when they can, it’s often out-of-date. The result? A potentially negative impact on your relationships with top channel partners.

Binders. One-sheets. Printouts. For salespeople and those who work on the road, the backseat is full of them. They are used not only for collateral but also for training customers on products and services. But are these the right tools? What if the customer has only five minutes? How can an individual quickly and efficiently discuss a topic in an engaging way and avoid the paper clutter?

Desktop platforms are giving way to mobile in many contexts. Opportunities abound. But eLearning designers and developers are used to a different set of paradigms undergirded by different competencies than those they need to design and develop mobile solutions.

It has always been tricky to track experiences and results when learning happens outside the LMS. Using the xAPI, you can track a huge amount of activity with a robust and flexible specification. The next challenge is to identify learners and capture what they do in the real world in digital format, then put that data to use for learners, their leadership, and the learning and development organization.

With the proliferation of mobile deployment to training audiences and rapidly emerging technology, training and development professionals often struggle with keeping their mobile knowledge and skills current. Sprint University confronted this problem head-on by implementing a mobile learning program.

The Nature Conservancy recently implemented a new constituent relationship management (CRM) application used by more than 1,000 staff members across the organization. The new CRM application not only changed how staff tracks and manages constituent relationships in an application, but also significantly changed the business processes surrounding CRM. An instructor-led training program was developed; however, staff needed ongoing support to address knowledge gaps and ongoing changes to the business processes.

Performance support can be a powerful addition to an organization’s learning and performance ecosystem as it is tasked with delivering more content in less time. Well-designed performance support solutions provide task-based information in a layered approach for intuitive fingertip access to specific resources at the performer’s moment of need. But how do you really design for the moment of apply?

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.

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.

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.

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.

mLearning has been on the radar for a few years now, but many organizations are still getting started. And that’s a vulnerable position; there are a number of mistakes that are easy to repeat if you haven’t been paying attention and really gotten steeped in the possibilities. Further, the field is changing rapidly. Yet with some basic models that help you “think different,” you’re ready to take advantage.

Most instructional designers have experience creating storyboards prior to developing eLearning solutions. The storyboarding process enables the designer to work through a concept and test various ways of structuring content. Storyboards are also used to communicate design concepts to eLearning developers when working in teams to build training solutions.

Video is the go-to medium in society, and it can be a valuable tool for delivering performance support and training. Most companies are searching for metrics to evaluate the impact of learning content produced, including videos, and asking learning teams to demonstrate ROI: Does their content produce measurable benefits? Which design techniques result in the best content? Without being able to successfully leverage analytics, learning teams cannot answer.

Finding ways to make learning “stick” with technology is always a challenge. Augmented reality (AR) is one of those “make it stick” technologies. With AR, you enable students to interact with the world using their mobile devices. This can improve their understanding of lessons through direct interaction with the objects around them. Now add video to AR projects, and you’ve combined a popular medium of instruction with cutting-edge tech.

The performance support industry has been searching for a true “blended learning” solution for years and has fallen short because it has been about blending training only. That has limited instructors’ impact and reach beyond the classroom, leaving them to be seen as event-based only.

Most performance support systems assume an environment where Internet and a tablet or laptop are available. However, there are situations in which access to Internet devices is not possible, like in remote education or when sales agents work in remote areas. In such places, SMS is the only channel for delivering performance support.

Including media in the training you create can be a fantastic way to make your content easier to understand and remember. But you don’t always have the time and budget to hire someone to create these design assets for you, and sometimes stock media just won’t cut it. There is another option, however: creating media yourself. And you likely already have two tools that can help you out—your smartphone and tablet. By knowing more about the apps and tools that can help you create some of the media needed, and by using a device you already own, you can be more efficient and keep project budgets down.

When hiring entry-level employees who need to be able to start work immediately, you need to ensure they have the skills required to complete the job. It isn’t always practical to have a manager supervising them through each step of their job when working on a tight deadline. Using online video, the new hire can learn the processes of the organization while completing work.

Educational video distribution is a moving target, and the options for distributing video can be daunting. Apple, Amazon, Google, and others all have separate ecosystems for video distribution. The ultimate solution for many is to have a presence in each ecosystem; however, learning exactly how to prepare videos, apps, and metadata content for each can be time-consuming and confusing.

Video is all around us. But what does video actually do to the brain? And are there best practices to keep in mind when you use video for learning? A nice video is not always a good video for learning purposes.

As organizations realize the value of mobile learning, an increased number are jumping at the opportunity to offer their employees mobile training opportunities. Currently, many mobile learning applications focus on delivering content. However, the most effective learning comes from applying information, especially with peers. How can you create mobile learning opportunities for learners to practice new concepts and receive real-time feedback from peers?

The quickening pace of change and increasing learner expectations demand learning approaches that can be produced quickly, at lower cost, and are easily accessible and readily available. Removing employees from the workflow for classroom sessions is not always feasible, nor does it provide the necessary just-in-time support. At the same time, the knowledge and information learners must have to support customers has expanded. Finally, the workforce is more distributed, more virtual.

Video is beginning to dominate the focus of learning and development. The technology and techniques for creating effective video content are now reaching most people responsible for using this medium to improve organizational performance. With a plethora of approaches around animation, motion, and streaming, where is one to begin?

Video is not a new medium, but not every instructional designer or developer intuitively knows how to create video or what makes it good. It’s important to understand the qualities that make for great videos. Organizations need data to drive decisions, and research is available to do just that.

Performance is not just an end result but a continuous flow of interactions between the individual and the environment, leading to a defined goal. Organizations normally try to keep this process in line through periodic evaluations or other methods, but tracking performance at work on a continuous basis with a geographically dispersed workforce is a challenge. This can result in failed objectives or substandard outcomes.