Did you miss it?

If you missed the free webinar that Stephanie co-hosted with Sean Hougan at Lambda Solutions on October 30th 2014 called Creating Effective and Engaging eLearning in your LMS, check out the archived session. It was a really interesting session that provided participants with valuable information on the basics of understanding the technical aspects of creating transferable eLearning courses that are SCORM compliant. As well, Stephanie shared her insights on the specialized aspects of eLearning course development and some of her favorite eLearning resources. Take an hour, grab a beverage and listen in!

Free Webinars for September 2014

It seems like summer goes by faster every year. As the days grow shorter and the beach becomes less tempting, indoor activities start to beckon. Why not get cozy with one of the free webinars being offered this month? We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014, 6AM – 7AM PST: BEST Webcast Series: Tech Mahindra—Aligning Learning to an Organization's Vision & Mission to Drive Business (Free for ATD members)

In this webcast, Tech Mahindra, an ATD BEST Award winner, will discuss how learning can become a strategic differentiator for organizational growth.

During this webcast, you will learn to:

• Align learning goals to the organization's mission.

• Draw business outcomes through learning initiatives.

• Create a self-sustained learning model.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Learning From Diversity and Inclusion Leaders: Prudential Financial and Pepsico (Free for ATD members)

Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) is recognized as being a necessity to compete and thrive in today’s global, changing workplace and marketplace. Many organizations have discovered that putting the aspiration to create an inclusive environment into action is quite challenging. Join us for this interactive webinar, where we will explore two in-depth case examples: Prudential Financial, ranked number eight in the DiversityInc. Top 50, and PepsiCo, which has established innovative ways to reward and recognize individuals and teams who exemplify D&I. As a result of this webcast, participants will:

• Learn how Prudential and PepsiCo establish priorities for D&I investments and obtain senior-level sponsorship.

• Discover how Prudential and PepsiCo engage employees at different levels in their respective organizations to get involved.

• Learn examples of “big wins” at Prudential in the workplace and marketplace.

• Learn how PepsiCo creates rewards and recognition programs to promote diversity best practices globally.

• Explore where PepsiCo and Prudential see D&I headed in the future

Wednesday, September 3, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: A Leader's Guide to Getting Things Done (Free for ATD members)

Getting things done in complex organizations doesn’t get any easier. Developing leadership gets squeezed out by the challenges and pressures of organizational life. Influential leadership is a new framework for making things happen, and for navigating between the short-term pressures and the long-term purpose of developing leaders.

Short, sharp, and practical, this webcast will share simple ideas that leaders can apply immediately to begin influencing more effectively, making faster progress, and freeing up time to allow their leadership to flourish.

Thursday, September 4, 2014, 5:30AM – 6:30AM PST: BEST Webcast Series: ICICI Lombard – Learning is Protein for the Organization's Muscle (Free for ATD members)

Hear how learning is the protein in the corporate diet at ICICI Lombard, a nine-time BEST Award winner. Learning is the perpetual fuel that satiates each employee’s personal desire to constantly stretch and grow. It adds variety and substance to every job and develops the muscle needed to drive a career. It enhances the flexibility and endurance that helps rise to new challenges. Most importantly, learning is the building block that helps the entire company to continuously grow, strengthen, and be more resilient. In this webcast, you will learn how to design remedial actions to optimize performance levels and build the knowledge and capability base across the organization.

Thursday, September 4, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Finding Balance in Blended Learning: Making the Move to Interactive Online Training

In-person training is reliable, personal, and interactive. Online training is scalable, cost-effective, and empowers people to learn at their own pace, on their own time. With today's agile workforce, blended learning offers the best of both worlds. 

Yet online learning is too often limited to videos and slide decks, meaning learners may spend more time checking Facebook than learning the material. So how can organizations successfully make the move to online training while creating the same kind of captivating and engaging experiences found in person? 

In this lively webinar, you will...

• Learn how to create interactive online learning experiences that your audience will love.

• Explore ways to migrate lecture-style materials and exercises into online courses.

• Receive actionable tips on how to convey concepts interactively and keep your learners engaged.

Immediately following the webinar, participants are invited to remain for a semi-private demonstration of the new Versal for Organizations platform.

Thursday, September 4, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Moving Beyond Compliance: Integrating Your LMS and CRM(Free for ATD members)

Most learning management systems (LMS) are put into place to implement and track compliance training. To ensure 100 percent employee compliance, it is essential to integrate the LMS with the organization’s CRM system. Your sales force most likely uses the CRM system every day—they probably don’t use the LMS every day. In many organizations, the LMS and CRM can leverage each other to achieve better product training and education. Better-trained partners can lead to improved customer satisfaction and reduced support costs.

Attend this webinar and learn how to:

• Identify business cases for LMS/CRM integration.

• List the benefits your organization could achieve with an LMS/CRM integration.

• Diagram the system work flow for a typical LMS/CRM integration

Friday, September 5, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Marketing Strategies for a Targeted Job Search: Tips for Attracting the Attention of Employers (Free for ATD members)

Are you prepared to market yourself? Ask yourself these questions to find out:

• When was the last time you revised your résumé?

• Do you know what T&D competencies or expertise you want to showcase in a marketing campaign?

• Can you describe the professional image or brand you would like to project?

• Is your professional story up-to-date so that it represents the present into the future and not the past?

This session provides practical and useful tips for:

• Developing a marketing action plan.

• Identifying your market.

• Viewing résumés as a basic marketing document.

• Preparing for interviews.

• Creating a positive and confident mindset.

Essential to a successful marketing campaign is knowing how to tell a story and what story to tell to whom. This session teaches those skills and more. Learn what it takes to get the recruiter to listen to you and place your name on the follow-up list. This discussion also will include some of the differences between  phone or face-to-face interviews and those held at job fairs and employment programs.

Monday, September 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Workforce Management Study: Findings Preview

Powering meaningful analytics, workforce planning, and managing a dispersed and diverse workforce: These are some of the most critical workforce management challenges revealed in Brandon Hall Group’s latest research. We invite you to join Mollie Lombardi, principal analyst and study lead, as she shares a sneak peek at some of the initial findings from this breakthrough study, including how organizations are rising to meet these challenges. She will cover:

• An overview of key concerns, drivers, and trends in workforce management.

• Study demographics.

• Insights into how organizations are using technologies like automated time and attendance, scheduling, absence management, and payroll solutions to drive business value.

• How top-performing organizations are integrating workforce management with key talent and business processes.

• The planned output from the study, including a timeline for publications on key topics.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: 2014 Excellence Awards Winners Revealed Sept. 9th

And so the countdown begins! Winners of the prestigious 20th annual Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards in Learning and Development, Talent Management, and Human Resources & Sales and Marketing will be announced in a live web event. Register for this much-anticipated live announcement and see which organizations will be dubbed as this year’s prestigious Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards winners in more than 50 categories.

Your hosts, Brandon Hall Group CEO Mike Cooke, COO Rachel Cooke, and VP/Corporate and Product Development Claude Werder, will take you through the winners of each category and highlight their achievements. As part of the program’s 20th anniversary, all winners will be honored at Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Excellence Conference 2015 to be held January 28–30 at the Hyatt Regency Pier Sixty-Six in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Conference presenters include select Excellence Award-winning organizations, who will take you through their journey of developing and deploying programs, strategies, modalities, processes, systems, and tools that have achieved measurable results.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Building Coachable and Approachable Employees for Training Success

The world of training is changing. The days of all-day workshops and seminars are behind us. Employees need to be developed, but there is little time allowed for the old traditional ways. This is where the world is changing, and NOW has never been a better time for trainers to build their value!

Employees and managers must share the responsibility for performance development. This webinar is dedicated to teaching the foundational principles that learners need to become high performers, and how trainers and managers can train and coach them.

• What the foundational principles are.

• Why foundational principles are required to develop targeted skills.

• Why development of the foundational principles will drive coaching and training success.

• How to create coachable and approachable employees.

• How to assess employees’ learning capacity.

• How managers can coach non-coachable and approachable employees into high performers.

• Why coaching is Training’s # 1 Supporter.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Beyond the LMS: Building a Virtual Training Strategy

Join Training Magazine for a live webinar where you will learn how to create virtual learning environments that deliver an interactive learning experience. This webinar will also discuss how a virtual learning environment can complement your existing learning management system—increasing learner engagement, improving knowledge retention, and reaching learners at their point of need.

This interactive webinar will feature guidance on how to:

• Increase the reach and effectiveness of your training programs.

• Use a virtual learning environment to provide an outstanding learning experience.

• Enhance and extend your existing learning management system.

• Extend the life of training sessions and content.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: SharePoint for Training and Compliance (Free for ATD members)

Training and compliance are now more than ever a necessity in the corporate world. Adhering to applicable laws and regulations concerning your business is vital, and failure to do so can lead to severe penalties. Leveraging an option like SharePoint for training and compliance can effectively reduce security risks and challenges associated with compliance. In this session, we’ll discuss some examples of using SharePoint to support training and compliance in organizations. Topics include:

• Managing training curriculum.

• Employee onboarding/orientation.

• Workflows and version control.

• Project management.

• Using SharePoint as LMS.

Join guest speakers Dr. Shawn Andrews and Matthew Smith as they walk you through some practical examples based on business problems, solutions, results, limitations, workarounds, and lessons learned.

Thursday, September 11, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Add Adventure, Challenge and Discovery in Learning Lessons

Learners often feel that training and eLearning are the least interesting and engaging activities. They have no time. They are busy. So, we need to push hard or force them to complete courses.

What if your courses provide the learners a sense of adventure, challenge and discovery? What if the courses become so inviting that learners are glued to the screen and refuse to end the course? What if they rave about the course and attribute high praises? What if your course is virally promoted to other learners as a “must experience” learning event?

In this webinar, you will learn:

• How to avoid using word learning games, but still add adventure and excitement in your courses.

• How to use heroes (super bosses, employees, customers, etc.) or villains (really obnoxious bosses, employees, customers, etc.) to represent learning challenges.

• How to add provocative exercises and interactivities that enthrall learners into action and learning.

• How to set up an adventure-based exercise by following a step-by-step process.

• How to make sure learners not only get excited but also use the knowledge.;

Thursday, September 11, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: New Technologies for Virtual Coaching (Free for ATD members)

The latest innovation in achieving performance improvement has arrived, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Many of us are experiencing the pressure of  decreased budgets, remote teams, and an increased need for performance coaching.

In this webcast, we will share the key reasons why talent development suffers, and how to overcome those pitfalls and unleash performance. We will also share the latest in a leading, web-based technology platform that helps accelerate talent development.

Friday, September 12, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: The Executive Speaking Presence(Free for ATD members)

What makes us gravitate toward some speakers over others? What is it that makes some people easy to listen to, while others put us to sleep? What can we do to be a great speaker?

This session takes an in-depth look at what it takes to be a successful speaker today, and how to maximize your executive presence in front of any group. We’ll examine 12 key aspects of verbal communication that will help you succeed in presenting, leading meetings, training, and engaging others in successful conversation.

In this webcast, you will learn to:

• Maximize your personal appeal by expressing a fine balance between strength and warmth

• Enhance your content by creating clear, compelling messages and delivering them powerfully.

• Boost your impact by turning presentations into interactive and appealing conversations.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 10AM – 10:30AM PST: Brandon Hall Group Membership: Dynamic Tools for Business Improvement

Whether you work within a Talent Management, Talent Acquisition, Learning and Development, or HR/Workforce Management function, a Brandon Hall Group Membership unlocks answers to questions that every organization needs in order to excel in today's fast-changing business environment.

If you are looking to enhance your human capital management processes, develop a better strategy, plan a major technology purpose, or initiate an organizational transformation, Brandon Hall Group can help with its vast array of online resources and advisory and training services. Our members receive unlimited access to research, and generous collaboration time with our team of expert analysts.

Learn more about how BHG can be part of your team. We will provide you with:

• A short update on the latest research

• A tour of our Research OnDemand member centre, DataNow (benchmarking database) and KnowledgeBases (database of technology solution provider profiles, and comparison tools).

• Overview of strategic consulting services.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: When Remembering Really Matters: The Power of Serious Games for Learning

Remembering is hard. Forgetting is easy. Employees have to complete a lot of training during the year—so much so that it is simply impossible for them to remember everything that is asked of them. “Processes, policies, terms, Oh My!” While business-critical for organizations, so much detail can be overwhelming to learners.

This session shares research on remembering—and forgetting—and identifies techniques that foster long-term retention. It then connects these techniques to games and explains how games can help form long-term memories ... and business results. We'll share recent research on games and case studies that demonstrate how games can be used for learning.

Attendees will be entered to win a free "starter" package for use in your organization and—after the webinar—are invited to remain for a focused exploration of the game-creation platform, Knowledge Guru.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014, 10AM – 10:30AM PST: Working with Brandon Hall Group: Many Options, High Value

All solution providers need tools to connect with clients, and Brandon Hall Group  provides you with a wide variety. Our newest and best include:

• BusinessBuilders: A research-based tool that helps organizations make a business case for new technology purchases. Available for licensing.

• DataNow: Our new online platform that puts customizable research results in your hands as soon as our analysts close a survey. You can instantly filter data by company size, revenue, and region; reports on major verticals are also available. DataNow comes with all Ultimate memberships.

• KnowledgeBlasts: Short research reports—on topics like technology selection and implementation—that deliver compelling data as well as tips on how to succeed. Available for licensing or as part of our Premier or Ultimate membership packages.

• KnowledgeGraphics: Research data for your clients or prospects to put to immediate use. One-page, colourful graphics available for licensing or as part of Premier or Ultimate membership.

Learn more about these tools—and other services Brandon Hall Group offers to solution providers—at this insightful webinar.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Subject Matter Expert + Tablet = Faster, Cheaper, Better Video Learning Content

In this session, we'll discuss a whole new way to gather video learning materials from your subject matter experts. Rather than dragging them to a recording studio, why not put the studio in their hands?

We'll introduce you to a new class of tablet-based video production tools that makes it easy and even fun for SMEs to share their knowledge with the organization and its customers. You'll walk away with a couple of great new free tools and a lot of insight into how to fit these tools into a learning program.

We'll cover:

• New, easy-to-use tools that will let your SMEs create content right from their tablet.

• Best practices for using these tools effectively.

• How to make this content even more effective with easy post-production tools.

• How to coach your SMEs to get the best possible on-camera performance.

Thursday, September 18, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Cracking the Hidden Job Market (Free for ATD members)

In this fast-paced, 60-minute session, national job search expert Laura M. Labovich will share with you:

• Why the "reactive" job search approach is a time-drainer and waste of time.

• The importance of being proactive in your job search campaign, and why it's too late to land the job once the job is posted.

• How a job target can enable you to help your network to help you better.

• Why a company list is like a GPS for your job search.

• How to become an insider—because insiders get hired!

Friday, September 19, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Six Keys to Career Resilience(Free for ATD members)

It is commonly believed that “training is always the first to go” when organizations need to cut the budget, leaving many corporate training professionals looking for work. You often hear “let the problems roll off you like water off a duck's back,” but do you know that ducks aren't always waterproof? It takes a certain process for a duck to stay afloat, as well as for us to keep our career afloat. Building career resilience is crucial to your success. Using the metaphor of a duck’s waterproofing and relevant real-life case scenarios, we will explore the six steps to help you build your career resilience.

Tuesday, September 23, 10AM – 11AM PST: Creativity Matters: Why Creativity Is Crucial and How to Develop Creative Employees (Free for ATD members)

Global business trends underscore the important role of creativity and creative problem solving in the new millennium. Indeed, many reports published in the last several years highlight creative thinking, innovation, and creative problem solving as essential 21st-century skills for both individuals and organizations. Unfortunately, most schools and organizations are not effective in developing these crucial skills. A recent Conference Board report on job readiness skills listed creativity as one of the 14 applied skills most desired about new hires, yet creativity was also the number one skill organizations felt least prepared to develop among employees.

The purpose of this session is to highlight how these trends support the need for more concerted and systematic efforts in promoting creative thinking in individuals and organizations. Some of the topics to be explored and experienced include:

• What is creativity?

• How can I become a more effective creative thinker?

• How does creative thinking relate to leadership effectiveness?

• How to develop the creative talents of employees.

Tuesday, September 23, 10AM – 11AM PST: DataNow: Easy-to-Customize Research for HCM Practitioners

Brandon Hall Group for more than two decades has produced great research on Human Capital Management. But providing research that is quickly accessible and customized to each client’s needs has been challenging. Until now. This webinar introduces new research that is instantly accessible and customizable for your needs through Brandon Hall Group’s new DataNow platform. In this webinar, Brandon Hall Group analysts will show highlights of recent learning, talent acquisition, and workforce management research that can you can see in various formats, filtered by company size, revenue, and more.

In this webinar you will:

• See highlights of just-released research on Workforce Management, Social Talent Acquisition, Compliance Training, and Social Learning.

• See how you can quickly filter data by company size, revenue, and much more!

• See how data can be quickly exported to share with your team.

Wednesday, September 24, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Agile Organization: Improving Time to Decision through Collaboration

Modern organizations are driven by their ability to react, change, and make decisions quickly. But attaining that agility can be difficult as organizations continue to become more diverse and dispersed. It takes more than just collaboration tools. It takes an organizational commitment to a collaborative culture, supported by the right tools and technology, to let organizations move faster, perform better, and win more often.

Join Mollie Lombardi, VP and principal analyst, workforce management, of the Brandon Hall Group and Shelley Schmoker, VP Marketing at Bloomfire, as they look at the links between agility and collaboration. The webinar will discuss:

• How your organization can harness collaboration to improve decision making.

• The key strategies to building and reinforcing a collaborative culture.

• How collaboration not only supports internal processes like learning and performance, but how it impacts sales and customer service

Wednesday, September 24, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of DevLearn: Streamlining Your eLearning Production Process for Efficiency

Clients want high-quality courses quickly and inexpensively, but there are many parts to creating eLearning courses, so you need an effective and efficient production process. A training, tracking, and performance monitoring system will let you increase your quality and decrease your production time and costs.

Session participants will learn best practices for documenting procedures, establishing clear roles, and creating tools, job aids, and checklists. You’ll get access to many of the tools and checklists. In this session, you will learn:

• The data types to capture and analyze about your current production process.

• How to map out your production process at both a macro and micro level.

• How to create a knowledge base to help train team members and reduce effort.

• How to create systems for effectively managing production.

Thursday, September 25, 10AM – 11AM PST:Strategies for Training Groups with Mixed Reading and Communication Skill Levels – Part 1 (Free for CSTD members)

Are you frustrated by mismatches between the materials you have to deliver, and the literacy, communication, and other foundation skills of the people who show up?

What can you do to increase your success in supporting learning with mixed level groups? Building support for literacy and foundation skills into your instructional and assessment strategies can enhance learning outcomes and support employees in developing their skills. Best of all, strategies for supporting literacy and foundational skills are often more engaging, memorable, and fun for everyone.

This is the first of a two-part webinar series offered by the Advancing Workplace Learning project in partnership with CSTD. To learn more, please visit the website. www.advancingworkplacelearning.ca.

Friday, September 26, 8:30AM – 9:30AM PST: Creating Engaged Employees (Free for ATD members)

The word "engagement" evokes different impressions from different people. What does the word mean? Why should anyone care about engagement? How can an organization create and sustain a culture of engagement? This presentation will answer these simple, yet profound questions. Upon attending this webcast, participants will be able to:

• Define the word “engagement.”

• Explain how to make the case for engagement with leaders and key decision makers.

• Build an organizational culture of engagement and sustain it.

Participants also will receive an instrument to compare their organizations' engagement culture to best practices.

Monday, September 29, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Employee Brain Performance: Leveraging Neuroscience to Improve Critical Thinking (ATD subscriber content)

Science offers surprising information about what really engages employees and makes a difference in optimizing their performance.

Claire Herring is the head of product at Blue Ocean Brain. Claire is a human capital performance improvement expert. Her work has been featured on the Hallmark Channel, in Real Simple magazine, Fitness Magazine, and Women’s Health. She combines her experience as a Big Four executive with advanced degrees in cognitive science to help organizations optimize employee performance and elevate critical thinking. As head of product for Blue Ocean Brain, Claire helps organizations promote cognitive skill improvement through intellectual challenges and fun experiences that are brand new 365 days a year.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: 3 Keys to Getting Employee Engagement Right

It's estimated that unengaged workers cost the US $350 billion/year and that US businesses lose $11 billion annually as a result of employee turnover. Clearly engagement is a key priority for all organizations—so why is it so low? And more importantly, what can be done—quickly—to get it right?

Join us as Mahan Tavakoli, Regional Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer for Dale Carnegie, shares best practices and action steps you can take immediately to start improving employee engagement.

Takeaways include:

• Why organizations have largely failed to turn engagement around despite all the buzz.

• Latest research into the drivers of employee engagement.

• Actions individuals can take—immediately—to start boosting employee morale.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: From Searching to Shopping: Leveraging E-Commerce within Your LMS (Free for ATD members)

An extensive catalogue of training content provides tremendous value to an organization and its learners, but ensuring that learners can easily find and access the courses and resources they’re looking for is crucial. Luckily, there are many creative ideas that we can borrow from online retail to help learners find what they’re looking for and even discover content they didn’t know they needed. Finding ways to increase user adoption ensures your learning resources are used and valued!

In this session we will explore ways to leverage e-commerce capabilities to enhance the traditional training and development searching experience. You will learn how to:

• Replace the standard enrolment processes with an intuitive shopping experience.

• Expand the reach of your content through targeted promotions.

• Leverage cross-sell offerings.

• Monetize content to external users’ bases.

Using Course Authoring Tools

Although a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) has more robust content management capabilities, an alternate course development solution is to use an e-learning authoring tool to create stand-alone courses.  Courses created in this manner can be delivered in a variety of ways, for example imported into a Learning Management System (LMS), hosted on a website or delivered on a CD or DVD.

Most authoring tools allow you to add animation, audio and video while some are also capable of creating tests/ evaluations and tracking results.  The final result and the level of skill required to use these tools ranges from template-based and entry level to highly customizable and complex. Some examples of authoring tools are Articulate, Captivate, Lectora, ToolBook, and Outstart Trainer.

Content created in authoring tools can be imported into most LMS and LCMS products and content can usually be exported out of an LCMS to be used elsewhere, but it may not be editable.  Whether you use an LCMS or an authoring tool to create training content, be aware that revisions to course content must almost always be made in the source authoring tool. 

Stay tuned to our website.  We'll be posting a white paper called "Inside Learning Management" in the next few days that provides more information about LMS, LCMS and custom learning management solutions. In the meantime, if you’re interested in finding out more about learning management, contact us here at Limestone Learning Solutions.