Digital badging is gaining traction in varied corners of the learning and development space from traditional academic environments to organizations and more. However, due to its relative novelty, there are some significant adoption barriers to those incorporating badging strategies.

Taking the plunge and deciding to create a serious game is an exciting and daunting task. Critical for Checkers and Rally’s was to find the right partner to help the company realize the benefits of this learning method. Other companies had tried, failed, or abandoned their investment. The mission was to realize the significant benefits by developing a serious game that could drive results by reducing costs, improve proficiency, encourage engagement, and deliver effective learning.

Did you know that the visual design of eLearning, slides, and other instructional materials have a big impact on learner success? Well-designed materials can motivate learners, improve comprehension, and assist retention.

Too often, content is cranked out without understanding the audience and looking at the best options for delivering solutions. Everyone wants to be more creative, but time, budget, and resources are frequently used as a crutch.

L&D practitioners face three significant challenges: adding context to their mobile learning and performance support challenges, understanding the possibilities of new technologies, and opportunities to see real-world applications.

As futurist Ray Kurzweil noted, “We are destroying jobs at the bottom of the skill ladder, we are adding new jobs at the top of the skill ladder. To keep up with that rising skill ladder, we need to make people more skilled. One methodology to do that is education.” To be enablers of the skill sets of the future, jobs in the learning profession will change.

Is your organization employing a workforce of motivated and vibrant human beings? Or is the office full of lumbering zombies barely able to pillage snacks from the kitchen and groan in meetings? Many organizations have employees that are so disengaged that it’s like they are becoming the working dead. But there’s hope, and you can save them!

Learning and development managers are faced with an ever-changing technical environment and a marketplace requiring cost-effective, competitive solutions. Questions most managers face include: how to ensure that an appropriate mix of training professionals are hired to meet customers’ educational and technical needs, while keeping prices competitive; determining the correct toolset needed to reach a training audience; considering if there is a one-size-fits-all solution appropriate for a team; and how to maintain an eLearning team’s relevance in a fast-moving training world. Staying ahead of new technology while keeping price in check is a challenge.

Mobile is the new way of learning. Learners want it and companies want to provide it. However, app development can be expensive, especially if you are starting from a mostly print or standard eLearning model of training. Finding a way to give learners and organizations the mobile learning they want without breaking the bank is a must in today’s training market.

Social learning is the latest trend in eLearning and corporate L&D—for good reason. As organizations move from hierarchies to wirearchies and communities of practice become the new content management solution, building meaningful connections between colleagues is critical. However, most organizations are going about social learning the wrong way, and technology vendors aren’t helping by bolting on discussion forums and adding integrations into social media which are not enough to capture the benefits of social learning.

Microlearning video is the creation of video-based content under one minute in length that is primarily consumed on mobile devices. The rise of user-generated micro-content has required the use of rapid storyboarding and predefined video content structures. As the length of the video decreases, so does the optimal format of the video.

Storyline 2 is Articulate’s most powerful tool yet, but many are not using it to its fullest capabilities and producing the level of engagement and interactivity needed in many eLearning solutions. Storyline 2 is laden with such a wide variety of features that it is easy for users to lose track of some of the key, lesser-known features that provide an opportunity to create dynamic eLearning.

In recent years, learning has moved closer to the workplace. Classrooms have moved out of corporate learning centers and into training rooms co-located with offices. Online learning is delivered directly to the desktop more than ever before. The next challenge is to move learning directly into the workflow. To do this, there needs to be a move beyond course delivery and into a broader, more comprehensive, and strategic approach that focuses not just on learning, but on performance and productivity.

Employees today don’t just use the Internet—they live in it! And they expect their online learning experience on the job to match their online experience in their digital, highly connected life. Is your ecosystem up to the challenge, or does it seem boring and limited to your learners? We’ve been reading about the wave of new employees in the workforce for years, but have we built the learning and performance support environment that will engage them and help them thrive?

In this interactive session, we will explore how the brain operates and how it expects to seek out, receive, and apply information. Then you’ll learn about specific ways to evaluate your current ecosystem and identify ways to tailor it to meet the needs of your connected employees. You will be able to immediately use this information to evaluate your own ecosystem’s readiness and the five things you can do right now to make it more effective for all.

The current learning environment is massively disruptive, with new learning technologies appearing daily. Focus has shifted from content to experience, and learning strategies now call for a new emphasis on informal learning, collaboration, and user-generated and curated content. Throw into the mix a wide variety of devices and approaches like gamification, and organizational learning has become a very confusing and complicated state.