"Late for Easter" by Benson Kua is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

With many of us in the throes of financial year-end, and the scheduling irregularities that come with spring break, it’s sometimes hard to find the time to keep up with business best practices. That’s what makes an hour-long webinar such an effective tool. April offers plenty of great webinars to help you leverage your time and skills. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: 10 Powerful Principles for Creating Impactful eLearning (Free for ATD members)

The shared perspective of learners and designers about eLearning is that much of it is not very good: it's boring, the interactions don't teach, the media are unhelpful, and so on. This is despite the fact that well-meaning instructional designers are following long-established models and doing exactly what most authoring tools have made easy. When pushed, many designers know what they are doing is flawed, but there's little guidance on how to do anything better. Many learners find that eLearning courses are not complex or difficult—designers need to focus on the essential aspects of learning that have been overlooked in the haste to rely on technology alone.

In this webinar, Ethan will share 10 straightforward and powerful principles to guide eLearning design. The principles focus on feedback, learner actions, usefulness of templates, motivation, risk, and content. Appropriate for any content and applicable to any authoring tool, these principles will empower you to make concrete design changes that will improve the impact of your eLearning courses.

Thursday, April 2, 2015, 8AM – 9AM PT: Horses for Courses! Switch to Mobile Learning and Stay Ahead

In today’s device-rich world, it’s absolutely essential to make your eLearning courses available, on all the devices, irrespective of their varying screen sizes, in the best possible manner. With so many variables, the question is, how many versions of your eLearning courses do you need? We say just one!

Join Dr. Pooja Jaisingh, Sr. Adobe eLearning Evangelist, to learn how to author just once to create responsive eLearning projects that deliver the most appropriate learner experience irrespective of the device it’s consumed on. She will also show you how to use the native capabilities of mobile devices and share some best practices for creating mobile learning courses with Adobe Captivate 8.

Friday, April 3, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: How U2 Cracked the Code of Team Culture (Free for ATD members)

The rock band U2 went from a band people laughed at to one that received more Grammy awards than any other in history and broke The Rolling Stones' record for the highest-grossing concert tour. How did they do it? Bono, U2's lead singer, says that the way the band works is more extraordinary than its music.

In this webcast, you will learn the vocabulary of team culture and how U2's team culture helped the band achieve sustainable superior performance.

"Pure Land of Bhaisajyaguru, Yuan Dynasty" is public domain.

Monday, April 6, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: The Zen of Physician Engagement (Free for ATD members)

Change can feel like failure when you’re in the middle of it. All too often, administrators struggle to articulate a vision for the future that results in a clinical workforce becoming meaningfully more engaged. In this webinar, we address the factors that make physician engagement challenging and methods for building a culture of collaboration from the ground up. Dr. Cohn also gives practical advice on how hospital systems can overcome the frustrations of rapid disruptive change to develop a cycle of improved practice environment, better clinical and financial outcomes, easier recruitment and retention, and the development of outstanding people and programs.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015, 6AM – 7AM PT: ATD 2015 Conference Preview (Previo Al Congreso ATD 2015) (Free for ATD members)

What are your learning priorities for 2015?

Where will you focus your development resources of talent and learning?

In this virtual session you will learn about trends in the field of talent development, while several Latin American speakers selected to present this year in Orlando show examples of what awaits you at the largest World Congress of talent development and training, the TD International Congress and Exhibition 2015 (ICE).

The ATD 2015 congress gives life to industry talent development. Every aspect of the industry is covered for all levels of participation, from CEOs and deans to specialists and students. You will learn about current and future trends; you will find out how to apply them at work to get results. The conference will provide the tools and resources necessary to carry you and your organization forward.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Who Says Technical eLearning Can't Be Exciting and Fun?

Yes! You can make your technical elearning fun and exciting.

How do you accomplish this?

Discoverthe “Beng, Beng and Boink Learning,” (BBBL) design approach.

Most technical training and design aim for the perfect world. The trouble starts when learners are unable “to make” sense of the training because they cannot touch, feel, and manipulate the content. The BBBL method is a metaphorical theme surrounding learning by problem-solving, diagnostics, and troubleshooting. It’s essential in trial-and-error and discovery learning.

In this workshop, you will gain a perspective of the basic structure on how to transform your technical content into a BBBL format to help learners learn faster and better. Topic coverage:

What is the scientific research supporting the discovery model and BBBL format?
How do you decipher which parts of your technical problem to transform, to enable discovery?
When and how do you use troubleshooting, problem-solving and diagnostics methods?

You will also preview examples in manufacturing, product training, processes and procedure training, and software training.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: 10 Ways to Virtualize Your Training (Free for ATD members)

Are you struggling with the challenges of delivering training to a global employee base? Would you like to provide more interactive and engaging training? Is social learning one of your training objectives?

This webinar will showcase 10 best practices for using virtual learning environments to:

Deliver a global training experience while enabling localized distinctiveness.
Engage and motivate your learners.
Enhance the audience experience.
Add social learning to your training arsenal.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: 1, 2, 3 S-T-R-E-T-C-H! Expanding Your Reach as a Department of One

Ever feel like a rubber band that’s ready to pop? Then YOU must be a department of one! The good news is that you CAN do it. Learn strategies and tips to help move you from feeling “overdone” to “can be done!”

In this session, you will learn to:

Examine the various roles and determine priorities when managing solo.
Develop a Mission/Vision for your training function.
Build your partnerships throughout the organization to increase your bench strength.

Using a self-assessment, evaluate and prioritize the roles you need to play in order to support your organization in achieving its performance goals. Vision and mission statements will be defined and shared. You’ll discuss the importance of building relationships, and a nine-cell partnership chart will be introduced outlining roles for success. You’ll identify what you are doing now and what you need to do in order to start/continue to build these relationships within the organization to expand your reach!

Note: Bring your department’s/function’s mission statement if you have one.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: How to Engage Millennials at Work (Free for ATD members)

Their work habits are different. Their values are different. They care more about work-life balance and less about money. They want to be given responsibility rather than earn it. They are entering the workforce at record rates—they are the Millennial generation.

In this fast-paced, one-hour webinar, we will review the latest research on the drivers of employee engagement for Millennials. You will learn how to develop an environment that will help you engage and retain members of this generation, thus setting your organization on a path to sustainable success.

After this session, you’ll be able to:

Describe the characteristics of Millennials in the workplace and how they differ from other generations.
Better engage and retain Millennial employees.
Identify the workplace preferences and values important to Millennials.

Thursday, April 9, 2015, 9AM – 10AM PT: Build Your Organization to Innovate – Or Watch It Deteriorate! (Free for ATD members)

Despite the popularity of thought leadership materials promoting creative epiphanies, innovation rarely comes from out-of-the-blue ideas. Rather, it comes from connectivity with your customers, insightful information, strategic intentions, and everyday execution. All too often, these critical connections are ignored. The key to continual performance is to build an organization with an approach and structures that are interconnected and explicitly defined, and that possess sufficient flexibility to keep pace in an ever-changing world.

In this webinar, Dave Hamme, author of Customer Focused Process Innovation: Linking Strategic Intent to Everyday Execution, presents a natural and methodical approach to embedding innovation practices into any enterprise. By dissecting innovation into its critical elements and showing how to address each one, Hamme has provided any organization with the ability to outwit, outmanoeuvre, and outplay its competition.

Thursday, April 9, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: How to Jump Start Your Video-Focused Learning Strategy

In this session, you will learn how to link a learning content strategy that relies upon bite-sized video to organizational objectives. The specific elements of a video strategy each guide a range of choices, from how to incorporate the power of storytelling through video to achieve these objectives to decisions about specific video types, styles, and delivery tools.

It’s easy to get seduced by the ease with which video can be produced. After all, smartphones and tablets represent video production capacity that is truly democratic, making video content something each and every employee in your entire organization can produce. But like many such tools that have come before, it’s important to get a clear strategic understanding of goals, objectives, best practices, and delivery methods before simply jumping into video as the dominant form of employee training content.

This session will jump-start the strategic conversation for you and your organization so that the power and impact of video is a tool for success rather than a distraction.

Friday, April 10, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Feedback for Impact: Intentional Conversation, Desired Results (Free for ATD members)

Performance Evaluations. Very few scheduled events can conjure up such negative emotions for both the manager and employee alike. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way.

An effective feedback session involves three key parts: planning, delivery, and follow-up. Adequate preparation in each phase will generate the most positive outcomes. Conversely, failure to do so can be catastrophic and mortifying for everyone involved. This presentation will ensure you are prepared to deliver your feedback in the most effective manner.

Occasionally, those receiving feedback can become defensive. We’ll explore various defensive statements and how to best respond to them. We’ll also provide a few examples of when providing feedback becomes more damaging than beneficial.Providing feedback effectively is one half of generating the desired results. What takes place AFTER the session is a huge key, and one that is often overlooked. The closing portion of the training will address how frequently to provide feedback and how to create sustainable shifts in people’s behaviour moving forward.

U.S. Army Photo "Electric Barrier Facility Manager John McGowan Receives Coin from Command Sgt. Maj. Groninger" by Sarah Gross/Released is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Monday, April 13, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Leading for Engagement (Free for ATD members)

Recent surveys continue to show that levels of job satisfaction and employee engagement are at record lows. This is a crisis for businesses and individuals alike.

Kevin Kruse presents conclusions based on surveys of more than 10 million workers in 150 countries, along with his own experience as a former Best Place to Work Award–winning CEO. He reveals the surprising ways that emotions at work spill over into other areas of our lives, and shows how growth, recognition, and trust are the three keys to gaining emotional commitment and loyalty. In this webinar, you will:

Learn about new research that shows companies with highly engaged workers achieve five times higher shareholder return than companies with disengaged workers.
Gain insight on how the spillover and crossover effects can cause your career satisfaction to have an impact on your health, marriage, and children.
Obtain easy and affordable actions leaders can take to create an environment rich in growth, recognition, and trust.
Take part in a two-minute activity that prompted a previous participant to state, “You just changed my entire leadership focus. I’m going to walk through the office with a completely new mindset.”

Tuesday, April 14, 2015, 9AM – 10AM PT: Accelerate Your Executive Career through Personal Branding and Marketing Yourself (Free for ATD members)

The term marketing makes most people think of products, services, and commodities. How about marketing ourselves—our talents, accomplishments, and value—inside our organization and within our profession, industry, and community? Are you and your staff members comfortable talking about yourselves in this way? More importantly, are you prepared to talk about yourself in this way—packaging your talents and accomplishments, showcasing them, leveraging them, and presenting them to your organization and community? Identifying, creating, and articulating a personal brand empowers people to own their career and seize opportunities. Personal branding and the ability to market ourselves is an essential ingredient for successful career management. Learn how to create a framework to embrace and develop this core competency.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: 4 Strategies to Gain Management Coaching Support for Your Training

Whether you deliver online or in-person training, there is nothing more powerful than managers who support training with well-delivered coaching. This webinar will teach four strategies to gain management coaching support for your training programs, as well as:

How to gain management participation without even mentioning coaching.
How to gain management support on their terms... easily.
Why managers want coaching but just don’t know it.
One coaching method guaranteed to get managers coaching.
Why a method, “Observational Coaching,” can be one of the most powerful techniques used to get manager involvement.
Why managers already coach and don’t know it.
How to measure coaching and why upper level management will love you for it.

A partnership between training and coaching is a powerful one. Learn the right approach to get manager buy-in to support coaching like never before.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Measuring Modern Learning – Lessons from Content Marketing and Learning Programs

Content marketing—a strategy based on providing prospective clients with insights they can use and thought leadership, not just product information—is dominating the marketing world today. It's a strategy that is coming in response to the myriad ways people are interacting with and utilizing information in today's marketplace. But some of its central tenets—turning one piece of content into many, using new ways of measuring the impact and influence of multiple content pieces, identifying and empowering influencers—could hold the key to managing and measuring modern learning for organizations. Businesses have struggled for years to help them more effectively manage and measure the impact of the learning programs, and looking to other business functions and resources may be part of the answer.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Best of LS DemoFest 2015: Award-Winning eLearning in Action

This year at Learning Solutions, dozens of conference participants will show off their latest eLearning, mLearning, and performance-support projects at LS DemoFest, offering their fellow attendees the opportunity to see a wide variety of solutions to common learning and support challenges, and sharing information about the tools, technologies, and processes used to build these solutions.

Meet some of the winners from this year’s LS DemoFest in this free webinar, and see their award-winning solutions in the following categories:

Best of Show: Non-Vendor
Best of Show: Vendor
Academic
Alternate
Blended Learning
Business Processes
Game-based/Immersive
Mobile
Soft Skills
Student

Wednesday, April 15, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Keys to Successful Succession Management

Succession is something that most companies want to do well, and yet it’s not considered a significant strength of many talent management plans. In this webinar we will look at the following aspects of this growing talent discipline:

Key research findings on today’s succession management .
A framework for effective succession management.
Integrating succession into your talent strategy.
Succession management pitfalls.

Principal Analyst Laci Loew and VP of Product Development Claude Werder will discuss the latest results from the Brandon Hall Group 2015 Succession Management Survey. In addition, there will be a dedicated Q&A time for you to share your succession and talent management questions. We hope you’ll join us!

Wednesday, April 15, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: Dispelling Myths: Understanding Learning and Knowledge Management Teams (Free for ATD members)

Knowledge and learning teams are the suppliers of information and training within an organization. Often, instead of collaborating eagerly, the teams are notorious for misunderstanding each other. This webcast will explore the two teams and examine key organization objectives that compel them to work together effectively. During this session, the presenters will discuss:

Common misconceptions each team has about the other.
Key organization objectives each team contributes, and their similarities.
Ways these teams can work together to demonstrate extraordinary value within the organization.

Thursday, April 16, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Unleash Your Hidden Heroes: The Simple Truth About Managers and Your Strategy

You’ve nailed down your strategy (finally!) Your people want to help the business succeed. Your customers want what you’ve got. So, what’s standing in the way of success? Chances are you haven’t unleashed your hidden heroes—your managers.

Strategy execution is hard work, but it doesn’t have to be. When managers are equipped with the insights and skills to lead their teams, there’s no limit to what these hidden heroes can achieve for your business.

Join author and strategy execution expert Gary Magenta for a highly interactive webinar to learn the simple truths about managers and your strategy. Key questions to be discussed:

Why are managers so well positioned to accelerate your success?
What are the “landmines” in your managers’ path, and how can you help them?
What’s even more important to manager success than skill building?
How can you, as leaders of talent development, easily sustain your manager development efforts beyond the classroom?

Thursday, April 16, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: Behind the Scenes: Ensuring Flawless Virtual Events (Free for ATD members)

Flawless virtual events don't just happen—they take careful planning, preparation, and practice! This session will explore what goes into making impeccable virtual events. You'll discover how to make a smooth and seamless transition from traditional face-to-face content to the virtual classroom. You'll also receive some valuable tips on how to:

Prepare your virtual learners and facilitators for success.
Anticipate and mitigate common risks in the virtual classroom.
Use producers to help make your virtual events effortless and memorable.

Friday, April 17, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: Detoxify Your Work Environment Using the 5 Languages of Appreciation (Free for ATD members)

In spite of the growing number of employee recognition programs, employees still report high levels of not feeling valued. Negativity, cynicism, and apathy continue to increase in many workplace environments. Discover the difference between “going through the motions” recognition and authentic appreciation by learning the core conditions necessary for individuals to truly feel appreciated. Empower your staff by giving them the tools to encourage colleagues in the ways that are meaningful to each individual. In this session you will learn how to:

Delineate the differences between traditional employee recognition activities and authentic appreciation.
Identify and apply the core components necessary for appreciation and encouragement to be effectively communicated in work-based relationships.
Implement practical actions to “hit the mark” in communicating appreciation to team members and colleagues.

U.S. Navy Photo "Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal - Leone" by Denise Emsley, NAVFAC Hawaii, Public Affairs/Released is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Monday, April 20, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: Great Leadership Creates Great Workplaces (Free for ATD members)

The key to making extraordinary things happen in organizations is great leadership. Leadership author Jim Kouzes will present evidence that exemplary leadership makes a meaningful difference in people’s engagement and in the performance of their organizations. He will explore the engagement difference through the lens of The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership, offer concrete advice on implementation, and show how they create higher levels of performance and engagement.

In this webinar you will learn:

The one attribute that is the foundation of all leadership.
The factor that most distinguishes leaders from individual contributors.
The condition that is most likely to produce personal-best leadership and how you can create it.
The factor that rules innovation, brand image, acceptance of leaders’ influence, commitment— just about everything else important in organizations—and what leaders can do about it.
What exemplary leaders do that enables them to become the best.
How great leadership impacts engagement and the bottom line.
The secret to success in life—seriously.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: Developing Great Frontline Sales Managers (Free for ATD members)

High-performing sales managers have a profound impact on a company's bottom-line sales results. But too often training initiatives focus on salespeople and not a company’s frontline sales management team. Join Norman Behar and Ray Makela of the Sales Readiness Group for a highly interactive webinar as they share best practices and strategies for creating effective sales management development programs.

During this webinar, you will learn how to:

Turn star sales reps into high-performing sales managers.
Identify and address the unique challenges sales managers face.
Implement an effective development program for sales managers.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Why Motivating People Doesn't Work... And What Does

In nearly every organization, leaders are being held accountable to do something they cannot do—motivate others. Leaders can't motivate people, because people are already motivated. The question is not if a person is motivated but why.

This realization always leads to an epiphany for training and human resource practitioners. HR's dependence on carrots and sticks to motivate people had become common practice because we didn't understand the true nature of human motivation. Now we do, thanks to thought leaders like Dan Pink and his blockbuster book DRIVE. But letting go of carrots and sticks has been a challenge. HR leaders know Dan Pink, they know what they've been doing doesn't work, and they know managers aren't successful at motivating people. But they haven't understood what their alternatives are. In this webinar, Susan Fowler will help HR leaders understand the viable alternatives to the carrots and sticks on three levels—individual, interpersonal, and organization.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: The Blended Learning Breakthrough (Free for ATD members)

Do you recognize the benefits of online learning but worry about the benefits that are lost without face-to-face instruction? You are not alone! For many organizations, the ability to offer training and development programs that are completely online is not practical. Blended learning uses a diverse range of online and traditional teaching methods to offer more effective learning experiences. Whether you are delivering learning opportunities to students or a group of employees—who are balancing heavy workloads, family commitments, and business travel—organizations of all kinds have much to gain from the blended learning approach. Save your seat to learn about:

The limitations of traditional or classroom modes of learning.
The difference between blended learning and traditional learning.
The impact of social media and social learning in the development of blended learning.
Successful models of blended learning.
A toolkit of activities and resources that can be used for a blended learning approach.

Thursday, April 23, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: A View from the Top: The Learning Executive’s Take on Learning Strategy and the Future of Learning (Free for ATD members)

This webcast will discuss topics in learning of importance to learning executives. Specifically, it will:

Present ATD’s research on how learning leaders can develop an effective learning strategy that is aligned with business strategy. What is the value of alignment? What are some challenges learning leaders face when trying to align learning goals with overall business goals, and how do top chief learning officers overcome these challenges?
Discuss findings and trends from ATD’s Learning Executive Confidence Index (LXCI), which reflects learning executives’ six-month outlook for the health of learning in organizations. The webcast will also provide insights into how learning leaders use the findings from the LXCI.
Provide a preview of upcoming research of interest to learning executives, including our report on the role of the chief talent development officer (CTDO) and how the field of talent development is defined in organizations that have a CTDO.

Friday, April 24, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Employee Engagement: 10 Reasons, 10 Ways (Free for ATD members)

Raising your company’s employee engagement levels doesn’t require another department-head meeting or brutal budget-approval process. Employee engagement happens when we engage with our employees. In this 60-minute webcast, Zane Safrit will share 10 reasons why you need an engaged workforce and 10 ways to create engaged employees and drive revenue growth and positive cash flow.

"Norco Green Team" BY Norco Bicycles IS LICENSED UNDER CC BY-SA 2.0.

Monday, April 27, 2015, 11:00AM – 12PM PT: Engaging for Success: Measuring Employee Engagement (Free for ATD members)

There is no doubt that engaged employees are vital to an organization’s long-term success. Researchers and organizations confirm that highly engaged employees are more productive, innovative, customer-focused, profitable, and committed to the success of their organizations. Therefore, it is essential for organizational leaders, employers, and decision-makers to understand how to evaluate employee engagement levels in order to develop their employees and improve their organizations.

The focus of this interactive webcast is to offer practical tips and strategies on measuring engagement. After attending the webcast, you will be able to:

Identify key employee engagement components.
Explain why it’s important to measure engagement.
Demonstrate how to use metrics and instruments for measuring engagement.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 11AM – 12PM PT: Perpetual Venues: Extend ROI through Touch-Point Engagement and MicroLearning (Free for ATD members)

The explosion of feature-rich, interactive, cloud-based meeting and conferencing technologies has already begun to restructure how organizations communicate and disseminate, study, and archive digital assets and data. With the use of webcams, audio and video streaming, and real-time file and information sharing becoming the norm within social channels, organizations feel pressure to keep up with their customers, partners, and workforce.

With the rapid advancement of technology and the desire for more frequent, up-to-date, and convenient access to materials and people, perpetual venues have demonstrated tremendous potential as the next disruptive paradigm shift in online technology. In this webinar, Adam B. Arthur, director of the CDC’s Virtual Platform Initiative, will present a comprehensive road map for leaders, planners, technologists, acquisition professionals, educators, communicators, web pros, multimedia specialists, and advisors to execute these initiatives successfully.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Making Performance Support Affordable Using Tools You Already Have

Many of the performance-support (PS) tools currently available for purchase have price tags that can be prohibitive, especially for small and/or not-for-profit organizations. Organizations with limited budgets need to find more affordable ways to support their workers.

Participants in this session will explore how an organization with a limited budget has successfully implemented PS using existing eLearning authoring tools, and see examples of the PS solutions that organization implemented. You’ll discuss the need for developing a plan for PS within your organization, learn the key elements of a PS plan, how to choose the best solution for your plan within existing limitations, and examine other existing or easily obtainable digital and non-digital tools you can use to support workers at their Moment of Apply.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015, 10AM – 11AM PT: Measuring the Impact of eLearning! Turning Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluation Upside Down

Whether it's to inform, to improve, to change—or a combination of these factors, training must have measurable outcomes that contribute to larger organizational goals. Good training evaluation techniques identify and measure the impact of learning on job performance and ultimately, organization-wide business results. When it comes to measuring eLearning, Donald Kirkpatrick's Four Level of Evaluation model is one of the most widely used and respected worldwide.

Co-hosted by Limestone Learning's very own Paula Yunker, with 30+ years of instructional design experience and certification in Kirkpatrick's Four Levels Evaluation—this webinar will explore why learning evaluation is an important component of any training program and how you can measure the application of learning beyond the learning event itself. We’ll discuss how to implement learning evaluation that’s practical and provides value but isn’t complicated, time consuming or expensive. Paula will also share her favourite learning evaluation resources after the webinar!

Save your seat for April 29th to learn more about: