How did December get here so fast? If 2016 seems like a blur to you, you’re not alone. We’re all going faster these days, trying to do more in less time, and looking for new ways to work smarter. If you’re looking for new ideas, you don’t have to wait for Santa to deliver them—free December webinars are already under the tree. Productivity, learning success, business optimization, and more! 

Thursday, December 1, 2016, 9AM – 10AM PT: Culture Change in Action – The Training Professional’s Guide

Members of our profession are not just able to change the culture around us, we’re uniquely equipped to do so. Why? Because people can see us!

In this webinar, led by award-winning author and repeat Training Magazine presenter Ed Muzio, you’ll explore:

• How systematic, disciplined application of simple behavioural principles becomes culture.

• How anyone, at any level, can create real impact on the broader environment—effecting permanent change gradually.

• How to seed productive, positive culture yourself, simply by enabling your colleagues and associates to create more output and experience less stress in their own work.

We’ll be changing worlds—actually, YOU’LL be changing worlds. Hopeless victims need not attend—everyone else, come ready to act! 

Thursday, December 1, 2016, 10AM – 11AM PT: Optimize Your Resumé! (Free for ATD members)

It's always wise to have your resumé up-to-date. If you haven't looked for a job in a while, you may find that your resumé looks dated and doesn't work well for online applications. Perhaps you're thinking about a career change and want to present yourself in a different light. Whatever your résumé challenge, this webcast can help you solve it! Resumé expert and career coach Lakeisha Mathews will answer questions such as:

• What should a modern, professional resumé look like?

• How do I format my resumé for online applications?

• What can I do to highlight older experience on my resumé?

• How can I present myself if I want to make a career change?

• What do you do if you have limited paid experience using a skill, but have employed that skill as a volunteer?

When you register for the webcast, be sure to provide a question that you would like the presenter to answer.

Friday, December 2, 2016, 10AM – 11AM PT: Steps to Successful Business Writing (Free for ATD members)

Is poor writing hurting your company’s bottom line? Is it stifling your own career? Billions of dollars in lost productivity can be traced to substandard writing, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal. And many highly competent employees are denied promotions because their writing isn’t cutting it.

Take your writing—and your employees’ writing—to a new level. Jack Appleman, prominent writing instructor and coach and author of 10 Steps to Successful Business Writing, will lead a fast-paced interactive webcast where you can submit completed exercises for his review. After the webcast, you’ll be able to:

• Write faster and better.

• Get to the point quickly with plain English.

• Stop wasting time with back-and-forth emails.

• Design your organization’s writing training program.

Sign up for this engaging webcast, and feel free to include a question for the presenter when you register. 

Monday, December 5, 2016, 10AM – 11AM PT: Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture (Free for ATD members)

Mentoring is a proven method for sharing knowledge in a personalized way, helping someone else gain skills and confidence, and improving overall job satisfaction. So why do so many companies still struggle with making mentoring a part of their culture?

Join this webcast featuring Randy Emelo, author of Modern Mentoring, to find out how you can:

• Make mentoring a part of your organizational culture.

• Support your entire workforce in mentoring relationships.

• Appeal to people of all ages with modern mentoring.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016, 9AM – 10AM PT: Your eLearning Tools: How to Use Them Most Effectively

It has been said that every eLearning professional should have multiple tools in his or her eLearning toolkit. But having them and using them effectively are two very different things. Learning how to make the most effective use of the tools you have can make your eLearning design and development process much smoother.

Join Adam Cannon, eLearning Evangelist at eLearning Brothers, as he walks you through some tips and tricks for making the most of the tools in your toolkit. He’ll cover:

• Creating a style guide.

• Gathering your assets.

• Purposeful design.

• Storyboarding.

The tips and tricks he’ll cover can be applied to any of the most commonly used eLearning tools. 

Tuesday, December 6, 13 & 20, 2016, 10AM – 11AM PT: Advanced LMS Reporting in Moodle & Totara LMS with Zoola Analytics

LMS Reporting is both the most sought-after learning management feature, and the feature users are least happy with in their existing LMS. Some of the reporting challenges LMS users face are limited access to data, limited options to analyze data, and limited options to share results. Zoola Analytics was developed to solve these reporting challenges in Moodle and Totara, by allowing administrators to eliminate hours of effort required to report on eLearning usage and outcomes, such as course activity, progress, effectiveness, and more.

This webinar will demonstrate how matching a powerful, easy-to-use reporting solution with access to all of your learning data can be used to provide a more meaningful, interactive, and actionable insights. See how a modern LMS reporting solution can exceed all of your learning management needs and expectations.

Attend the live webinar to learn how to use Lambda Zoola to:

• Enhance learner productivity and improve performance.

• Reduce employee turnover, and increase learner engagement.

• Improve training and learning processes, and see consistently better learning results.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016, 11AM – 12PM PT: The Democratization of Learning and Development (Free for ATD members)

The future of learning and development (L&D) is already here. This new reality includes workers and their managers sharing more of the responsibility than you might be used to. That doesn’t mean your L&D organization, practices, and tools are obsolete—they still play an important role. But they do need to evolve. These days, the most successful chief learning officers do more than just supply learning. They also enable their workers to take learning into their own hands.

Join this webcast to explore:

• Why yesterday’s approaches to L&D are no longer meeting today’s demands.

• What progressive organizations are doing differently to build more agile and responsive L&D functions.

• Suggestions for ways you can adapt your strategy, organization, and toolkit so you’re ready for this democratic future.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016, 11AM – 12PM PT: xAPI in eLearning – Beyond SCORM to a Big Data Future

RAFFLE ALERT: Register and attend this webinar for a chance to win a $250 Amazon Gift Card.

The Big Data floodgates have opened, yet most organizations have very little insight into the learning they are delivering beyond who took and completed a course. The problem is that learning technology has traditionally been unable to capture much else. The advent of the Experience API (xAPI) seeks to fundamentally change the way organizations deliver, track, and measure learning.

As the learning ecosystem expands to include social, mobile, collaborative, and other informal experiences, organizations need a solution to track and measure their efforts in these areas. xAPI is poised to set organizations free from the restrictions of SCORM and allow them to explore new learning opportunities.

Discussion topics include:

• What is xAPI and why does it matter?

• What are the practical applications of xAPI?

• Examples of xAPI in practice

• The future of learning standards

Tuesday, December 6, 2016, 12PM – 1PM PT: Next Generation Gamification, Simulation and Virtual Reality Learning

How do you develop a new generation of learners who have spent more time with video games than in school? Join us for a session packed with demos and case studies of how leading Fortune 50 companies are harnessing gamification, simulation, virtual and augmented reality, and mobile video to build organizational capabilities:

• A global sales force transformed with a Mission-Possible-themed, video-based, sales simulation game.

• A tower-defense-style game to train cyber security skills.

• A 3D immersive hospitality management game.

• A new leadership initiative introduced with a transmedia storytelling campaign across a multitude of screens and devices.

Finally, the session will demonstrate how the new generation of virtual and augmented reality technology can simulate tasks that are too dangerous, expensive, or inconvenient to practice in real life.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016, 9AM – 10AM PT: Webinar Bootcamp: Proven Steps to Success

Ready to build stronger relationships with your customers and prospects? Looking for opportunities to connect with your audience at a deeper level? It’s easy and cost-effective with live webinars. And your key to success is in the planning, setup, and execution.

Whether you’re new to webinar production, or you’re looking to tune-up your game plan, this resource-filled webinar will guide you through focused steps that will help give you the confidence to get your webinars off to a great start.

You’ll learn:

• How to structure your webinar content for maximum time efficiency.

• Best practices to set up your equipment, camera, and monitors.

• How to use modern webinar tools to engage your audience.

Wednesday, December 7, 2016, 11AM – 12PM PT: Big in 2016: The Trends on Our Radar (Member/subscriber content)

The world of talent development—and the world at large—is changing quickly, and in ways that are shifting paradigms. In 2016, a few exciting new ideas entered the conversation, while a few others seemed to be on the verge of undergoing big changes. And they’re not all focused around technological advancements. Organizations are beginning to look at the latter half of diversity and inclusion, hoping to figure out how to create a more inclusive working environment, while dealing with their inherent unconscious biases. Meanwhile, the practice of design thinking has started to become popular, and companies are seriously looking at the usefulness of their annual performance reviews. 

Wednesday, December 7, 2016, 12PM – 1PM PT: Taking Care of Number One: Functional Fitness for Trainers

Exhausted at the end of a day of training? Sore feet? Cramped back? Throbbing head?

Your job as a trainer/facilitator is to always keep the best interest of your learners in mind.

You plan every move and craft each word coming from your lips to meet the needs of these folks. However, it’s hard to be on top of your game if you are in pain or just dog tired! Let’s face it: training is HARD, PHYSICAL work! And some days we are up to the task more than others.

In this fast-paced, interactive session we’re going to share with you tips and techniques to make every training day an energized day and help you to:

• Stay relaxed.

• Feel and look energized.

• Avoid being wiped out at the end of the day.

You'll identify hazards and pitfalls that create fatigue and drain your energy and learn practical strategies to renew your energy, protect your health, and overcome barriers to energized training.

So join in and take care of YOU! 

Thursday, December 8, 2016, 9AM – 10AM PT: Doin' the Socials: Supporting Learning through Social Media Tools

There are many options for using social media to support our learning in classes, at conferences, and when participating in other events. In this session the facilitators will explore social media tools like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Periscope with a special emphasis on using them to support learning. "Doin' the Socials" is full of examples and ideas for supporting your own learning and extending the reach of your work as a training practitioner. 

Thursday, December 8, 2016, 10AM – 11AM PT: The Leader’s Guide to Competitive Advantage (Free for ATD members)

Competitive advantage is often sought but rarely found. Yet a few organizations continuously outperform their peers year after year. What makes the difference? A killer product, insights from big data, steep barriers to entry, brand power? Or could competitive advantage be within the grasp of every company, if they understood two critical foundation elements?

This webcast will draw on 35 years of hands-on consulting experience with senior teams across all industries on what drives sustainable competitive advantage. Using case studies mixed with personal anecdotes and insightful graphics, it will provide deeper insight into effective strategy execution and culture as the fundamental requirements for competitive advantage. 

Thursday, December 8, 2016, 12PM – 1PM PT: Pulling Back the Curtain on Online Learning: How Does This Stuff Work?

Online content can be simple, or incredibly complicated, or anything in between. But no matter how complicated, or how many activities you may have, all web-based content is based on the same basic languages that tell your browser how to display and work with your courses: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

In this session, the facilitators will:

• Open up some web-based courseware and see what the actual code looks like.

• Explore how making small changes to this code can result in significant changes to how (and if) your content works and displays in the browser.

• Discuss times when you may want to edit code directly.

• Reflect on why being reliant on rapid development environments can put you far behind the curve.

At the end of the session, you’ll have a better idea of how your content actually works with the browser to display your awesome course, and why that can be very important! 

Friday, December 9, 2016, 10:26AM – 11:26AM PT: Changing the Way You Manage Learning Is the Key to Success in the Knowledge Economy (Free for ATD members)

Most management practices and principles were developed in the 19th century, when we learned at a very different pace. Digital technology, automation, and globalization have forever changed everything. In the 21st-century knowledge economy, we produce knowledge and know-how, and need to manage people who must continuously learn in dramatically new ways.

This webcast will show you why and how companies worldwide are changing the way they manage people and learning to succeed in the 21st-century knowledge economy. You’ll learn what managers in the smartest companies are doing to succeed now and in the future, and what you need to do to become part of this worldwide movement. 

Monday, December 12, 2016, 10AM – 11AM PT: Let’s Get Creative: Build Your Own Talent Development Framework (Free for ATD members)

In today's knowledge economy, organizations need to build talent development functions to support the needs of their workforce and the goals of the business. During this webcast, you’ll learn more about the central components of ATD’s talent development framework and how organizations are using it to structure their training departments. Using an online tool guided by your facilitators, you'll learn about building and implementing this framework in your own organization.

During this webcast, you’ll learn how to:

• Define the ATD talent development framework and its 15 primary and 24 secondary functions using research-based definitions.

• Use the ATD talent development framework to create a learning function that’s aligned with organizational goals.

• Build an action plan to engage organizational leaders using the ATD talent development framework.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016, 10AM – 11AM PT: Good Manager, Bad Manager: How to Train Your Way Out of the Modern Management Deficit

One of the toughest transitions in any career is the jump from individual contributor to manager. Even though 99 percent of companies provide first-time managers with some form of training, more than two in five managers believe they were unprepared when they took on the role, according to a new study from Wakefield Research and Grovo, a workplace learning company based in New York City. Surprisingly, the study revealed that the struggle most companies face in developing the next generation of leaders is not due to a lack of training, but rather a failure to design training that is likely to engage 21st-century workers and result in lasting behaviour change on the job.

Join Alex Khurgin, Grovo’s director of learning innovation, for a data-driven journey through the state of today’s management development programs, followed by an in-depth analysis of what is and isn’t working, and topped off with actionable ideas you can use to reimagine your own management training programs based on Grovo’s innovative, microlearning-based instructional design method.

In this presentation, you’ll discover:

• New statistics on the critical importance of management training in the digital age.

• Compelling insights on why many go-to management training techniques fail.

• Actionable tips for designing management training for your 21st-century workforce.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016, 11AM – 12PM PT: ACCEL: The Skills That Make a Winning Manager (Free for ATD members)

Frontline managers—often called people managers—are a vital part of any organization. One of their primary responsibilities is to develop the talent of their direct reports. ATD has developed the ACCEL skills model, which focuses on five key skills necessary for managerial success: accountability, communication, collaboration, engagement, and listening and assessing.

This webcast will centre on applying these skills to developing direct reports. You will also hear recommendations for overcoming some of the barriers to exhibiting ACCEL skills, and suggestions for creating ACCEL skills training.

The key data points presented in this webcast are presented in the forthcoming ATD research report ACCEL: The Skills That Make a Winning Manager, available at www.td.org/manager.

In this webcast, you’ll learn:

• About the barriers that keep managers from effectively exhibiting ACCEL skills.

• How ACCEL skills training is delivered.

• How success in exhibiting ACCEL skills is recognized and rewarded in organizations.

• How success in developing direct reports is determined.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016, 12PM – 1PM PT: Awesome PowerPoint Tricks for Effective Presentations

PowerPoint is the basis for much of the training material you use, and yet it’s text-heavy, dull, and boring. See how you can revolutionize your presentations and other training material using visuals, diagrams, and animated sequences, with some helpful how-to guides, and a collection of awesome PowerPoint tricks, plus a free PowerPoint toolkit to kick-start your efforts for everyone who attends.

Steps to take:

1. Attend this session.

2. Become a PowerPoint Legend.

Participants will be able to:

• Create visual slides using the full range of PowerPoint’s tools to generate your own graphics.

• Manipulate photos within PowerPoint (with no need for Photoshop), so that they convey meaning.

• Use animation—including sophisticated animation—to tell your story effectively.

• Create, edit, format, and animate live graphs and charts quickly and easily.

• Build slides faster by using toolbars and shortcuts.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 10AM – 11AM PT: Best of DemoFest: Award-Winning Learning in Action

This year at DevLearn Conference & Expo, dozens of conference participants showed off their unique mobile learning, performance support, and video learning projects at DemoFest, offering their fellow attendees the opportunity to see a wide variety of solutions to common learning challenges, and sharing information about the tools, technologies, and processes used to build them.

Meet several of this year’s winners in this complimentary webinar. Learn about their award-winning projects and get some great ideas to apply to your work!

Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 10AM – 11AM PT: Research Spotlight: The Essentials of Effective Leadership Development

Each year, Leadership Development sits atop the list of Human Capital Management priorities—and disappointments. Less than 40 percent of organizations participating in Brandon Hall Group’s 2016 Leadership Development research say their LD programs are effective, even while they plan to invest more time and money in 2017.

So why does Leadership Development have such a dysfunctional relationship between investment and success?

The answer can be summed up in one word—strategy. But the truth is much more complicated than that.

You’ll leave this webinar understanding several essentials of effective Leadership Development, including the:

• Importance of a mature strategy that links LD objectives to business goals.

• Critical elements of an effective LD strategy.

• Importance of measuring leadership effectiveness in terms of business objectives and financial performance rather than simply skills improvement.

• Most effective learning modalities in Leadership Development.

• Positive—and negative—impacts of corporate culture on LD effectiveness.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 11AM – 12PM PT: Time Management: You’re Doing It Wrong (Free for ATD members)

What if everything we know about time management is wrong? Bestselling efficiency author Mike Song found that most time management advice is terrible. In fact, he believes that you should never get your inbox to zero, use a daily task list, or write down your big goals.

In this webcast, Mike will replace complex, abstract, outdated, and fluffy time management advice with easy-to-use, practical, quick-hit ideas. These surprising solutions will help you manage your time and life like a pro!

Attendees will:

• Understand why and how traditional time management strategies backfire for most professionals, resulting in lost productivity.

• Achieve more using a simplified approach versus managing top goals and daily task lists.

• Discover 10 quick-hit time management techniques that save time, reduce stress, and boost performance.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016, 12PM – 1PM PT: Skip Learning, Accelerate Expertise

Many studies and experts tell us that training and learning must focus on improving performance. However, performance improvement has always been a nebulous or difficult goal to achieve through training and learning programs. Bersin by Deloitte has released a recent study showing that training programs rank the lowest in the list that learners use to obtain knowledge to improve work. The highest source of knowledge is from connections within the organization.

Skipping learning and accelerating expertise is the new “buzz” of new platforms, solutions, and learning thought leaders. However, most solutions are stuck with “learning content and its tools and mindsets” and not on accelerating expertise.

In this session, we will discuss the following :

• What is significantly different about focusing on performance or expertise?

• What are the different types of expertise researches that have been found to work in rapidly changing organizations?

• What compelling transformation must content undergo?

• How do you help learners think and build expertise and not just learning?

• How do expertise development tools such as framing, channeling, sensing, problem-solving and others accelerate expertise?

• How do trainer, designer, and coach skills get overhauled to become expertise accelerators?

Thursday, December 15, 2016, 10AM – 11AM PT: Technology Excellence Awards 2016 Announcements

Join Brandon Hall Group executives as they announce the winners of the coveted 2016 Technology Excellence Awards in a live web event!

Brandon Hall Group presenters will be Chief Operating Officer Rachel Cooke, the head of the awards program; Chief Executive Officer Mike Cooke, and Vice President/Research Operations and HCM Principal Analyst Claude Werder.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016, 11AM – 12PM PT: State of the Industry Webcast (Free for ATD members)

The State of the Industry report is ATD’s definitive review of training and development trends. In this webcast, Maria Ho, manager of ATD Research, will discuss learning benchmarking data from ATD’s 2016 State of the Industry report.

The webcast will explore trends in key learning metrics, including:

• Direct learning expenditure.

• The average number of training hours used by employees.

• The average cost per learning hour.

• What methods of training companies are using.

• Content areas that companies are focusing on.

Maria will also look at these key metrics for ATD’s 2016 BEST Award–winning organizations, which were recognized for their commitment to talent development.