It’s the start of a brand new year and the perfect time to make plans for personal development in 2012. Check out the variety of interesting free T&D webinars being offered this month. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: An Active Approach to Communications Training

Join Thiagi and Tracy Tagliati in a webinar that will explore a variety of high-impact activities, jolts, and interactive learning strategies that have been specifically chosen to teach and apply some of the most critical communication competencies and concepts that we all need. 

Thursday, January 5, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: (for ASTD members only)

Yawn-Proof Your eLearning

Finding yourself a bit bored with the e-learning you've been creating lately? Looking to jazz up your e-learning courses, but don't have the resources to create a 3-D immersive learning game that can be delivered on your iPhone? Need to get your content turned around fast – but without sacrificing engagement?  Join Cammy Bean to explore strategies and tips for creating quality e-learning in a rapid timeframe without breaking the bank. You'll see examples of incoming content received from clients, discuss the approach to rapid design, and talk about some of the specific strategies you can use to maximize engagement with minimal investment.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Guarantee that Creativity and Innovation Flows Year Round in Your Organization

Based on empirical research, Dr. Robert Epstein, one of the world's leading experts on creativity and innovation, will summarize 10 practical techniques for spurring creativity and innovation in an organization on an ongoing basis, such as using a "shifting" technique for teams and making sure that all assignments and goals are stated in an "open-ended" fashion.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: (for ASTD members only)

3 Simple Steps to Convert Classroom Training to Virtual Training

One minute of classroom time does not equal one minute of virtual classroom time–some activities simply don’t translate or even make sense online. How do you know what to reuse versus what to build from scratch?  Join this interactive webinar to discover the answer and begin to convert your classroom training to virtual training using 3 simple guidelines.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Learn to Use PowerPoint for More Than Boring Presentations

PowerPoint's gotten a bad rap. Sure we've all had to sit through hours of boring presentations. But is that PowerPoint's fault?  With the right skills, PowerPoint is one of the best multimedia applications out there. Join Tom Kuhlmann, VP of Community for Articulate as he shares ways to get more our out of PowerPoint. In this session you'll learn how to use PowerPoint to create illustrations and all sorts of multimedia.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: New Year, New Trends – LMS 2012

Join Stacey Harris, VP of Research, Brandon Hall Group, and Donald Taylor, Chairman, Learning and Performance Institute, as they discuss how the world of learning and development will change in 2012—in particular how L & D focus will continue to shift from “learning and development” to “knowledge and performance.” They’ll share insights on the trends to take action on today, as well as those that you’ll need to keep an eye on throughout the year.

Thursday, January 12, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Buried Alive: Human Productivity in the 21st Century

Unnecessary interruptions are consuming 28 percent of a knowledge workers’ day. Knowledge workers indicate in survey results that 40% of their time is spent on irrelevant activities.  In today’s world of unlimited information, technology and opportunities, why is it that people are finding themselves more “buried alive” than ever before?  During this session participants will discover the 21st century’s three key problems that are hindering the capabilities and potential of today’s workforce and their dramatic “hidden costs” taking its toll on organizational results.

Thursday, January 12, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: Twitter 101: The Basics and Tips for Learning Use

Twitter is an excellent tool to leverage for both personal and professional learning and growth, and more and more organizations are harnessing its power as part of learning programs. And with that, many learning professionals are encountering the same challenges, such as: How can I use Twitter in my learning programs if I don't even know how to use Twitter myself? What is the platform's value? We will explain what Twitter is, walk through the steps to (properly) set up a twitter account, define much of the technical Twitter terminology, and share some examples of how learning professionals are using the platform.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Modern Mentoring: Harnessing the Collective Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Passions of Today’s Workforce

Technology and innovative thinking have revitalized mentoring and extended its developmental benefits to the entire enterprise. No longer just about one-to-one relationships between senior leaders and potential successors, today’s mentoring is focused on removing the barriers between people and engaging them in rich learning and teaching opportunities. Join Michael Rochelle, Chief Business Development Officer for the Brandon Hall Group, and Randy Emelo, President and CEO of Triple Creek, as they discuss the strategies that make modern mentoring more valuable than ever.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Trainer as Peak Performer: Scale the Heights

In this webinar, learn how to identify peak performance in yourself and the trainers who work for you. Develop your training skills improvement plan based on 100 Training Clinic instructor behaviors and activities in ten competency areas. Become a peak performer in the classroom or on-the-job.

Thursday, January 19, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Generation Next: Creating Experiences that Engage

When it comes to learning, Generation Next learners have high expectations. They expect something more than last year’s enterprise-wide learning platform interface, something that looks and feels more like the sites they already frequent in other parts of their lives. Organizations are responding to these expectations by creating engaging, personalized experiences that use gamification and branding strategies to build experiences that are inviting, motivating, and feel familiar to tomorrow’s learners.
Join Scot Lake, Senior Learning Analyst for Brandon Hall Group, and Dan Medakovic, VP, Learning Solutions at Blatant Media as they discuss strategies for engaging Generation Next’s learners.

Friday, January 20, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Getting Great ROI from Attending the Training 2012 Conference

If you will be attending the Training 2012 Conference, join Jack Philips, Chairman of the ROI institute in this thought-provoking webcast to explore how conferences are being evaluated from the participants’ perspective. It shows how you, as a potential conference participant, can judge the ROI of a conference in advance of attending. It presents a system to track what you do with what you learned, including impact and financial ROI. In this session, we will also offer you an opportunity to measure your ROI for attending the Training 2012 Conference. This offer includes participating in a collaborative study to show your ROI for attending.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Meeting the Mobile Need: Strategies for Developing Meaningful Mobile Content

With the explosive growth of mobile device use, today’s workforce is connected and ready to engage—wherever and whenever. But how do organizations go about delivering mobile learning that is effective and well received? What content lends itself to mobile delivery, and how must content developers think and design differently? Join Scot Lake, Sr. Analyst for Brandon Hall Group, and Chris Van Wingerden, of dominKnow Learning Solutions, as they discuss the end-to-end process for designing and developing the most effective mobile learning experiences for today’s connected workforce.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Designing 3-Minute or Less eLearning Programs

Chunking, miniaturizing and boiling down content to fit into short and quick lessons for eLearning and mobile learning are difficult tasks: How does one know what content keep and throwaway? Furthermore, traditional content design assumes that learners must learn all the content. The challenge is that it leads to bloated, long, boring and costly eLearning and impossible to deliver in mobile learning. In this session, you will learn a content design process that shows you step-by-step how to boil down and chunk your content. You will learn how to create 3-minute eLearning lessons.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Through the Looking Glass: 2012 Learning Function Trends

Many learning professionals and leaders are wondering when their jobs shifted from instructional designers and content developers, to social media mavens, workflow analysts, and content filters. The fact is that in a world where over 48 hours of YouTube videos are uploaded every minute, content is really not the problem. Businesses are looking for tomorrow’s learning function to turn the reams of content we are generating into opportunities and increase performance. To do that, the learning function simply has to change. Join Stacey Harris, VP of Research for Brandon Hall Group, as she shares key findings from recent research on award winning learning functions and their new approaches to creating not just effective learning, but learning eco-systems that support sustained performance improvement.

Thursday, January 26, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Great Ideas from Practice: Lessons Learned from Cases in Training and Development

Looking for some great ideas that have proven successful? Join Saul Carliner, associate professor with the graduate program in Educational Technology at Concordia University in Montreal, who will present several practical tips for designing, developing, and implementing training that have been gleaned from cases of real-world training and development projects.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: What do Projects and EQ Have to Do with Each Other?

Juggling multiple learning projects with multiple players while trying to do your REAL job makes you FRANXIOUS (frustrated and anxious). Join Lou Russell, President and CEO of L+EARN and Russell Martin & Associates to learn simple project management techniques to start a project and a little emotional awareness and regulation to reduce the chaos as the project progresses.