Magicians are master storytellers. Their ability to engage an audience and keep it focused is critical to their ability to execute many of the astounding tricks they perform. In this exciting opening keynote, you will learn some of the secrets of storytelling from one of the world’s leading magicians, Penn Jillette. You will discover how magicians create an environment in which magic can take place—because true magic, like learning, takes place in the mind of an individual fully engaged in an experience.

Time is money, and so are happy clients! Come spend some time with the Articulate team and learn how you can speed up your workflow and increase your productivity with your favorite Articulate tools.

Take an in-depth look at five trends you should focus on in learning today, and get a glimpse of what’s just around the corner. This session will provide you with dozens of resources to share with your team and get you started. Get ready to reboot your brain and enhance your learning today.

Collaborative and social tools have transformed how people work together and perform their jobs. These tools and concepts, however, are not yet being used as they could or should be within the learning life cycle—so organizations continue to miss out on key opportunities to optimize the learning experience. This will become even more crucial as L&D moves beyond person-to-person to also encompass personalized interactions with cognitive-based platforms. This session will provide insight into identifying opportunities and implementing new approaches based on real-world examples. It will also provide an overview of an IBM cognitive-based solution that demonstrates the possibilities.

LMS reporting and learning analytics are often seen as tasks performed by LMS administrators, trainers, and instructors—tactical tools and methods used only to illustrate the performance and outcomes of training and blended learning programs. Increasingly, however, organizations are using learning data to show how improved learning performance impacts corporate performance at the highest level. Today, any LMS should be able to quantify the cost savings and resource efficiencies—KPIs for which everyone on the management team is held accountable. In this session, learn how reporting and analytics can demonstrate the value of your learning program to the entire organization.

Sales reps need a way to ramp up on their products, competitors, and industry landscape fast. With Knowledge Guru’s new app, Drive, reps can increase their confidence and competence in just a few minutes a day on their smartphones. This session will cover the challenges faced by today’s sales reps and demonstrate how the Knowledge Guru platform uses game-based learning, adaptive learning, and microlearning to reinforce training after product launches and enable coaching at scale.

Camtasia is an all-in-one tool that you can use for screencasts, video, and even user interaction. It has many powerful features and a few that could greatly improve the engagement level of your eLearning production. Camtasia “power users” can create visually stunning courses with very efficient workflow.

In this session, you will learn about eight powerful, little-known features in Camtasia Studio. These features will allow you to complete high-level production tasks with Camtasia, such as picture-in-picture, green screen, and animated background layers. You will also learn how to author custom experiences with active hotspots and similar interactions using the Camtasia studio tools.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to effectively edit green screen video footage
• How to apply a picture-in-picture effect
• How to clean up and edit audio
• How to quickly create hotspot interactions
• How to add quizzing, SCORM, and more to your Camtasia production

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Camtasia Studio.

Click here for the session trailer

Microlearning videos under one minute in length require rapid storyboarding and predefined video content structures. As the length of the video decreases, so does the optimal format of the video. Leaving out too many details will have a negative effect on your learning strategy. Every second counts for your learner!

In this session, you will learn the process for creating microvideo, including video length considerations, optimal short video structures, emotional push/pull events, and instructional media strategies. Explore the steps for creating microcontent and tricks for using video analytics to select the best content for a microvideo. You will leave with specific formulas for creating short-form video-based content.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the various structures for microvideo
• When to use microvideo for learning
• Formulas for opening and closing a microvideo
• About the importance of emotional pull and push techniques
• Effective instructional microvideo techniques

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Video content management systems, video playback, and storyboarding tools.

Click here for the session trailer

Your access to learning-related data has grown dramatically over recent years. But just because you have a large volume of data doesn’t mean it necessarily provides value. While tools like the xAPI make it increasingly easy to acquire data about learners’ activities, this information provides little benefit if you don’t know how to design to acquire meaningful data, interpret that data, or improve your learning design based on what you’ve discovered.

In this session, you’ll dive deep into how data should shape your learning systems design, including exploring the basic principles of how to use data effectively and how to design to provide meaningful feedback. To do this, you’ll look at outside inspiration from fields that are already doing this well: user experience design (UXD), web analytics, and business intelligence. You’ll also uncover some of the pitfalls of data collection and analysis, discuss using both qualitative and quantitative data, and address the difficulties inherent in finding valid measurements of learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use your data analytics to improve course design
• How to design to gather meaningful data
• About the potential pitfalls of data interpretation
• Lessons, from fields like business intelligence and web analytics, about how to apply data principles to learning design

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, and managers.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) continue to be both big news and big business, but one aspect that is less often discussed is the behind-the-scenes perspective. Building a greater understanding of the design considerations, facilitation techniques, and data interpretation from MOOCs can give you valuable inspiration for designing and facilitating any people development activities—regardless of whether or not you’re building MOOCs.

This session will lift the lid on what happens before, during, and after a MOOC. You will take a backstage look at several live MOOCs, which will give you a clearer view into the choices MOOC designers make, as well as how to successfully facilitate a MOOC once it has started. You’ll also see how you can use xAPI data to influence future design and facilitation.

In this session, you will learn:

• How quickly a MOOC can be created using curated content
• How the placement of social features can significantly influence conversation
• About the effects of facilitation vs. non-facilitation
• The value of adopting a nudging approach to your facilitation
• How to apply subtle gamification techniques to increase engagement

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers, project managers, and managers who are already aware of what a massive open online course (MOOC) is.

Technology discussed in this session:
Curatr, blogs, video, social media, the xAPI, email, and Learning Locker.

On time. Within budget. What they need (even if that changes!). These are moving targets, and yet you’re expected to deliver all three. The software development industry is embracing agile methods to address these issues, and there is much that the eLearning development world can learn from it. Agile provides a framework for adapting to change as it happens and working with the client to deliver content that learners need most.

In this session, you will learn about the agile project management methods adapted specifically for the instructional design and development “Lot Like Agile Methods Approach” (LLAMA) and how you can use them on the job. You’ll learn about the tools and supplies you need and how to choose a project to pilot. You’ll also see how agile supports estimating, planning, and managing tasks in an eLearning design and development project.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to build the business case for agile, LLAMA specifically, and iterative development with SMEs, project sponsors, and your own team
• How to kick off projects, create a shared definition of scope, and create action-focused eLearning that people actually want to take
• How to estimate and plan a project so you arrive on time and on budget
• How to build the environment to support an agile project team

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Click here for the session trailer

For a remote workforce such as flight attendants, who travel all over the country, eLearning is effective, necessary, and widely enjoyed. However, there are no computers on the airplane, which serves as their office. Due to the lifestyle of the work group, many do not have computers at home; this leads to a large percentage’s trying to complete non-mobile courses on their tablets or smartphones, causing a poor user experience.

In this session, you will learn how Alaska Airlines taught flight attendants about their devices on their devices, and you’ll learn about device operation, flight attendant apps, and compliance policies. Learn how Alaska leveraged a mobile ecosystem to push forth a test case for an all-mobile eLearning initiative, under a strict timeline and with much at stake, and the clever technology workarounds that were used to ensure a quality user experience in a short turnaround time.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Alaska Airlines was able to quickly deliver an effective mobile training course to a remote work group with limited resources
• Workarounds for mobile design, tracking, and deployment challenges
• About mobile learning strategies and solutions that can be reproduced and adapted to other organizations
• About user experience ideas that can engage a change-averse and tech-averse group of learners
• Practical, quick solutions for rapid mobile development and deployment
• How to promote change management with video content

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, and project managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Lectora Inspire, HTML5, web clips, Videoshop, PowerPoint, iPhone 6+, iOS, and Verint Survey software.

Click here for the session trailer

For instructional designers and facilitators, the challenge is to create learning materials that reach and affect audiences positively and do not elicit feelings of exclusion or discrimination. However, you’re human, and every human has hidden or unconscious biases that impact behaviors and thoughts. This can lead to unintentional missteps in design and delivery. As learning becomes more story-driven, you need to be sensitive to how you present characters, including race, gender, gender identity, and organizational roles.

In this session, using the latest neurological research, you will learn where hidden biases come from. You’ll examine how you can uncover hidden biases within yourself and others, and identify strategies to avoid hidden bias in instructional design and delivery. You’ll look at ways instructional designers and facilitators can continue the mission of inclusivity in their day-to-day work, and you’ll learn what will instill pride in your organization and learners and what will cause them to tune out or reject your learning intervention.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to accurately define the concept of hidden bias with reference to the current literature and research studies
• How to identify at least two approaches to recognizing hidden bias within yourself and others
• How to compare at least three examples of learning content or delivery where hidden bias is evident and not evident
• How to list three ways to mitigate hidden bias in instructional design and delivery

Audience:
Novice designers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Learner-driven, adaptive, engaging, future-proof, innovative, and business-aligned—you need to deliver all this and more! Constructing a strategy to match, though, is tough, pushing L&D to redefine its role in the business. However, by applying a performance lens to learning, you can engage everyone from the board to new starters, construct a holistic strategy, and put learning at the heart of the workflow.

During this session, you will explore “More Than Performance Support,” a five-point framework for creating a performance environment. This plan focuses on conditions (the culture, people, and environment), goal setting (how to share and evolve strategic goals), technology (the tools and how they are used), community (dialogue, collaboration, and visibility), and people (facilitating and accelerating performance). This framework can help you diagnose how performance-ready your organization is and what short- and long-term steps you need to take to get there. You will also receive a takeaway guide to help you apply this model in your work.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to apply the five-point framework to your context by exploring practical case studies
• How to diagnose your current learning environment, and where you need to focus to drive performance
• How learning needs align to real metrics that matter to the business
• About the skills that are required of today’s learning professionals
• Why communities are essential and how to build successful ones

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning portals, learner-generated content tools (including iMovie, learn.ist, Microsoft Snip, and Piktochart), iBeacons, mobile and wearables, virtual worlds, and VR.

Click here for the session trailer

How do eLearning developers ensure that trainings are well designed graphically? There are many resources out there for web design standards, such as the Nielsen Norman Group and the World Wide Web Consortium, but what about eLearning design? Sure, there are plenty of resources for free templates and character packs, but that doesn’t really help developers learn how to properly design online training.

Good news! You can apply many interaction design principles for interface design and web design best practices to your eLearning content. In this session, you will learn the benefits of implementing graphic design techniques and the key usability standards that directly apply to eLearning design by exploring realistic “do and don’t” examples for each. What you gain from this session, you can take back and immediately apply to support and enhance your content.

In this session, you will learn:

• About key usability standards
• How to directly apply standards to eLearning design
• Graphic design techniques and principles
• How to use graphic design techniques to support and enhance eLearning content

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 2, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and various web application sites and resources.

Learners are distracted with daily competing priorities and struggle to retain information presented through digital learning. Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve shows that retention rates are abysmal. Educators and instructional designers are pressed for time and resources to deliver learning that maximizes retention and desired outcomes.

What’s the good news? You can leverage neuroscience and seven fundamental game mechanics to combat the forgetting curve! In this session, you will learn how to apply seven simple techniques in your eLearning projects to naturally boost your learners’ dopamine and enable them to learn more effectively. Explore how to leverage scientific knowledge of the neurochemical dopamine, which is linked to the reward centers of the brain. Research shows that higher levels of dopamine enhance confidence, memory, and learning. Prime your audience for success. Give your learners a turbo boost!

In this session, you will learn:

• How to apply game mechanics to your eLearning projects
• How to increase learning retention
• How to improve learner confidence and accuracy in applying learned information
• How to dramatically increase engagement

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline, Twitter, LMSs (in general terms), and mobile devices.

Today, 360-degree video is becoming a part of consumers’ lives on social media and through entertainment. However, to be effective for learning, it needs to be interactive, relevant, and trackable. Achieve these, and you can give learners the ability to explore a space and discover its secrets (or risks). As video shifts, learning professionals need to be ready to make the most of the changes.

In this case study session, you will be able to satisfy your curiosity about the next innovation in video-based learning. You will hear the story of a 360-degree interactive video learning project, from concept through to implementation. You will see how layering different technologies, including gamification, can create a SCORM-compliant learning experience. Finally, you will get to see what 360-degree interactive video looks and feels like.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to enhance workplace learning with 360-degree interactive video and 360-degree photospheres
• How to overcome the challenges associated with this new technology
• Methods for applying 360-degree interactive video successfully to learning
• The skills you need to create effective 360-degree interactive video for learning
• How 360-degree interactive video links to virtual reality and wearables

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
360-degree interactive video.

Click here for the session trailer

While there are many practices and models grounded in research that people use to create eLearning, there are also a lot of common statements about the field that may or may not be based in fact. Do learners really remember 50 percent of what they hear? Does L&D need to treat generations differently? Do learning styles matter? While these ideas are widespread, are they actually true?

In this session, you’ll get to put some widely touted ideas to the test. Attendees will review the claims together, take a look at the research, and separate the wheat from the chaff. Digital natives, generations, learning styles, and more will be subject to examination. Come find out which ideas you can trust and which you should question!

In this session, you will learn:

• Why these ideas are so compelling
• What the research says about these ideas
• Which L&D statements don’t pass the “sniff test”
• What you can do to avoid falling for learning myths in the future

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and managers.

Click here for the session trailer

Learners, particularly online learners, often suffer from illusions of competence in learning, procrastinate, and fail at breaking down content into smaller chunks to build solid expertise. Each can lead to higher rates of frustration and, ultimately, reduce success.

In this session, you will learn about neuroscientific processes that kick off procrastination, and how to tackle it. You’ll also learn about the default mode network and its role in helping prevent frustration. Strategies for the effective chunking of content, improving recall, and the challenge of developing passion for hard-to-master subjects will all be part of the discussion. Finally, you will explore ways to combat frustration when learning challenging content, and ways that metaphor and analogy can increase the speed of learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to tackle procrastination
• How to develop expertise in topics ranging from programming to language study to dance
• How to handle frustration when learning a difficult topic
• How to use metaphor and analogy to speed your learning

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
PowerPoint with many embedded videos and animations.

Click here for the session trailer

The challenge with the majority of learning that goes on in organizations is that it is quickly forgotten. Modern neuroscience tells us that in an increasingly complex digital world, with so much competing for our attention, a majority of what we learn in organizational training is forgotten within days. With the amount of time, money, and energy spent on developing these learning experiences, it is critical that organizations find ways to maximize their investment by ensuring learners retain the information they are given.

In this session you will explore the ways mobile technology can reinforce training. You will learn how to maximize knowledge retention and improve on-the-job performance. You will also review best practices and strategies to boost learner engagement through mobile applications. This session will also feature a case study from General Electric that explicitly addresses the issues around knowledge retention.

In this session, you will learn:

• The challenges with current learning methodologies
• The value and the need for learning reinforcement
• How to leverage mobile technology to close the learning/performance gap
• Best practices and strategies to start a pilot in your organization

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VPs, CLOs, executives, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Mobile applications.

High-quality visuals are crucial to the success of eLearning courses and videos. Photoshop lets you create these quickly and easily, but many eLearning developers find the program too complicated and either avoid it altogether or don’t take full advantage of the features available.

In this session, you will learn 10 simple, yet powerful, Photoshop tips every learning developer should know, and you will see how they help you quickly and easily produce high-impact visuals. You’ll learn how to effectively remove people and objects from backgrounds, change colors on a part of a photo, and even create custom buttons for use in your eLearning projects. You will leave with time-saving knowledge you can instantly apply on the job.

In this session, you will learn:

• Methods to easily and effectively cut out people and objects
• How to create versatile image fades
• How to export files with optimized settings
• How to quickly change the color of part of a photo
• How to create custom buttons

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, and project managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Photoshop.

Technology required:
Laptop running Photoshop.

Click here for the sessions trailer

Storyline offers so many layers of possibilities, with its various trigger and variable functions, that it can feel overwhelming with the level of customization at your fingertips. You may have seen eLearning with characters that can respond directly to you, ask you questions, or move and interact with other characters based on what you input—but how would you create such engaging interactions and fit them all on screen?

In this session, you will learn how to create motion and dialogue between two or more characters in a comic book panel format using Storyline’s illustrated characters and their state changes. You will also learn how to use the variable functions, in conjunction with data entry boxes, to create back-and-forth dialogue between the learner and your created characters. In learning these techniques, you will be exploring some of the more complex customization features of Storyline that will allow you to create much more engaging eLearning with a greater degree of personalization.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to prompt motion and dialogue between characters as if you were reading a motion comic book
• How to use the project variable functions in Storyline
• How to fit comic-book-style panels all on one slide without running out of space or needing layers
• How to create back-and-forth dialogue between the learner and your created characters
• How to program Storyline to ask the learner a question, retain the answer, and relay it back to the learner at another point in time
• Tricks and tips for keeping all your objects, states, triggers, and variables organized when creating detailed interactions in Storyline

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 2.

Technology required:
Laptop running Articulate Storyline 2.

When you develop with Adobe Captivate, you need an extensive set of tools and techniques in your arsenal in order to use the intricacies of the full environment. But while you need to use this wide variety of features effectively, you also need to use them efficiently in order to meet the timeline demands of most projects. While they may not always be included in formal training, it turns out there are lots of ways you can use Captivate differently that can lead to faster, more efficient development!

In this session, you’ll learn shortcuts and workflow efficiencies that will make your rapid development even speedier. Based on years of experience using Captivate, these are tried and tested tips for making your development quicker and more productive. You’ll get to try out these tricks for yourself and also receive pre-made files to practice with after the session.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to save time with global preferences and branding
• Tips to make audio editing go faster
• How to round trip images in Captivate
• What you can do with shared actions and learning interactions to speed up development
• Which features of video development can cut down on production time

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Captivate 8 and 9.

Technology required:
Adobe Captivate, Photoshop, and Audition.

You live in a world of dynamic and interactive multimedia. Why, then, are you still subjecting your learners to static and one-dimensional training materials? Augmented reality is now an affordable technology that can be easily integrated into your learning content to provide immediate context at the moment of need.

In this session, you will build a better understanding of augmented reality (AR) and discover its evolution into workplace learning. Explore affordable out-of-the-box solutions that you can implement today in your L&D space, from new-hire orientations to general training. This session will equip you with valuable tips and tricks to augment any learning experience.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the concept of augmented reality and its application in training environments
• About several easy-to-apply AR solutions
• About the various uses of AR for L&D

Audience:
Novice designers and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Augmented reality apps Zappar, Layar, and Blippar.

It’s relatively common to use features like forums, chats, and blogs to help learners interact with (and learn from) their peers. But only a handful of people in L&D go even deeper with this approach and leverage the API of well-established social media platforms to combine all those components and create a unique user interface. This approach saves extensive hours of implementation and provides a better user experience.

In this session, you’ll find out how the Twitter API can help your organization build a custom user interface where features like sharing, instant messaging, blogging, and search can be combined in a single environment. You’ll learn how to use the Twitter API to generate a user leaderboard, help your audience curate content with hashtags, and access features from Twitter without having to go to the platform itself. And through this customized use of the Twitter API, you’ll be able to create a collaborative and structured knowledge base among your learners.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use social media platforms as an alternative to posting in a forum, networking in a chatroom, exchanging ideas on a wiki, and more
• How you can use the Twitter API to bring features from Twitter into a course
• How to run .NET web services to bypass Twitter API limitations
• How to pick the right settings to make the content secure and private
• How to use web services, data visualization, and analytics to integrate social tools

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Twitter API, MySQL database, and the Threejs.org library.

Each project, whether agile or ADDIE, micro or massive, has components that must align in order to have a successful outcome. The first two to three weeks of a project set the stage for communication, vision, expectations, content preparation, and rapport. A misfire in the beginning can lead to extended time frames, disappointment, and lost profit.

In this session, you’ll learn tried-and-true ways to set your project up for success. You’ll learn which steps to take with your team prior to the client kickoff meeting. You’ll receive a PowerPoint template for kickoff sessions with clients. You will explore the six steps of content readiness and preparation and how to walk through them with a client. You’ll also create five-second, 30-second, and five-minute creative pitch presentations that generate enthusiasm and a common vision.

In this session, you will learn:

• About steps to take with your team prior to the client kickoff meeting
• About the six steps of content readiness and preparation
• How to create a pitch presentation
• An agile approach to prioritizing client requests

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, project managers, managers, and directors; a project management, leadership, or instructional design background is helpful but not required.

Technology discussed in this session:
Various project management portals, such as Teamwork PM.

“Curation” has reached buzzword status. But while everyone’s talking about it, not everyone is really sure how to do it. What does curation actually mean, and why is it important to your organization? While it’s important to know that curation has the potential to transform your approach to learning, you also need to understand the details of what it takes to make it work.

In this session, you’ll walk through a step-by-step process for building a robust curation strategy. You’ll explore the ins and outs of how to create an effective strategy for your organization, including what questions you need to ask, what tools you need to explore, and how to build a strategy that is detailed enough to create a solid impact but flexible enough to take you into the future. Finally, you’ll look at the broader roles involved in your curation strategy and discuss whether or not it should really be a one-person job at your company.

In this session, you will learn:

• The basics of how to curate content for learning
• How to determine your curation objectives
• About the difference between personal and organizational curation
• About the difference between collaborative and individual curation

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

ITycom demonstrates its authoring tool ITyStudio, dedicated to serious games and creating 2-D and 3-D simulations. See how to easily create branching scenarios and enrich your modules with web content, Storyline assets, and more to enrich your learners’ experience. Make your content available on LMS, PC/Mac, or tablets with new HTML5 export capability. Thanks to an intuitive user interface, you will be able to see during this session a short example of what a learner’s experience could be with ITyStudio-based content, and how to create this type of content.

Sure, you’ve heard of the power of branching scenarios: how they can enhance learner experience and strengthen training models. But developing and authoring these branches can be quite difficult. iSpring’s TalkMaster tool makes creating interactive branching scenarios easy and comes with many ready-made assets to use, right out of the box! Come learn how to work smarter and faster—not harder—and learn how to author interactive branching simulations with iSpring TalkMaster.

A recent Microsoft study revealed that the human attention span has fallen to eight seconds, thanks to digital devices. That’s why traditional training methods are failing employees today. Vibons.com introduces a better tool for busy, distracted digital-age learners: motion graphics—a new learning technique that combines info graphics with animation.

The Internet is a terrific knowledge repository. The sheer size of the content stored on the web is unimaginable. Within organizational intranets, the amount of content that is available is also impressive, but is it good content? Is it the right content for the right purpose? Is it up to date? Is it understandable? The more you have to ask these questions about online content, the less efficient your search for the right information will be. Even more of a concern is that you might be more likely to find bad content, act on it (believing it is correct), and suffer the consequences.

This session will explore the rationale and challenges of content curation and review a number of strategies for assuring your content is curated appropriately. You will learn the importance of becoming a good content curator in addition to being a good content creator, and find out how curators are less focused on finding more content than on making sure they have the right content. Finally, you will learn more about the focuses of content curation: accuracy, relevance, usefulness, and value of knowledge assets.

In this session, you will learn:

• What content curation is, and why it is so critical to learning and performance
• About the role of technology, users, and authors in content curation
• How to avoid risking poor content curation
• About six approaches to content curation

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Modern adult learners don’t always have time to learn in a classroom; they need engaging mobile learning solutions that can be accessed anywhere and at any time. Teaching through podcasting can allow organizations to package training in a manner that is appealing to learners and easy to consume. On-demand narrative audio can allow learners to gain important skills while on the go.

In this session, you will explore the science behind podcasting as a learning tool and the benefits of teaching adults through storytelling. Find out why narrative podcasts can provide a successful learning solution to a growing mobile audience. You will learn from a case study on narrative podcasting to train insurance professionals on complex policy language. You will gain tips and suggestions for creating your own podcasts, along with recommendations on equipment and programs (both paid and free) that you can use to begin podcasting.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why narrative podcasts are an effective learning tool
• About one organization’s successful implementation of a podcast to meet learning needs
• The skills and knowledge you need to construct your own podcast
• Expert tips and tricks to make podcast recording and editing easier and quicker
• About the science behind using audio as a teaching tool

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Podcasting, audio recording devices and programs, audio recording and editing methods, and mobile content delivery.

Click here for the session trailer

Virtual reality technology is here and getting better every day. Still, there are a variety of different types of virtual reality platforms that all present different pros and cons for use in training. With technology evolving so quickly, learning professionals need to stay informed of what options are available today, what will be available tomorrow, and what VR means for the future of immersive learning.

This session will explore the latest releases and the emerging advances in virtual reality technologies, including video-based and animation-based VR. Learn about the companies that are investing in VR and where they are focused, and pay particular attention to where they are investing in content. You’ll also explore some examples of VR for learning that already exist, as well as the logical applications for VR in organizational learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• What virtual reality is, and what current VR technologies are available
• What the future of VR technologies looks like, particularly from a learning perspective
• What examples of VR for learning currently exist
• How to get started with VR for learning in your organization

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
VR platforms: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Microsoft HoloLens, PlayStation VR, and SilVR Thread.

Content that’s unclear. Links that don’t work. Buttons that aren’t aligned. These things can distract from your eLearning course. You want to make sure your course is good, but if you aren’t careful, you could spend more time in review cycles than it took you to design and build it in the first place. How do you strike a balance between thorough review and your time and cost constraints?

In this session, you’ll learn how to plan for and manage reviews for instructional design, content, usability, functionality, and graphic design. You’ll explore how to set up the right systems and processes, as well as how to manage the many opinions and expectations that your stakeholders might have.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to plan for the appropriate number of reviews by the right people
• What guidance to give about what each person should be looking for
• How to set clear expectations about the scope of reviews
• How to effectively estimate and communicate the impact of out-of-scope changes
• How to manage all the little details needed to implement requested changes

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers. 

Technology discussed in this session:
eLearning review platforms, Microsoft Word, and Google spreadsheets.

Training professionals work hard to help train employees and produce meaningful behavior change within organizations. But modern cognitive science shows that, in spite of their efforts, people forget most of what they learn. Research indicates startling facts about retention: Within only an hour, people forget 50 percent of what they just learned. A week later, that number jumps to an astonishing 90 percent.

In this session, neuropsychologist Art Kohn will review four techniques that can help you overcome the forgetting curve. These techniques include booster quizzing, social elaboration, strategic coaching, and depth of processing. You’ll explore how these techniques can be easily incorporated into your training programs and dramatically improve learning and retention.

In this session, you will learn:

• Valuable techniques that overcome the forgetting curve and maximize retention
• How to incorporate booster learning into your existing live and online training
• Why periodic polls and quizzes enhance recall
• How social learning can be used to boost memory after a training session has finished
• How to incorporate post-training coaching—a technique that involves minimum effort and maximum gain

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Every revolution requires both dreamers and pragmatists. The xAPI dreamers have been painting a beautiful picture of what is becoming possible. To realize its full potential, the pragmatists need to catch up. The xAPI needs a very specific set of work completed to be successful, and it needs organizations to participate in making the next generation of learning systems and impacts possible.

In this session, you will learn how LRPs (learning record providers, formerly known as “activity providers”) can best ramp up their development teams to start realizing the full potential of the xAPI. Learn about the current status of the official xAPI Conformance Suite. You will learn which questions to ask in order to tell if a vendor is really xAPI conformant. And finally, see how you can contribute to the xAPI community.

In this session, you will learn:

• How LRPs can best ramp up their development teams
• About the xAPI Conformance Suite
• How to identify conformant vendors
• What the US Department of Defense considered regarding xAPI products
• About the growing xAPI community and how to contribute

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
The xAPI Conformance Suite.

American Honda Motor Company identified a need to create a consistent and credible customer service experience for a highly technical product—across all employee skill and experience levels. Service employees were not uniformly educating customers, leading to potential lost sales and lower customer satisfaction.

In this session, you will learn how a project team—including creative, technology, instructional design, and SME team members—worked together to build a mobile performance tool to put technical knowledge in the hands of employees, to use at the time of need with customers. You will be introduced to the process, from each team member’s vantage point, of creating smart, user-focused design and technology. Finally, you will be able to define a process for developing a mobile performance tool framework, showing how the framework can be implemented in any industry.

In this session, you will learn:

• About Honda’s goals and challenges for developing a mobile tool to be used as a performance aid with customers
• About the process Honda used to create the mobile tools, with a focus on the right balance of subject matter expertise
• How to identify a performance support tool need
• How to describe outcomes and results to date from this mobile tool

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Web and hybrid apps for mobile performance support.

Click here for the session trailer

More advanced, nonlinear projects often call for more advanced solutions. In cases such as these, Storyline’s built-in triggers and logic system often lead to an unwieldy and difficult-to-manage course. Using JavaScript in conjunction with Storyline’s built-in triggers and variables, you can greatly expand Storyline’s capabilities while reducing the overall effort.

In this session, you will learn how to set up Storyline to handle external files such as JavaScript, JSON and jQuery. You will learn how to use JSON as the data source for your course and how to use JavaScript and jQuery to get the maximum value of a Storyline variable. You will be able to perform multistep advanced calculations based on variable values or any of Storyline 2’s built-in triggers. Finally, you will learn how to use web objects to simulate dynamic information from your Storyline 2 course.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to integrate jQuery and JavaScript into your project
• How to use JavaScript to expand the logic capabilities in Storyline triggers
• Techniques to make your Storyline courses more dynamic
• How to get and set Storyline variables with JavaScript
• How to maintain an application state outside of Storyline

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers, developers, and project managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Storyline 2, JavaScript, jQuery, and JSON.

Many eLearning professionals are attempting to use gamification and serious games to spark employee engagement and drive learning retention; it seems everyone is working to make the best serious game that will enhance learning objectives and retention. The biggest setbacks for some have been little to no planning, tough-to-pinpoint metrics, little to no implementation strategy, and insufficient or nonexistent post-deployment support.

In this session, you will learn about planning, developing, implementing, and supporting serious games for companies that have never gone down the route of serious games and gamified learning experiences. You will learn what makes a serious game a success or a failure. This session will also address the proper steps to take throughout each phase of a project to ensure success, as well as the pain points you will have to deal with when going down the route of gamification and serious games. You will walk away with knowledge of best practices, what not to do, and how to support serious games at your organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why serious games work
• The best practices to ensure a successful serious game implementation
• The best practices learned from other organizations in different phases of this effort
• What not to do, and how to support serious games at your organization
• How to approach a serious game

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

What happens when your current eLearning development tool and your LMS are not enough (and they often are not)? With myriad tools and platforms available, being married to one or only a few is not wise, nor does it provide you the flexibility to create dynamic learning opportunities.

In this session, you will learn ways to utilize multiple platforms and coding such as PHP and WordPress to achieve a better learning experience. You will learn that there are more options than simply using an eLearning software alone with your LMS, as eLearning software can be combined with WordPress and even PHP coding to allow for greater control and ease of use for the learning experience.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to connect your LMS to an external PHP coded page
• How to utilize WordPress within your LMS
• How to combine WordPress along with Articulate Storyline to develop an eLearning course
• How to allow a PHP coded page to track within your LMS

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, and project managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
WordPress, Articulate Storyline, Taleo Learning Management System, PHP Coding, Microsoft Access, and mySQL.

PowerPoint is the basis for much of the training material you design and use, and yet it’s text-heavy, dull, and boring. That switches people off, and they don’t learn anything. It’s poorly used for in-person training, dreadful in webinars, and deathly when converted to eLearning. Quite simply, you can’t keep using PowerPoint like this. You can do better.

In this session, you will learn why using more visuals and animations is critical to making PowerPoint work, along with a process for visualization and some techniques in PowerPoint that can bring presentations and other training material to life. You will view a demonstration that you can use yourself, and you will leave this session with the ability to immediately create new and different uses for PowerPoint. Finally, you’ll get a free PowerPoint toolkit to kick-start your efforts!

In this session, you will learn:

• How to delight your audiences with compelling visual slides
• How to create visual slides using the full range of PowerPoint’s tools to generate your own graphics
• How to manipulate photos within PowerPoint so that they convey meaning
• How to use animation, including sophisticated animation, to tell your story effectively
• How to create, edit, format, and animate live graphs and charts quickly and easily
• How to build slides faster by using toolbars and shortcuts

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Microsoft PowerPoint.

Click here for the session trailer

Do you have a subject matter expert (SME) who makes everything more difficult than it needs to be? How about the SME who just doesn’t seem to grasp the work you’re doing together? Or the SME whose idea of dates and deadlines is not at all aligned with the project needs? It isn’t their fault. SMEs are a vital part of the process, and of whether or not the project is a success. However, they don’t always understand that fact because, of course, they already have a “day job.” It is your job to build the plan, communicate it well, and stay on top of the details so they don’t have to.

This session will cover communication, strategies for effectively meeting with SMEs and stakeholders, and how to map the process(es) from start to finish. You will learn tips for leading an effective project kickoff event and how to deal with feedback, scope creep, and fallout. Finally, you will learn some of the best practices for wrapping up a project with your SME.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to hold an effective SME and project kickoff event
• Methods for wrapping up the project with the SME
• How to cover lessons learned, evaluation, and handling feedback
• How to map the process and use it for effectively communicating with SMEs

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Virtual reality (VR) is a new tool that has the potential to drastically change the way people view and implement training and development. In generations to come, people will use virtual reality like social media is used today. This is the future of how people will learn. But today, this technology may seem too complicated and unattainable for many organizations to implement into their learning portfolios.

In this session, you will explore the world of virtual reality for learning. You will learn how Samsung Electronics America has implemented its VR learning strategy in three steps. You will learn the best practices that will help your organization understand this technology. You’ll examine the different VR hardware and platforms, and the technical requirements to implement VR in your organization. Finally, you’ll learn about best practices and the expertise your organization needs in order to implement this technology.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Samsung Electronics America implemented a VR learning strategy
• About the VR learning content that is available and ready to implement now
• About the hardware required to implement a VR learning strategy
• About the technical requirements to implement a VR learning strategy

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone, Samsung Gear VR, and Samsung VR 360.

Large-scale system transformation initiatives are challenging at the best of times. But when you factor in a rollout that involves restructuring, growing existing operations, and establishing new franchise owners to enable strategic expansion and remarkable customer service as part of the initiative, they become substantially more complex. In 2013, Coca-Cola faced this very issue in North America when it needed to replace outdated systems with a common enterprise solution. With an accelerated plan to transition more than 60,000 users to a new operating solution, this initiative required innovative approaches to train and support users rapidly and efficiently.

A collaborative platform for learning and performance support was required to achieve this feat, and Assima was selected in 2013 as the solution provider and consultant to enable the ambitious goals of this initiative. You will see how Coke used cloning technology to dramatically streamline the development and deployment of thousands of diverse training modules. You will learn techniques used to put learning within two clicks or less for thousands of users, and you’ll learn about the tactics employed to supplement live training environments. Finally, you will learn how Coke is leveraging a lean L&D team to successfully implement an electronic performance support system (EPSS).

In this session, you will learn:

• How to leverage existing resources and technology to deploy a lean but scalable learning and performance support model that supports a complex, distributed, and varied audience
• Tactics to sell the right solution internally, including gaining executive sponsorship and building a solid internal business case
• Strategies for streamlining large-scale content creation and maintenance
• How to leverage performance support technology and best practices to drive cost savings
• Methods of building and sustaining long-lasting partnerships that drive success across various cultures
• How to improve time to competency by using real-time analytics and reporting through an EPSS

Audience:
Novice and intermediate project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Captivate’s built-in features can do a lot, but sometimes your project just needs to do more. By using JavaScript, you can extend Captivate and leverage the broader capabilities of HTML5 and other web technologies. This approach makes it possible for designers and web developers to collaborate to produce projects that can communicate with systems outside of an LMS, or to create individual multimedia components that communicate with one another.

In this session, you will learn the specific steps you need to start building more sophisticated projects with Captivate. Working from sample files based on a case study, this session will show you how to use JavaScript to save and retrieve data, read in XML, control elements on the webpage, and more. At the end of this session, you will have a working example of a project that will allow the Captivate asset to communicate with the webpage.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to extend Captivate advanced actions by integrating JavaScript
• How to access externalized JavaScript code from within Captivate
• How to use HTML5 features, like local storage, with Captivate
• How to use JavaScript to integrate Captivate with its containing webpage
• How to use JavaScript to share data across Captivate files

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Captivate, JavaScript, XML, and HTML5.

Technology required:
Laptop running Adobe Captivate 9 (a licensed copy or a 30-day trial version) and Dreamweaver or a similar text editor.

People are drawn to whiteboard animations (pardon the pun!). Watching the story unfold before your eyes creates a memorable and lasting impression—and can often provide a better transfer of knowledge. But the cost of producing whiteboard animation can be prohibitive. If you’re a freelance developer, work in a not-for-profit organization, or have a minimal budget, whiteboard animation can be out of reach. Or is it?

In this session, you’ll learn how to use VideoScribe to create engaging whiteboard animations for a fraction of the cost of hiring a professional developer. You can quickly assemble your animated clips using the built-in library of images. Or, with even a tiny bit of artistic talent, you can create your own images using vector editing software. Combining your animations with an audio track and narration provides a cost-effective way of creating explainer videos, digital stories, simulations, and more. Your whiteboard animations can be great stand-alone eLearning pieces, or they can be combined with other, more traditional learning modalities.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to create simple whiteboard animations usingVideoScribe
• What you’ll want to include when you storyboard your ideas
• How to add audio and narration to your animation
• How to draw your own images for animation (no artistic talent required!)
• How to integrate your animation into a traditional eLearning course

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
VideoScribe, Adobe Illustrator, and Inkscape.

Technology required:
VideoScribe (note: Download the seven-day free trial at videoscribe.co the day before you attend the workshop) and Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape (you must have a working knowledge of whichever software you choose).

Click here for the session trailer

Creating timely and relevant microlearning videos with audio can be challenging for most designers and developers, especially those on a tight budget. But with Adobe Spark Video, a free app for iPhone and iPad, you can quickly create engaging microlearning videos that can then be shared in a number of ways.

In this session, you will discover just how easily you can create professional and polished videos using just one app. Everything you need—from coaching on storytelling to the ability to record voiceovers, access to a library of free images and icons, and even a suite of background music—is contained in Spark Video, so you can create a video from start to finish. That saves you time while also helping you produce a higher-quality video than you ever thought you could make on just a tablet or smartphone.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the capabilities of Adobe Spark Video
• How to create a microlearning video using an iPhone or iPad
• What templates are included with this app
• How to upload and share your microlearning video to YouTube and/or Vimeo
• From examples of microlearning videos that have been created with this tool

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Spark Video, YouTube, and Vimeo.

To deliver personalized learning experiences for employees, Visa needed to better understand what its employees were interested in learning. However, because Visa uses various content types and providers, tracking and analyzing learner behavior was difficult. As a result, creating and delivering tailored learning approaches was also challenging.

In this session, you will learn how Visa built an xAPI-enabled ecosystem for Visa University Online that allows it to customize and track learning experiences. Explore how this program delivers value to the learners and insights to the training department through the following capabilities: curation and aggregation of content, giving learners freedom to be curious; standardized tracking of data across all delivery methods without disrupting learners; real-time dashboard reporting and analytics without manual work; and single sign-on for learners, allowing access to content from a variety of sources including LMSs, survey tools, experience learning platforms, etc.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the fundamentals of an xAPI-centric learning ecosystem
• How to deliver and track formal, informal, and social learning
• How to validate the investment in social learning
• How to bring data together from disparate sources without spreadsheets and manual work
• How to position your organization for learning-data success

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Pathgather, Watershed LRS, Plateau by SuccessFactors, SurveyMonkey, Zapier, Adobe Experience Manager, Pluralsight, getAbstract, Lynda.com, Harvard ManageMentor, and Salesforce Chatter.

IDs may be so caught up in content, business expectations, project management, and stakeholder politics that learner needs get overlooked. Today’s learners want personalized learning that resonates with them, solves their problems, and simplifies their jobs. You can’t do that if you don’t know them.

Marketers spend considerable time understanding their target audience to effectively meet their needs. This session will examine the techniques used in UX of building personas, documenting user stories, and creating journey maps to better understand learners. You’ll leave with a better understanding of your audience and evidence to assist your SMEs with meeting users’ needs through the learning you design.

In this session, you will learn:

• How UX professionals analyze to design for users
• How to create personas for your audience members
• How to create a journey map
• How to document user stories
• How to recognize more nuances about your audience

Audience:
Intermediate designers and developers who have some experience with instructional design.

Have you ever been asked, “How do you know they’re learning?” It’s always unnerving when the higher-ups start questioning the validity of a training program that you built. How would you like to be armed with solid hard and soft data metrics that prove the effectiveness of learning and performance beyond the shadow of a doubt? Deeper learning analytics like this have always been a challenge—until now.

In this session, you will learn how Autotrader discovered new ways to guide and measure performance when the company completely reimagined its onboarding program for new sales employees. From surveying past participants and managers to updating all its learning objectives, Autotrader identified the key performance indicators that addressed the most important knowledge and skills all new hires needed to possess. By learning from this case study, discovering how to ask the right questions of your senior leadership team to uncover what they want out of an onboarding program, and then tracking and analyzing metrics that align to those goals, you’ll create training that you can clearly show the results of.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to examine key hard and soft performance indicators
• About the right questions to ask to uncover expectations
• How you can analyze learning performance quickly
• What solid learning metrics and analysis you can use to evaluate onboarding success

Audience:
Novice designers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Microsoft Excel, survey tools, and LMS platforms.

Training and development in enterprises continues to change, and some of the field’s more recent challenges involve volume. It’s difficult to keep up with the increasing demand for ad hoc knowledge sharing and training requests. Also, there’s a growing need for training that is specific to more niche audiences (such as regional content) and that central teams struggle to support. However, there’s a solution to both these issues that’s starting to take off: user-generated learning content. But what are the pros and cons to this solution, and how can you ensure that it will bring value to your company?

In this session, you’ll hear the insight gained from recent research into user-generated content. This research used interviews with over 50 eLearning managers to uncover how this emerging training trend actually works in the real world. You’ll discuss the outcome of these conversations and look at a number of use cases to gain insight into the strategic decisions learning managers are making today in regard to user-generated content. In addition, you’ll explore a case study from Nielsen in which the designers themselves will share their experience implementing and supporting myTraining Builder: a toolkit designed to help Nielsen users develop their own training solutions.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the four key reasons that companies are leveraging user-generated content
• About two situations in which user-generated content isn’t a great fit
• Best practices for implementing user-generated content in your own organization
• How Nielsen’s talent engagement and development team strategically adopted user-generated content as part of its approach

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
SharePoint, Easygenerator, Skype for Business, and Nielsen’s LMS.

It used to be that people only worried about testing online training lessons on Internet Explorer and Netscape. Those days are long gone. Today, there are myriad testing challenges due to the vast number of hardware devices and display environments that learners are using. Developing and testing lessons to ensure that they will work for everyone is an incredible challenge. This session explores a variety of quality assurance test strategies that are currently being used in software engineering corporations to test their products, and shows how you can carry over those strategies into the world of eLearning and mLearning.

Gamification is here to stay, as more and more organizations are using learning games to help improve performance and achieve business results. Find out how Learning Pool’s multi-device, SCORM-compatible game engine is making budget barriers a thing of the past and placing rapid, customizable learning games firmly in the present. Game on!

This interactive presentation will feature Bob, who leads two lives. Bob is a new hire who recently completed onboarding. At other times, Bob is an L&D employee who designs training for evolving IT applications. His day includes data masking, content creation, maintenance, and localization of courseware. Gain insight on how to overcome Bob’s daily challenges, including significant time-saving methods for developing, maintaining, deploying, and tracking eLearning, ILT, and ongoing performance support. Learn about in-application assistance, as well as innovative cloning technology that eliminates the need for training environments with single capture content generation, all while reducing data breach risk.

What exactly does performance support entail, and how does it differ from traditional eLearning? Delivery and tracking of performance support is a big differentiator, as you won’t have tests, and you need to get information to where the users are doing their work, rather than on a desktop. This session takes an in-depth look at what makes content performance support, and how you can not only utilize existing training materials but also use a single source to provide both traditional training and performance support. Learn how to track usage patterns of your content, even when it’s used as performance support.

Learning content management system (LCMS) ROI is realized over time as both the number of people managing content and the amount of content grow. These are the benefits of single sourcing, multi-modal outputs, and maintenance of content. This is easier for a trained instructional designer to understand. This session covers expanding the LCMS-based approach to a larger group by providing a more visual page-based UI for quickly creating eLearning delivered by the LCMS. This allows all users to find and reuse existing media and content and publish eLearning quickly without becoming an expert in the concepts of object-oriented content development.

Communities of practice (CoPs) have become a hot topic in the past few years. They are an excellent tool for developing skills, sharing tacit knowledge, and shoring up retention of high-performing staff. But they differ from teams and other types of groups in many ways. Understanding what CoPs are and how they work—rather than just looking at how to create and manage them—is critical to supporting their success.

This session will take a look at the definition and function of communities of practice; examine how successful CoPs work; explore research around the critical CoP issues of learning, meaning, and identity; and identify strategies for nurturing and supporting successful CoPs. This session draws from academic literature on CoPs and offers an evidence-based view of the topic.

In this session, you will learn:

• What a community of practice is and how it functions
• From research on what works, and doesn’t work, in CoPs
• How to nurture and support a CoP
• From examples of successful CoPs

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Click here for the session trailer

Back by popular demand, Hyperdrive returns to DevLearn this fall. This year’s Hyperdrive competition focuses on innovation, showcasing projects that are using technology and solutions to create new and exciting opportunities for learning and performance support.

In this session, you will learn from the three winning entries in DevLearn Hyperdrive, the competition that took place before DevLearn began. You will learn from individuals and organizations that are pushing the boundaries of what learning and performance support looks like, and you’ll explore examples of technology being harnessed in ways that most others have yet to consider.

In this session, you will learn:

• From cutting-edge examples of innovative learning
• How the projects provide business value
• Why a design decision was made
• About the technologies used in innovative projects

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Various.

Are you the trainer, instructional designer, coordinator, project manager, and business analyst for your organization, all in one? Are you constantly moving from one role to the next while feeling overwhelmed by endless training projects? As a one-person training team, it’s common to feel challenged by constant time management, project intake and prioritization, development, delivery, and analysis you have to do on a regular basis. How do you reclaim control from this chaos?

In this session, you’ll focus on practical steps you can take right now to make being a one-person training team easier through strategic planning and processes. You’ll explore strategies for creating structured processes and learn how to use your peers, requesters, and project sponsors to offset your workload. You’ll also find out about methods for focusing on core competencies. Through this session, you’ll learn how to transition from being a “jack of all trades and master of none” to a focused individual who can carefully navigate multiple projects and requests at once.

In this session, you will learn:

• Techniques for creating a training intake process
• Best practices for balancing all of your job responsibilities
• Methods of organizing project tasks and deadlines
• Strategies for communicating with your stakeholders
• Strategies for setting expectations with your requesters and project sponsors

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Google Forms, Kerika, Google Keep, Canva, Gravity Forms, and other low-cost cloud-based tools.

Good courseware will use multiple elements such as video, audio, interaction, and good old-fashioned reading. You struggle to balance all of it until it’s a finely harmonized symphony of information, waiting for a student to take it all in. But are any of those activities or videos you’ve worked on actually helping anyone learn? How can you show the relationship between the activities and performance?

This session will show how you can use the xAPI to capture data from different activities into a single uniform format in the learning record store (LRS). Then, by looking at a real-world example page with video and test questions, you can start analyzing results to see which activities contribute most to learner success and which test questions need work. And by knowing how to leverage your data, you can begin to see how to design your content to make sure that data is where you need it, when you need it!

In this session, you will learn:

• How the xAPI can help you collect user data
• How activity data can be combined to see if your test questions are good
• How activity data can be combined to make sure your activities are accomplishing their goals
• How to use the xAPI to compare consumption to performance
• How to make sure your content does what you need it to

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
HTML5, JavaScript, the xAPI, and LRSs.

Many have said that 2016 is the year of virtual reality (VR), as Facebook (Oculus Rift), Sony, Samsung, and HTC, to name a few, are launching consumer products. But how can it be used for learning, especially in a corporate environment? Is VR all hype, or are there sound pedagogical principles behind it?

In this session, you will gain a solid foundation in understanding the VR landscape: what it is, what equipment you need, where to find free learning resources, and how to develop your own content. You will also learn about the experience of developing and deploying VR within the Nokia Corporate University, where it has been promoted as the next generation of mobile learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• About using VR for learning
• About the best VR options for your environment
• How to access free VR content to get started
• About new insights into VR content development options
• About the experiences and lessons learned from using VR for learning at Nokia

Audience:
Novice designers, developers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Oculus Rift headset (Dev Kit 2), Samsung Gear VR headset, Google Cardboard (V1 and V2), Samsung Gear 360 VR camera, Unity game software, Unreal game software, Google VR, and Nokia VR.

Learning and performance ecosystems represent a new way of thinking about L&D. Many agree with this approach in concept. But where are the examples? This session showcases a real-life learning and performance ecosystem solution.

In this session, you will explore the analysis and design methods and view the product of an innovative learning and performance ecosystem project. The example comes from a multinational industrial manufacturing company that recognized that it had excessively high inventory costs. You will learn how L&D conducted a thorough needs analysis, harvested knowledge from experts, and developed a solution using five ecosystem components: performance support, knowledge management, access to experts, social networking and collaboration, and structured learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• How L&D reframed a training project into a broader ecosystem project
• How a Level IV business metric was identified
• A proven process for analyzing and prioritizing different aspects of the business problem
• How the ecosystem solution addressed the problem
• Valuable lessons from this project

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders.

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning management systems, document management systems, knowledge management systems, expertise location and management systems, communities of practice, enterprise search, inference engines, performance support applications, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

Dairy Queen, like many organizations, experiences challenges in knowledge retention following formal training. Dairy Queen needed a strategy that would equip learners with tools and resources to help boost learning retention of role-specific knowledge and skills throughout all learning stages. What Dairy Queen required was a rapid development process to create role-based learning tools to remedy these challenges and address real-time training needs of thousands of Dairy Queen franchisee employees.

In this case-study session, you will learn how Dairy Queen defined and implemented a strategy for scoping projects using rapid design and development techniques to create on-demand, role-based microlearning, simulations, and other video-based learning tools. Learn how this framework enabled business owners to articulate specific training needs within a limited scope and timeline. Additionally, you will learn about a mechanism for business owners to select from an assortment of pre-defined themes and design elements for the project. Within this framework, designers and developers are able to efficiently gather necessary project requirements, design elements, functional components, and content required to rapidly produce the final deliverable.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to create a framework that will meet strategic and budgetary objectives while building and expanding your training library
• How to adapt and fine-tune your instructional design process to support rapid development projects
• How to implement rapid development techniques to efficiently produce targeted learning deliverables
• How to increase learner confidence by delivering on-demand, role-based training throughout all learning stages

Audience:
Novice designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 2, PowerPoint, and Camtasia.

Many companies have legacy content that is text-heavy, hard to navigate, impossible to control once out “in the wild,” and ultimately not very effective. Connecting those static documents within a larger training pathway, and keeping that content up to date, can be very difficult. Additionally, getting information about who might be using that content, or how it is being used, is pretty much impossible. Sound familiar?

In this case-study session, you’ll learn how Intuitive Surgical recently overcame these challenges while providing a better learning and trainer-support experience. You’ll gain insights into how a small team created a useful mobile training app, with minimal vendor assistance or internal IT resources. The session will explore the steps in this project, the challenges and successes along the way, and what you might do differently. You’ll leave with a framework and guidance for implementing a similar solution on your own.

In this session, you will learn:

• A framework for moving away from static documents and into mobile apps
• About solution options for delivering content to mobile devices with offline access
• How to prepare for the challenges of selecting and pitching new technology to decision-makers in your organization
• About the pitfalls and triumphs of a real-world implementation

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Custom mobile app development, Adobe Experience Manager Mobile (formerly Digital Publishing Suite), Adobe Mobile Analytics, Inkling, Mag+ Designd, Localytics, Adobe InDesign, HTML5, and PDF.

The corporate eLearning development world may not always seem creative from the outside, but successful eLearning teams use creativity in every project they design and develop. But how, specifically, can this skill contribute to successful eLearning? What kinds of creativity should be part of your eLearning workflow? What benefits does creativity provide to your development process? How can you explain to your stakeholders that increased creativity contributes to business-focused learning objectives?

In this session, you will discover what kinds of creativity are part of a typical eLearning workflow and how you can use them to your advantage. You’ll also find out more about how creativity improves every aspect of eLearning projects for everyone involved—designers, developers, stakeholders, and even participants.

In this session, you will learn:

• About two specific areas of creativity that are integral to successful eLearning
• How creativity can be used to solve functional skill issues
• Ways to explain how creativity contributes to business objectives
• About tools that can facilitate creativity in eLearning development

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe CC suite, iPad/tablet drawing and sketching tools, brainstorming software, and online creative gallery sites like Behance.

Gamification is a multibillion-dollar business that has touched a wide variety of fields, but especially learning and development. At the same time, according to research from Gartner, approximately 80 percent of gamification projects fail. So how can you use gamification in a way that’s actually successful? You need to think like game designers and go beyond the buzzwords and definitions.

Come to this session to bust five of the biggest myths about gamification of learning. As you find out more about these myths and play an interactive game, you’ll clarify the differences between gamification, game-based learning, and game thinking; uncover why points, badges, and leaderboards may lead to disappointment; and explore the mindset of a game designer. You’ll also find out more about player types and their motivators, a piece of knowledge that can make or break your design.

In this session, you will learn:

• The truth behind five key myths about gamification
• Why there is serious confusion about gamification and game-based learning
• About common player types and motivators and how you can use them to avoid design mistakes
• How to shift from content-driven to action-driven thinking

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, managers, and directors.

Click here for the session trailer

Designers, developers, trainers, instructors, content experts, and others too often design and build instruction in ways that interfere with how adults learn. The result is less-than-optimal learning that can lead to a chain reaction of disengagement in learning materials and limited, if any, performance improvement.

In this session, you will learn specific evidence-based practices and tactics that make instructional materials more “learnable” and promote learning. Explore the numerous factors that enable and increase learning through formal methods and materials, where they are often lacking, and how to improve them. You will be able to apply these practices and tactics to specific learning situations in order to learn to use them effectively in your own efforts.

In this session, you will learn:

• What learnability is and how it helps adults learn
• How to use readability scores to help make content easier to use
• About the tasks and realities of learning
• How to apply multiple learnability tactics to learning situations

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers and managers.

MOOCs are growing in use in public and private sectors, taking on different forms and providing diverse experiences. The approaches are relatively new, and there is still much to learn. Have you ever wondered whether your organization could benefit from lessons learned designing and facilitating a massive open online course (MOOC)? The answer is: Yes, it can. The data and experiences obtained from a course of thousands can be applied in many different ways.

Though your audience may not be massive, in this session you will learn to scale down the essential elements of an engaging MOOC to be relevant for your organization. You will leave this session with practical tips based on experience. Whether you are a subject matter expert, an instructional designer, or someone who manages learning programs, there is much to learn about how MOOCs can be a valuable addition to your organizational learning strategy.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to design interactions between participants that add value
• How to evaluate what you can include in a MOOC design and what you cannot
• How to examine the results of a specific learning strategy
• How to construct techniques you can apply to your own programs

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
A MOOC designed and delivered on the Coursera platform.

A large variety of eLearning authoring tools are on the market, and it can be difficult to determine which tools will meet your needs. Two of the most widely used are Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline. eLearning designers and managers are challenged with determining which tool will fit their needs today and in the future as the demands for learning content change.

In this session, you will gain a comprehensive, objective review of both tools: their key features, strengths, and weaknesses. Categories include: interface, media, interactivity, quizzing, publishing, players, accessibility, file management and diagnostics, templates, import/export, localization, and pricing. You will learn about the basic feature sets of each and their capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. You will also see example files and demos depicting the tools’ various strengths and weaknesses. A matrix handout will be provided for easy reference and comparison.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to identify individual strengths and weaknesses of both Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline
• About the basic categories of features in both Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline
• How to differentiate between key decision points for determining which tool works best in a given situation

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Captivate (currently in version 9) and Articulate Storyline (currently in version 2).

Video is eating the Internet. People are 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.

This session will explore how learning and development professionals can leverage content-consumption trends to create powerful and impactful learning experiences. Through examples ranging from surfers in Hawaii to telecom companies in Europe, you will learn how video can amplify the reach of informal learning, empower employees to create and share, and increase retention and engagement. You will also learn how platforms like Netflix and YouTube leverage cloud technologies to create the seamless, frictionless video experiences that users have come to expect in 2016.

In this session, you will learn:

• About key trends and behaviors driving video usage in the consumer world
• How to leverage these trends to create powerful workplace learning experiences
• About practical ideas for piloting video learning at your organization
• About key video technologies underpinning these trends

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Video, social platforms, and social tools.

While the basics are quite easy to pick up on your own, many self-taught Storyline developers are able to explore the functions of only the tool that they need immediately, particularly when multiple projects and tight timelines are involved. As a result, it’s easy to overlook some of the newer and lesser-known features. But it’s these deeper features that can do the most to make your eLearning more versatile and original.

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll uncover some of the advanced features of Storyline that you might not have even been aware were there and develop the skills you’ll need to put them into practice. You’ll look at how to customize the look and feel of markers, ways to create more dynamic “game style” interactivity, and options for developing cool motion and animation. When you put these features together, you’ll unlock an even deeper understanding of how you can create engaging and effective experiences using Storyline.

In this session, you will learn:

• About features in Storyline that you may not be using fully yet
• How to build and use custom markers
• About surprising features that can help you design unique animations
• How you can use triggering with motion

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers and developers.  

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline.

Technology Required:
PC or Mac (with Windows) running Storyline.

Click here for the sessions trailer

Instructional designers tend to define what is possible by the limitations of their chosen authoring tools, and common modern web practices don’t always transfer over to those tools until it is too late. Because of this, IDs sometimes remove ideas like responsive courses from consideration because their authoring tools don’t automatically support the capability. But why not take control over what you can do in your eLearning authoring by building it yourself?

In this hands-on session, you will explore how jQuery Mobile allows you to build responsive custom mobile applications that not only take advantage of modern web technology, but also simplify development without requiring heavy amounts of coding. You will learn how jQuery removes many of the constraints placed by authoring tools; how you can build custom, mobile-first HTML5 quickly and easily; and how to publish what you build as a native mobile app. You will also examine how to integrate the xAPI into HTML5 to track progress within your LMS or LRS.

In this session, you will learn:

• HTML5 basics
• jQuery Mobile basics
• Skeleton CSS for responsive layouts
• How to create simple page layouts and navigation
• How to use jQuery Mobile UI components to build custom learning interactions

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers; some knowledge of HTML5 is helpful but not necessary.

Technology discussed in this session:
HTML5, jQuery Mobile, and the xAPI.

Technology Required:
Sublime Text editor, jQuery Mobile, HTML, and CSS.

Shrinking budgets and constrained resources make it more important than ever to make the most of the resources you have when designing learning experiences. The increasing availability of, and ease of access to, cloud-based applications and other free tools makes it easier than ever to create and develop learning experiences that don’t have to cost a bundle.

In this session, you will learn about some of the best tools from an ever-expanding curated list of over 400 free online tools. With over 25 categories of tools that will assist designers and developers in creating their projects faster, easier, and more dynamically, there is something for everyone. Participants will leave with a list of free tools, as well as some ideas for how to incorporate them into design and development processes immediately.

In this session, you will learn:

• About more than 25 categories of free tools that can be useful for instructional design
• How these tools can be used in developing and delivering quality learning experiences
• How to combine the strengths of various tools to achieve the best results
• Ways to repurpose many social tools for learning

Audience:
Novice to intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers. 

Technology discussed in this session:
Cloud-based applications and other online tools.

Click here for the session trailer

As a learning practitioner, you are tasked with providing distinctive immersive learning experiences for your learners when and where they need to learn. You may be asked to shorten the length of the online training offerings or to provide access to learning in spaces that are not traditional office settings. How can you leverage your infrastructure to accommodate employees who need performance support and quick learning experiences at the moment of need, in any location, and in real time?

In this session, you will experience how augmented reality combines brilliantly with microlearning and performance support by providing pathways to content, especially in situations and locations where content deployment and training was difficult in the past—such as on construction sites, in retail locations, and in new or unfamiliar work locations. Additionally, you’ll learn how this amalgamation addresses user expectations by creating a learning experience within the context of learners’ current physical space.

In this session, you will learn:

• How microlearning and performance support can be interchangeable
• About when microlearning is most and least applicable
• About key differences and considerations between microlearning and traditional courseware
• About augmented reality, including best cases for use, features, and limitations
• About the challenges and considerations of mobile deployment
• How to leverage user experience and expectations to create solutions that your audience seeks and wants to use

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

CACI International, a federal contractor, delivers compliance training to 20,000 employees annually to meet federal, state, and company legal requirements. Until 2015, the course was little more than a glorified PowerPoint presentation and check-the-box activity, lacking employee engagement, ownership, and commitment. In late 2014, an L&D team set out to take the training from average (yawn) to awesome (right on)! This session walks attendees through that transformation.

This session will share the process of transforming average compliance training into training that increases content engagement, hits the mark with employees (relatable, interactive, fun), and results in fewer compliance violations and better business-making decisions at all levels. The session will explore and demonstrate instructional techniques used: scenarios, authentic examples, videos, comic strips, and gamification. Learn about the technology, software, and other tools the team used to produce a course that engaged learners and achieved learning objectives. You’ll discover how to replicate a dramatic change to your training and overcome obstacles such as a conservative culture, antiquated LMS, and tight budget constraints.

In this session, you will learn:

• A process to transform training from “yawn” to “right on”
• Instructional techniques that engage learners and achieve objectives
• About tools and software that create engaging, interactive, and gamified eLearning
• Strategies to overcome obstacles

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Saba LMS, Lectora Inspire, Pixton Comics, eLearning Brothers templates, and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

Learning professionals often are not presented with the ideal infrastructure to make sure they get the right learning to the right people in the right format and, most importantly, at the right time. Companies are also moving at lightning speed, which means the need to navigate not only existing, but evolving, learning infrastructures is critical for the success of your programs and your people.

In this session, you’ll take a look at high-level strategies for identifying what tools and systems are already in place at your company (such as wikis, LMSs, house-built tools, and resources) and discuss best practices for leveraging the right tools at the right time for the right audience. This session will challenge the notion that there are systems out there that “do everything,” or that one LMS will solve all of your problems. Instead, you’ll discover how a true learning ecosystem needs to complement the complexities of how people learn and develop themselves.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why no learning ecosystem is perfect
• Who the unsung heroes of your learning ecosystem are
• How to leverage the right systems for the right audience and the right initiative
• How to navigate the complexities and imperfection of your existing learning ecosystem
• What a real-life example of a successful learning ecosystem looks like

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Twitter, LMS (Saba Cloud), social learning and curation tools (Pathgather), ILT scheduler, internal wiki (Confluence), and WordPress.

Online and social learning reduces the cost of training, expands the ability to reach a larger audience for your content, and increases the speed at which learning experiences can be accessed and offered. Because of these growing complexities, though, it’s increasingly important to ensure that you’re looking at both how these ever-increasing types of content interconnect and how your learning architecture scales with the business needs of your organization.

In this session, you’ll find out more about the requirements you’ll need to consider to adopt new approaches to learning (such as blended, informal, mobile, and social). Through exploring topics such as the link between performance and learning, how new platforms and approaches can contribute to collaboration between learners, and how to use both synchronous and asynchronous content effectively, you’ll gain insight into the key factors you’ll want to consider when creating your learning ecosystem strategy.

In this session, you will learn:

• How learning paths will push people past compliance and “required” learning
• About new platforms that exist to give employees the opportunity to innovate through enhanced collaboration with peers and/or allow them to see new ideas emerge through informal learning activities
• About the link between performance and learning
• How using both asynchronous and synchronous content can give additional flexibility to your ecosystem

Audience:
Intermediate managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Social platforms; performance support platforms; eLearning, video, and mobile learning; learning management systems; and HRIS system integration.

Technology has a history of fundamentally shifting the ways people interact with information and with one another. We’ve seen it with the invention of radio and television, and more recently through the evolution of the Internet. We are approaching the dawn of yet another shift: the introduction of virtual, augmented, and other enhanced realities.

In this keynote session, you will take a journey into the coming world of virtual reality (VR) and explore how VR is shaping the future of content. Using his work with Oculus Story Studio as an example, Maxwell Planck will examine why new technologies require us to challenge our assumptions of what we do in order to fully explore the potential of what we could do. You will learn why new technologies require us to rethink our current narratives, and how virtual reality is changing the definition of “story” itself.

Join Yukon Learning and Articulate to test your knowledge of the Articulate Suite of tools. Every correct answer wins a prize and puts you in the running to walk away with the grand prize: a sleek new iPad loaded with some awesome freebies.

While creativity is often associated with art, it is equally important in problem-solving. In this keynote from Pixar’s Tony DeRose, you will explore both sides of this equation through the experiences of one of the most creative and innovative companies in the world. You will learn about Pixar’s movie-making process and see how the creativity applied to its films is also applied to how the company creates technical solutions to challenges. You will also discover how this unique approach to creative challenges can be applied to education.

Your workforce and clients are mobile—is your content? VitalSource Technologies will present a session on the development and execution of successful strategies for the digital distribution of content. The expertise behind this presentation is culled from more than 20 years of experience working with hundreds of content publishers, corporations, and educational institutions, and providing content to over 10 million users. As one of the first digital content companies in the marketplace, VitalSource continues to build on its success and lead the market in technology that evolves with its clients’ changing needs.

Is it possible to use virtual reality and augmented reality for your organization’s training on a budget? This session will showcase some amazing virtual- and augmented-reality training examples, bust some common myths about the hot new platforms taking the consumer technology world by storm, and explain how you can integrate them into your training in a practical, powerful, and cost-effective manner.

Whether you are creating a new project, developing an app, or launching a new platform, join this session to learn about the latest strategies in brainstorming, prototyping, and designing your experiences. This session will highlight tools, techniques, and workflows to help you kick off any project the right way. Learn how to communicate a concept beginning with low-fidelity prototypes, gather user feedback, and translate into high-fidelity prototypes before you start development. Get pumped and ready to take ideas out of your head and make them a reality!

Today’s companies and professionals need to build the skills that deliver exceptional results and fulfilling careers. The expertise management process combines benchmark-based competency assessments, personalized development plans, and collaborative progress management to deliver professional development that meets the needs of employers while supporting professionals as they build rewarding careers. We will also explore how to deliver this full-cycle process through always-on, easily available cloud solutions that eliminate the need for costly organization-wide implementations of packaged software.

Your goal is to provide learners with a terrific learning experience on whatever device they might be using. But spending countless hours tweaking content for various screens when there’s a fast-approaching deadline doesn’t seem like a great solution. Come spend time with Articulate and learn about how it’s helping to make mobile course development simple.

While linear video is a preferred method for learning, technologically speaking it has not advanced much over the past few decades. Now, linear video has started to incorporate interactive annotations, which have greatly improved users’ learning experience. Adding interactive annotations becomes easier each year.

This session will cover the various ways to add interactive annotations to your videos, including YouTube, HapYak, Captivate, Articulate Storyline, etc. You will learn how these different technologies compare to one another and see how easy it is to add interactivity with platforms such as YouTube and HapYak. You will also learn interactive video best practices for the five most common interactive annotations and the values they offer video users.

In this session, you will learn:

• About various technologies available to add interactivity to your videos
• About the pros and cons of these technologies
• How to add the five most common interactive annotations to your video
• Best practices for these interactive annotations
• About the values these interactive annotations offer your users
• How and why others like you are using interactive video in their businesses

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
YouTube, HapYak, Captivate, and Articulate Storyline.

Creating effective learning experiences is not a job for a novice, although many novices are thrown into the role of instructional designer/developer. If beginners turn to the field’s expansive literature, which ranges from cookbook-style guides and blogs to scientific research, they are easily overwhelmed and typically turn to overly simplistic approaches. But even experienced professionals can come to feel they’re never able to do the job that should be done.

In this session, you will learn how to create effective instructional experiences without oversimplifying them. You will come away from this session with six successful strategies that are responsive to research and best practices, simplifying the overall task while addressing the fundamentals needed for highly effective instruction.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to continually evaluate designs as they come together
• How to avoid excessive content presentation as a means to achieve greater content mastery
• How to challenge awareness goals
• How to design backwards (it’s faster, easier, and better)

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, and project managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Exemplary eLearning applications.

NorthShore is taking proactive measures to combat the rising number of violent trends in health care settings. The company developed online training that teaches employees how to 1) identify the beginning stages of workplace violence, 2) understand how best to respond and prevent it from escalating, and 3) know when to get help.

In this session, you will learn how NorthShore addressed an issue that is on everyone’s minds: preventing violence. The ideal venue for this type of training would be in-person training that provides education, practice, and coaching. But with over 10,000 employees, the organization needed to deploy training in a time-effective manner. You will learn how NorthShore came up with a compromise: blended learning that was deployed to the entire organization. Learn how the company introduced its workforce to de-escalation techniques, provided practice through video-based scenarios, and provided high-risk areas with additional opportunities for in-person training and practice.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to creatively approach a compromise between online learning and instructor-led training
• Why video-based scenarios can provide learners with memorable feedback
• About the importance of collaborating across teams to develop lifelike scenarios
• About some of the challenges and rewards that accompany “choose-your-own-adventure” training

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate, Captivate, Vimeo, and Premiere.

Much has been made about the astounding dropout rates for massive open online courses (MOOCs): typically 85 percent or more. While it may be misleading to apply the traditional metrics of higher education to MOOCs, there are ways to dramatically improve the numbers.

In this session, you will learn the challenges IBM faced with its online MOOCs and how its IBM Open Badge program solved the problem. Through this case study, learn how IBM wanted to increase new subscribers and increase course completions for its “big data” MOOCs. See how, after introducing Open Badges, every metric—from new attendees to course completions to the average number of courses taken—increased well beyond expectations. You will see exactly how IBM achieved impressive results, and you’ll leave with an action list to show you how to marry MOOCs to digital credentials and improve your numbers.

In this session, you will learn:

• How Open Badges can be used to attract new audiences
• How Open Badges increase course completions
• How to incorporate gamification elements
• How to improve uptake with simple email language
• How and what to measure
• How to sell the value to your stakeholders

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
MOOCs and digital Open Badge platforms.

Click here for the session trailer

How will the connected learning landscape shift when cognitive technology takes over? Connected print technologies, extreme wearables, and device-to-device, machine-to-machine communication will transform the way a learner interacts with content, changing everything about the ecosystem of learning.

In this highly interactive session, find out more about what the wearable future holds, and the new ways people can literally hold connected learning in their hands, minds, and bodies. Learn about the business landscape, the emerging technology capabilities, and the implications for instructional design and delivery. It’s a new world where what you wear enables what you learn. Are you ready?

In this session, you will learn:

• About the business landscape for wearable and connected learning
• About emerging technology capabilities
• About the application of wearable learning to workplace instructional design and delivery

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Virtual reality and Ericsson Connected Print.

Click here for the session trailer

Mobile is the new way of learning. Learners want it, and companies want to provide it. But app development can be expensive, especially if you are starting from a mostly print or standard eLearning model. 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, especially for companies with populations of mobile learners (e.g., sales).

In this session, you will learn how EPUBs and iBooks can be used as a low-cost solution for taking training content mobile. Explore how these digital books are able to support many of the same bells and whistles as traditional eLearning interactions, and examine how digital books leverage the same inputs as traditional apps (such as gestures) but cost a fraction as much to develop and maintain across multiple operation systems and devices.

In this session, you will learn:

• Which platforms and tools are available to use for digital publications
• About basic design and development strategies
• About the different audiences for each publishing platform and which platform best fits your audience
• About real-world strategies from companies that use digital book platforms as part of their mobile strategy
• The dos and don’ts of digital book publishing

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Digital Publishing Suite and Apple iBooks.

There is an increasing appetite for knowledge in high-competition business environments. At the same time, when knowledge and information are growing at a fast pace, it is difficult for employees to retain and recall everything that they know or need to know to perform. With a large part of the workforce always on the move, L&D teams face the challenge of reaching them effectively to deliver performance support solutions.

In this session, you will see use cases and demonstrations of mobile performance support tools. You will see how these tools, used in tandem with traditional learning, provide short bursts of critical knowledge based on employee demand. You will learn various strategies for designing these tools and the critical dos and don’ts when developing them.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to effectively support training with performance support tools
• About the various technologies and strategies used to create such solutions
• About the benefits incurred by satisfied clients that have adopted these solutions
• What works and what doesn’t while developing these tools

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
HTML5-based performance support solutions.

It has been said that Flash is dead, yet there exists an army of Flash content in the world of eLearning today. Seemingly alive and well, these Flash zombies must be eliminated in order to answer the increasing demand for mobile-compatible content. Is there a way to save any of the good work that was done—or is a double tap to the timeline the only way?

This session will explore the challenges a team encountered and the solutions they created when removing every single Flash element from a catalog of over 1,600 lessons. You will learn how the team handled a variety of cases from simple linear Flash animations to custom Flash playback engines that use XML to configure rich, interactive content, including the steps they took in reintroducing the converted content into existing lessons. Finally, learn about the team’s various skill sets and how each contributed to the conversion process.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to convert existing Flash content into HTML5 using Adobe Flash CC (or Adobe Animate)
• How the HTML and JavaScript files from conversion relate to the Flash source file
• About factors that influence the blend of skill sets needed
• How to decompile SWF files you don’t have source files for
• Strategies for converting large numbers of files

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Flash CC, Flash Animate, HTML5, JavaScript, CreateJS, and Trillix Decompiler.

There are many situations where learners can benefit from being able to instantly request assistance from an expert through voice or even video chat. That kind of in-the-moment performance support can save time and help people get back to the task at hand quickly, armed with the knowledge they need to do it right. But how do you provide that kind of support directly in your web or mobile applications? In the past this could be done, but only with the assistance of extra plugins that were tricky to use. Thankfully, there’s now an easier way for developers to include this functionality: Web Real-time Communications (WebRTC).

In this session, you’ll be introduced to the basics of WebRTC, a technology that became available in the recent generation of web browsers and mobile applications. WebRTC allows you to support in-browser applications for voice and video chat without needing additional plugins. You’ll find out more about WebRTC’s capabilities, its standardized mechanisms and APIs, and how web and mobile developers can leverage it when creating performance support applications. Through using WebRTC, you’ll be able to easily provide in-the-moment support for your learners in all new ways.

In this session, you will learn:

• What WebRTC is and how it can enhance performance support
• What WebRTC looks like in action
• How to use WebRTC in web and mobile applications
• How best to apply WebRTC mechanisms and features in specific scenarios

Audience:
Novice and intermediate developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
WebRTC and ORTC (Object Real-time Communications) technologies; JavaScriptCore APIs (e.g., Promises); desktop browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari); React and React Native; and iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

Animation is a powerful tool for creating engaging eLearning experiences. Sadly, many animations are used without purpose as just a design embellishment. When that happens, the animation distracts the learner from the content rather than helping to elevate it.

This session will explore how animation can be used with purpose to create meaningful and appealing eLearning experiences. Demonstrating multiple before-and-after examples, the session will show how animation can explain complex ideas and create valuable learning content.

In this session, you will learn:

• How animation affects the learning process
• How to use animation with purpose to bring meaning to learning content
• About the various types of animations used within eLearning
• How to explain complex ideas and processes through animation

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers.

J.M. Barrie said, “We are all failures; at least, the best of us are.” When attending conferences, you often get the opportunity to see individuals sharing their best work. What isn’t visible is everything that fell apart in the process of achieving something great. These are great opportunities to learn from.

This session will explore the experiences of a panel of eLearning professionals who have a checkered past of designing and developing training solutions. They will share some of their eLearning dirty secrets—the worst examples from past projects—and discuss what they learned. They will also invite attendees to share their own eLearning dirty secrets, creating a real-time collection of lessons learned. You won’t want to miss out on this opportunity to see firsthand how others best learn from mistakes.

In this session, you will learn:

• From examples of bad eLearning projects
• About better ways of approaching eLearning design and development
• How to build your confidence to try something new and different

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, and project managers.

Click here for the session trailer

You are always striving to ensure the learner is learning in the best possible way, aren’t you? Sometimes technology introduces a new way of interacting that really takes learning to a new level. Explore some of these technologies and their possibilities for learning.

This session will explore the changing landscape of learning technology. You will learn how wearable technology could enhance the learning experience and how tools like Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard are opening eyes to the possibilities of virtual reality. You’ll examine which technologies will soon help learners really leap ahead in incorporating new skills. It’s not just about avant-garde, bleeding-edge technology; you’ll look at technologies that cost nothing at all that can take learners to the next level!

In this session, you will learn:

• What technologies are available today
• Which technologies are realistic and affordable for learning and development
• How to enhance the learning experience using these technologies
• How to prepare for the future of learning

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
The Myo armband and MUV Interactive’s Bird device.

Learning and development professionals strive to help people get better at what they do every day. But acquiring knowledge isn’t enough to improve performance. In order to do better work tomorrow than they did today, people need to change their behaviors. That’s when learning becomes effective and gets results. However, behavior change is hard. It takes time, energy, and commitment. The only way to keep people engaged in the project of real transformation is to give them an experience they love.

Microlearning, the process of learning complex topics in small, focused segments, meets learners where they are with short, effortless content delivered in the moment it’s needed. In this session, you’ll find out how and why this approach can have a large impact, despite the small size of each piece of content. You’ll also learn more about how to create a microlearning strategy of your own to meet the needs of your audience and the goals of your company.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the engaging power of digestible, point-of-need learning moments
• How microlearning engineers big transformation through tiny learning experiences
• How to create an effective microlearning program that people love
• Why traditional training isn’t enough

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and and those responsible for curriculum development.

The opportunities to create transformative learning experiences have never been greater: There are more devices capable of delivering immersive media experiences to more people than ever before. Yet many learners are habituated to be wary of traditional, mandatory corporate learning programs. How should learning leaders understand this landscape, and how can they develop learning experiences that resonate with audiences?

In this session, you will learn how today’s audiences value experiences over all else, and how you can elevate learning to exceed these expectations and truly resonate. You will hear about examples of holistic learning programs that matched and surpassed the expectations of a very discerning audience. You will discover how to effectively leverage enhanced media and storytelling techniques to create memorable learning experiences. Explore ideas for implementing learning and communications programs that have succeeded in resonating with both learner and business audiences.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to deliver learning “experiences”
• How to effectively and sustainably earn the mind share of your audience
• How to use creative storytelling to communicate value and authenticity
• How the expectations of learners have changed

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Mobile technology, video, and gamification.

Selecting the right virtual classroom platform can be challenging! There are so many programs available, each with its own sets of tools and features. And each platform offers a unique angle on virtual training classes. With all those differences, it’s hard to know which platform is right for your organization.

In this session, you’ll get to compare six different virtual classroom platforms: Adobe Connect, Citrix GoToTraining, Cisco WebEx Training Center, Jigsaw, Fuze, and Zoom. You’ll gain hands-on experience with their common features and explore what makes each one unique. Using a checklist that can be tailored to your organization, you’ll begin to determine which platform might be best suited for your own virtual training programs.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the features of these six virtual classroom platforms
• How to recognize common tools used in most platforms
• Which platform features are most useful when selecting a platform
• How to apply a template for selecting the right platform for your organization

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, managers, directors, and facilitators.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Connect, Citrix GoToTraining, Cisco WebEx Training Center, Jigsaw, Fuze, and Zoom.

Technology Required:
A WiFi-enabled laptop with any standard Internet browser installed.

Click here for the session trailer

“Gamification,” “learning games,” and “serious games”: These are trendy buzzwords in L&D right now, but how can you actually create these experiences yourself if you’re not a game designer? Designing your first learning game can be a daunting task, and it’s quite common to think you don’t have the skill set or tools needed. But in many cases, you actually do have a tool for creating games, and it’s one you likely know well: Articulate Storyline. That’s right: With a few tips and tricks, you can actually create rich and engaging learning games using Storyline.

In this session, you’ll learn the basics of Storyline game development through looking at a real game developed with this tool. You’ll learn a bit about the game’s background and the gaming elements used. You’ll then spend the rest of the session in a hands-on activity that will teach you how to create one of the main elements from this game: interactive panoramic graphics. This common gaming element allows you to navigate around a digital space and is found in many search games, adventure games, and virtual tours. With a little creativity, it’s also easy to replicate in Storyline. You’ll leave this session with a better understanding of what game experiences you can build into Storyline and the practical skills to implement them.

In this session, you will learn:

• Tips for getting started designing a game
• How Storyline can be used to create learning games
• About gaming elements that can be created in Storyline
• How to create interactive panoramic graphics in Storyline

Audience:
Designers and developers with intermediate experience developing in Storyline 2.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 2 and interactive panoramic graphics.

Technology required:
Laptop running Articulate Storyline 2.

The task of incorporating gaming into an organization’s learning solutions can seem overwhelming. The lack of understanding as to what gamification and gaming are confuses the issue, and many of the off-the-shelf vendor solutions offer only rudimentary gamification techniques. No wonder organizations tend to discount gamification and associate these techniques with “playing Jeopardy” and not meaningful learning.

This session will address how learning professionals can develop a gamification culture in their organization. Through exploring the difference between gamification and gaming, you’ll learn how to incorporate gaming techniques into traditional eLearning designs. You’ll also find out how to use existing rapid development tools, such as Articulate Studio and Storyline, to develop engaging gamified learning solutions, allowing you to incorporate gaming elements in your projects even if you don’t have a large budget. Finally, gamified solutions work best when your whole team is on board, so the session will give you strategies for how to help your team learn to design and develop simple gamified solutions.

In this session, you will learn:

• The difference between gamification and gaming
• How to identify gamification elements that you can add to your learning solutions
• How to develop simple gamified solutions using your current rapid development tools
• How to teach your team to develop simple gamified solutions

Audience:
Novice designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline.

Years of momentum have resulted in a collection of use cases for teams seeking to leverage the xAPI to better track, measure, and manage their learning efforts. The time is now; the xAPI can improve the ways you create and deliver content and classes, track interactions, communicate, and measure performance. Armed with knowledge and the proverbial Swiss Army Knife of xAPI functions, begin to “slice, saw, tweeze and pick” your way through training obstacles.

This session will cover what the xAPI really is, how statements are structured, and how it is being operationalized. You will explore how progressive teams leverage the xAPI to improve the learning experience, streamline tracking, perform common tasks, and drive engagement via modern authoring tools and an LRS. You will see how LMSs are undergoing transformations to support the trend. This session will help you understand the basic challenges teams face in implementing the xAPI on a limited budget. Finally, learn how authoring tools, LMS platforms, mobile apps, and IoT endpoints are being connected to leverage the power of the xAPI.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the best current authoring tools and learning platforms to take advantage of the xAPI
• About new use cases to apply tracking to nontraditional learning assignments and interactions
• About the challenges to overcome with LMS integration, security, mobile access (especially when offline), and more
• About the basic structural and design tenets of an xAPI-based solution and the best-practice approach to implementing those solutions
• When to use the xAPI over SCORM for tracking, and when “all of the above” is better than one or the other

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
The xAPI, learning record stores, and authoring tools.

Design thinking—a prototype-driven, human-centered innovation process—can aid in the creation of experiences for the “real world” in a variety of form factors. It can help you develop emotional connections with your intended audience while you imagine new solutions and create user-centered prototypes for hands-on, high-energy design challenges. Sound exciting?

In this session, you will explore implementation of the design thinking process and learn about several best practices currently used in business as well as in education. You will learn about the seven stages of design thinking—define, research, ideate, prototype, choose, implement, and learn—and create user-centered prototypes for hands-on, high-energy design challenges. Learn how to design learning opportunities and thinking around real-world problems and solutions. Appreciate how the design thinking process applies to your personal innovative strategy and to solving problems within your organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• About the seven stages of design thinking
• From three case studies of design thinking applied in the real world
• How to create prototypes for hands-on, high-energy, time-based design challenges
• How to move from design thinking to design actions

Audience:
Novice designers and project managers.

Finding a learning management system (LMS) that best fits your company’s design, business goals, and budget can be a daunting task. While choosing the right LMS can help your organization define, deliver, and manage training to drive ongoing success, the countless options when it comes to product selection can make determining which LMS best fits your company’s needs overwhelmingly difficult. Before making a decision, it’s important to find out what exactly you should consider when evaluating your options.

In this session, you’ll learn about aspects to evaluate when selecting an LMS, including integration with existing IT infrastructure; ease of use and accessibility; scalability and adaptability; vendor support and service quality; tracking and reporting capabilities; and collaboration or social learning features. To make sure you’re considering all the important elements of this choice, you’ll find out how to have a meaningful discussion with your IT department, whose members should be key stakeholders in the selection process. You’ll also receive practical tools for helping you make your decision—a sample LMS request for proposals and checklist.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to identify the LMS features that your organization must have
• About resources and research that are available to help inform your decision
• How to talk to IT about integrating your LMS with the existing infrastructure
• How to demonstrate the value of your preferred solution to stakeholders

Audience:
Novice and intermediate developers, project managers, managers, directors, and senior leaders (VP, CLO, executive, etc.).

Technology discussed in this session:
Learning management systems.