FocusOn Learning Sessions
You’ll be able to learn from industry leaders and peers sharing case studies, examples, and best practices that will help you harness the opportunities presented by mobile, game, and video technologies. You’ll find sessions targeting management & strategy, design, and development.
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Specialized Focuses
In addition to the great tracks at FocusOn Learning Conference & Expo, there are a number of specialized sessions curated to help you put your skills into practice immediately.
Bring Your Own Laptop® sessions ensure that you receive in-depth, hands-on training and enable you to follow along with the instructor step-by-step.
Advanced sessions take you further into the areas of your interest. Explore a level up and deepen your knowledge in the latest L&D technology and approaches.
Deconstructing Games sessions allow attendees to play or observe a game, then discuss how the mechanics can be applied in a learning context.
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Sessions in Design Track
IE101 Creating Amazing Experiences: Concept to Design—Let’s Get Inspired!
Interactive Experiences Stage
Designing great user experiences for your learners is critical to their success in engaging with or using your content, tools, and apps. This session will break down what’s important in designing great experiences and provide you with resources to get started, from mobile to desktop and beyond. The discussion will cover design strategies, what works and what doesn’t, and how to plan and prototype, with several great examples. You’ll get more than 10 resources and inspiration to take your experiences to the next level.
Read MoreDesigning eLearning can be challenging enough, but designing eLearning for mobile platforms presents its own set of obstacles. In order to move your projects into the ever-growing mobile world, you need to know how responsive design differs from traditional eLearning design.
Read MoreVideo has traditionally been difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, but it doesn’t need to be. Today, eLearning professionals can produce live-action and animated videos easily, quickly, and on a budget. But which do you choose, live-action or animated? It can be challenging to determine which option will best tell your story and engage your learners while also making the most sense given your budget and time constraints.
Read MoreDeconstructing Games is a new series of hands-on sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to play a game and then discuss how the mechanics in play can be applied in your own learning context.
Read MoreSmartphones are everywhere, and one of the most common uses for these phones is to play games. Their smaller screens require more skill to create a strong learning experience, game experience, and user experience.
Read More114 The Future of Instructional Videos in Digital Learning
Concurrent Session
Technology has made it possible to offer scalable, experiential, and collaborative learning across the globe, while instructional videos can serve as a key delivery mechanism for content from instructor to students. Nevertheless, instructional videos often are too long, too dense, and offer little room for learners to interact with the content.
Read MoreMM104 CANCELLED: Using Video in Blended Solutions to Effectively Train Even the Hardest Skills
Mobile & Media Stage
From Gutenberg to Google, the old model of training that was disconnected from real-world practical experience has been: Read and remember. However, with the hardest skills, which training method is almost universally recognized as effectively impacting learning and retention of workplace skills? Hints: _____ makes perfect. _____ is the best teacher.
Read MoreIE104 Using 360-Degree Video for On-Site Training and Education
Interactive Experiences Stage
The pairing of 360-degree video and virtual reality has hit the mainstream, with numerous companies launching new tools to view and even create this content on a constant basis. Yet it’s difficult to fully understand the possibilities of this technology without clear examples of how to use 360-degree video for education and training purposes, what tools are available to develop this content, and how to test whether it’s actually effective at sharing content.
Read MoreHave you heard the saying “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million”? Video content can explain very complex concepts, but usually lacks good navigation or interactivity. eLearning, on the other hand, delivers a great user experience, but often comes up short at conveying meaning with just words and pictures. Combining eLearning with video can give you the best of both worlds.
Read MoreYour company keeps growing, but your training department doesn’t. You feel like your current course development methods are making it harder to keep up with compressing development timelines, and yet you’re being asked to create more courses, different courses, smaller courses, and courses that are easier to access. Sales doesn’t like logging in to the LMS every time they need to take some training. And you’re getting tired...
Read MoreDeconstructing Games is a new series of hands-on sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to play a game and then discuss how the mechanics in play can be applied in your own learning context.
Read MoreEight seconds: the time you have to grab an employee’s attention. Five minutes: the time you can keep it. Both down by 50 percent in 10 years. What’s causing this societal attention problem? Every day, hundreds of emails, chats, texts, notifications, calls, and meetings compete for your employees’ attention and divert their focus. What tool can you use to grab and keep their attention? Training games. Games complement and improve the effectiveness of traditional training. Come learn more, play the Jump Game, and see data in action. High score at the game session wins a $250 gift certificate!
Read MoreAfter years of existing mostly in the world of science fiction, virtual reality is finally ready for its close-up. With VR normalizing itself within the consumer culture, the interest in using these technologies for learning and performance is growing. But where can curious learning professionals go to learn more about the power and potential of VR? The answer is simple: gaming.
Read More308 Custom Mobile Learning: Scope Influences and How to Avoid Messing Up
Concurrent Session
There are many opinions, myths, and facts that surround what mobile technology can or cannot do to influence, educate, and enable users. The problem is that many adult-learning professionals do not understand mobile technology and often end up developing a curriculum that fails to take advantage of mobile’s strengths or even ends up highlighting weaknesses.
Read MoreAt one point or another, you’ve probably been forced to endure some kind of training that made you want to pull your hair out. You click through the slides as fast as you can, or you stare blankly at the lecturer reading bullet points from each slide. What if you could transform those mandated training programs into something engaging and entertaining instead?
Read More310 Getting Started with Video Education in Your Organization
Concurrent Session
Video is a great medium for learning content; however, designing and developing great videos can be challenging and labor-intensive. Additionally, gaining stakeholder buy-in on a curriculum based on microlearning, like videos, can be a challenge.
Read MoreMM106 Story and Structure: The Simplest, Yet Hardest, Challenge with Video
Mobile & Media Stage
Thanks to the increase in easy-to-use tools and software, everyone now has access to cost-effective tools to create animations and video. Unfortunately, just because content is shared as a video doesn’t magically make it great, and these simple tools can also create a flood of ineffective and boring video content. If you’re not careful, weak content can kill the implementation of video in your organization and cause your audience to dread yet another bad video.
Read MoreMost 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.
Read MoreA team working with major electronics in public areas—installing slot machines in casinos—needed to follow several safety processes. After a year or longer of monthly safety emails and talks at all-hands meetings, the company took its safety program for field service technicians to SMS bimonthly delivery. What happened next?
Read MoreGamification is about using game elements to drive motivation and engagement. Although gamification is most effective when used to drive intrinsic motivation, it is frequently abused as an extrinsic reward system, which hinders learning. Studies have shown that learners seek more rewards in demotivating environments and that players lose interest in an activity after receiving extrinsic rewards. How do you combat bad game design and find the right balance to maintain motivation?
Read More407 How Gamification, Video, and Mobile Can Help Organizational Change: A Case Study
Concurrent Session
4:00 PM Tue, June 20
Track: Design
Focus: Games, Mobile, Video
A government office was going through a major reorganization; there was confusion and concern about the future organization. Each division had been working with minimal contact with other divisions, which resulted in a culture of lack of trust and personal connection with other employees. The problem was intensified because employees worked in various geographic locations and time zones. Learning leaders needed to help the employees understand the new organization and purpose.
Read More408 Gateway to Gaming: Leveraging Game Mechanics in Learning
Concurrent Session
Consultants face challenging career transitions while working in fast-paced environments with high performance standards. Learning that supports such transitions requires simulation of the complex mix of skills and trade-offs that consultants face on the ground, yet traditional digital simulations often fail to incorporate that complexity.
Read MoreNew for FocusOn this year! This is a popular session being offered twice. It's also available as session 606.
Read MoreDeconstructing Games is a new series of hands-on sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to play a game and then discuss how the mechanics in play can be applied in your own learning context.
Read MoreChances are that your favorite characters are your favorites because of what they taught you. How can you ensure that characters in your games are effective in supporting learning?
Read MoreYou love the idea of using mobile, but you’re not sure how to get started, how to test a concept, or how to improve the design to be on the same level that mobile users are used to with their latest apps.
Read MoreMost people interact with social media via their smartphone on a continual basis throughout the day. Smartphones and social media are integrated into daily life. Interactive and social learning can maximize learning opportunities by engaging in actions that people are already accustomed to.
Read MoreThe industry is saying that video is the way to go for online learning—great. But before you get started, it is important to think strategically about why and how video will create the most value in your course. This session will explore the best questions to ask before you incorporate (or don’t incorporate) video into your courses.
Read MorePerformance support videos are everywhere. From YouTube to the workplace, you can learn pretty much anything by watching a step-by-step video. Some of these videos are good; others, not so much. So how can you be sure that the video you are producing for your client or organization is high-quality—and effective?
Read MoreDeconstructing Games is a new series of hands-on sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to play a game and then discuss how the mechanics in play can be applied in your own learning context.
Read MoreIE202 Using Video in Virtual Training: Tips and Techniques for Success
Interactive Experiences Stage
Should you turn on your webcam during virtual training classes? Or does the webcam detract from the learner experience? What about using pre-recorded training videos in your virtual platform—how do you ensure they actually work and provide value to the learning outcomes?
Read MoreMany organizations try to address their learning needs with intranet content, eLearning courses, and reminder emails, but these efforts often fail to get the desired results. Busy employees just don’t have lots of time for learning content, particularly when it feels like a content dump. So how do you cover what employees and managers need to know and do without writing even more text? Short multimedia presentations and videos are one of the best ways to simply and quickly convey concepts and context, influence behavior, and, best yet, reduce text overkill.
Read MoreHow do you know your content is ready for a global audience? Will you be able to translate it? What kind of issues will you run into? This session explores the design and technical challenges of getting your content properly internationalized and ready for consumers worldwide.
Read MoreIE204 Chatbots: A Practical Use of AI for Organizational Learning
Interactive Experiences Stage
Chatbots are becoming more and more commonplace for consumers to help automate simple tasks and make life easier. But what about using chatbots to facilitate learning?
Read MoreMM204 CANCELLED: A Survival Guide to Accidental Video Production
Mobile & Media Stage
So, your boss wants you to produce a video for a training project. Great! Well, aside from the fact that you’ve never worked on video production and don’t even know where to begin. If you’re in a situation where you’ve been tasked with creating video content, but have never actually been involved with formal video production before, there can be a lot of pressure to create something polished despite your lack of experience. But amateur videos can be surprisingly easy to create with a few tips and tricks to get you started.
Read MoreHBO has an app. So do other major TV channels like Comedy Central and ESPN. With major media brands like these distributing content via television-based apps, and an increasing number of people cutting the cable cord, television-based app development is a rapidly growing segment of media. Learning media and content isn’t far behind; in fact, it’s already happening. However, most developers have little understanding of the television app ecosystem and how L&D can benefit.
Read More606 Encore Session: Solving Complex Problems with Game-Based Learning
Concurrent Session
New for FocusOn this year! This is a popular session being offered twice. It's also available as session 409.
Read MoreVisual directions provide the framework upon which producers, editors, and animators base their content production, and many IDs introduced to today’s expanding eLearning departments lack familiarity with and experience in writing targeted visual directions for video scripts. This can result in increased costs in the form of ongoing revisions and can undermine the quality of the final product.
Read MoreDeconstructing Games is a new series of hands-on sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to play a game and then discuss how the mechanics in play can be applied in your own learning context.
Read MoreIE205 How to Use Interactivity for a Superior Learning Experience
Interactive Experiences Stage
Come see, hear, and do as you explore three levels of interactive learning experiences. This session will share three different use cases with increasing levels of interactivity for learners. You’ll hear about an eLearning course designed to improve a highly technical skill in learners; an interactive gaming experience that allows learners to record themselves and get involved; and a virtual reality experience that allows learners to interact with products directly. You will learn about approach, technology, and user experience, and you’ll gain tangible ideas and action items for creating your own interactive experience.
Read MoreMM205 The Hero’s Journey: Exploring Often-Overlooked Elements in Learning Games
Mobile & Media Stage
By making the transformation from the ordinary world of uninspiring online learning to the special world of deeply immersive and compelling online learning elements, you can create games that learners will engage with willingly, repeatedly, and excitedly. Embrace the call to adventure in this session, and return to your job with elixir!
Read MoreAs instructional designers skilled in eLearning design begin offering mobile experiences to learners, the ways in which they approach instructional design and development need to change. What works for a full-screen desktop experience doesn’t work on a mobile phone. So how can you shift your thinking to consider things like screen experience and what that means to learners? And once you’ve considered new design concerns and approaches, what development platforms should you consider to make your mobile design come to life?
Read More706 Moving from Paper to Tablets in Classroom Training: A Case Study
Concurrent Session
Each year, PG&E Academy was spending nearly $1 million on printing costs to support required instructor-led training programs. Large binders of student materials had to be manually updated, and often would never be referenced again after training. PG&E Academy was driving to web-based training (WBT) and blended solutions that could leverage mobile devices; however, the organization needed to cover the costs of student tablets for use back on the job.
Read MoreSales reps struggle to have quick and easy access to their product and services portfolio at the point of sale. Marketing, sales management, and L&D struggle to provide sales reps with the most up-to-date, consistent, and synthesized product messaging in an ongoing way. They also struggle to understand the impact their training is having on their sales reps.
Read MoreDeconstructing Games is a new series of hands-on sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to play a game and then discuss how the mechanics in play can be applied in your own learning context.
Read MoreFeeling like you can’t get past gamification? Tired of matching, memory, or Jeopardy-style games? Everyone hits creative road blocks. Maybe you see a great example of a learning game online, but feel held back creatively by learning objectives. How do you create a serious game while ensuring you meet your learning objectives?
Read MoreYou would like to design and develop animated videos, but you’re not sure how to get started or apply the tools you have to create new content. You may have a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud but may not be sure how to get started with Adobe After Effects.
Read MoreEveryone has seen truly terrible training videos at some point—everything from awkward educational films that put you to sleep in school to unintentionally hilarious training videos that have you laughing more than learning. It’s abundantly clear that just because content has been put into video form doesn’t mean it’s something people want to watch. But while these training video failures may not be fantastic at what they were designed to do, there’s a surprising amount that we can learn from their mistakes.
Read More806 Drones, Phones, and GoPro Clones: Innovating Your Approach to Video
Concurrent Session
Today, anyone with a smartphone has video capabilities—just look at the number and variety of videos posted on YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. In addition to phones, you now have drone capabilities and cameras that you can attach to yourself and your pets or embed in your doorbell. The possibilities are seemingly endless. So how do you take advantage of these options for training?
Read MoreMany people in the eLearning realm are attempting to use gamification and serious games to spark employee engagement and drive learning retention. And while the intent is to make the best serious games that will enhance the learning objectives and help people retain content, unfortunately, they don’t always go as planned. Common issues with these unsuccessful serious games and gamified learning experiences include little to no planning, tough-to-pinpoint metrics, little to no implementation strategy, and insufficient or nonexistent post-deployment support. So what can you do to ensure your game-based project actually works?
Read MoreDeconstructing Games is a new series of hands-on sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to play a game and then discuss how the mechanics in play can be applied in your own learning context.
Read MoreIt seems video has been around forever. Video was a primary source of training for the military during World War II. Most classrooms used reel-to-reel players for video-based learning, a format that soon evolved into VHS/TV carts that easily rolled in and out of the room. In the early part of this century, video began to migrate online, but it’s only in recent years that the world of video has truly transformed itself and continues to do so rapidly. What lies ahead in the evolution of this powerful medium?
Read MoreDeveloping mobile learning solutions can become complicated if you’re not careful. One wrong turn can leave you mired in extra work you didn’t anticipate. Sometimes this happens due to design decisions. In other cases, the problem stems from choosing the wrong tool, failing to set up templates properly, or any number of other issues. Thankfully, one of the best ways to figure out how to reduce or even avoid your development complexity is simple: Look at successes and snags from previous projects.
Read MoreMobile and performance support seem like a perfect team. A just-in-time performance support system can improve efficiency, reduce errors, lessen the need for upfront training, and even improve morale; and mobile devices have tremendous potential to help workers solve problems on the go. That said, designing a mobile performance support solution requires a different mindset and approach than designing traditional training. So how can you best use this pairing to improve performance?
Read More906 Game Design Principles: Creating Powerful Scenario-Based Learning
Concurrent Session
Instructional designers and writers are increasingly turning to branching scenarios as a way to embrace experiential learning and move beyond page-turners. But authoring an effective scenario is challenging, as the branches can become overwhelming. Moreover, if you don’t apply good game-design principles, the scenarios can turn out to be as flat, boring, and ineffective as a series of multiple-choice questions.
Read More907 Revolutionizing a Veterinary Simulation: A Case Study
Concurrent Session
When a pet is undergoing anesthesia, the veterinary nurses who monitor that process are put in a high-stakes environment where the patient, not training, needs to be the focus. One organization wanted a way to bridge the gap between what veterinary nurses understood about the theories behind anesthesia monitoring, and effective real-world application of those principles. To solve this dilemma, the team needed to find a scalable solution to provide a lower-stakes environment, allowing nurses to practice the important patient assessment and remediation techniques they needed before they began actual anesthetic monitoring on the job.
Read More908 Lessons Learned on Developing a Gamified Learning Platform
Concurrent Session
Over the last decade, there has been industrywide emphasis on developing learning objects with embedded gamification elements. However, taking the concept of gamification past the singular learning objects to the more global, overall learner experience is more of a rarity.
Read More909 Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Simulations I Learned from Video Games
Concurrent Session
We know that simulations are a fantastic way to allow people to practice skills in a realistic but safe environment that gives them the opportunity to learn from mistakes. However, actually sitting down and creating a simulation that feels real to your audience is definitely harder than it sounds. So learn from the industry that’s been successfully simulating real and imagined situations for years: video games! Video games aren’t just a fun diversion, there’s also a lot in common between how they’re created and the way a strong simulation should be designed.
Read MoreDeconstructing Games is a new series of hands-on sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to play a game and then discuss how the mechanics in play can be applied in your own learning context.
Read MoreThe role of the learning developer is expanding in scope and responsibility. Today’s learning professionals need to understand how to use mobile devices to deliver useful content at the time of need. They have to consider the complete user experience, including user context, device capabilities, mobile interface design, and audience personas. And they have to understand how all of these variables translate into a memorable experience for their audience.
Read MoreAs companies support using more devices to access training content, the balance between standardizing the training experience and supporting learning on the go becomes more challenging. There are distinct differences when accessing content on a computer versus a tablet or smartphone, including screen size, ways to interact with the content, and sometimes even people’s expectations of the experience. Is one experience better than the other? And is it possible to support both well?
Read MoreIncreasingly more participants in live online virtual training classes are joining by mobile device—which means they connect via the platform app instead of using the full desktop program. While this gives people substantially more flexibility in where and when they can access virtual training, it has a big drawback as well. Most virtual training designs assume that all tools and features will be available for learning activities, but most virtual classroom apps only have limited features. Given this challenge, it can be tricky to know how best to design virtual training content that’s engaging but that every member of your audience can fully experience.
Read MoreIn a world of short attention spans and the need to “break through the clutter,” how can you ensure your learning videos leave your audience remembering your message? Maybe it’s time to look outside L&D for inspiration and toward a field that already does this well: advertising. If advertisements can influence people to purchase items they don’t need, are there ways to use this field’s secrets to influence learners (and do this without their feeling manipulated)?
Read MoreLearning videos can range from astoundingly effective to painfully bad. And while most people can at least create content that avoids the latter category, it’s not always easy to know what makes the difference between video content that truly resonates with your audience and content that is fine but forgettable. Thankfully, one of the best solutions is to take a closer look at examples that work well.
Read MoreDeconstructing Games is a new series of hands-on sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to play a game and then discuss how the mechanics in play can be applied in your own learning context.
Read MoreDeconstructing Games is a new series of hands-on sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to play a game and then discuss how the mechanics in play can be applied in your own learning context.
Read More