Free T&D Webinars for June 2014

It's hard to believe we were wearing mittens just a couple of months ago! Spring is well into its stride, and everywhere you look, things are blooming. This is a great time of year to shake off any remaining cold-weather cobwebs and make an action plan. Why not check out a free webinar or two and get some fresh ideas? We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Creating Highly Effective Virtual Teams – A Case Study

Can a virtual team be as effective as a co-located team? This is a question that organizations are debating, and the arguments on both sides are very compelling. The reality is, a virtual team can be very effective if the correct conditions are met and maintained. It’s about putting together the right personalities, ensuring they have the right tools, and leading the team successfully. After discussing the arguments for and against establishing a virtual team, this workshop will use real-life examples to address six key enablers for success:

• How to form the virtual team

• How to enable the virtual team

• How to maintain the virtual team

• How to protect the virtual team

• How to lead the virtual team

• How to reward the virtual team

Tuesday, June 3, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leading Collaborative Virtual Teams

As advancing technology and globalization continue to impact many organizations, it's clear that virtual teams require consistent attention, direction, and recognition from managers. Strong work relationships remain critical to drive productivity and support innovation, trust, and nimble teamwork. But building and maintaining strong relationships becomes challenging as teams become more dispersed. What must a leader do in the virtual workplace to effectively manage distributed team members? After attending this one-hour webinar, you'll be able to:

• Design your "game plan" around eight practices used by the best virtual team managers

• Bring attention, direction, and recognition to your virtual team

• Build accountability even when you can't sit down next to your colleagues

Tuesday, June 3, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Trends in the Corporate Training Market: MOOCs and Online Development Programs

In today’s online environment, the ability to learn any subject is merely a click away. People can use the Internet to learn how to play guitar, bake a cake, or repair a dishwasher. Open online courses allow learners to easily drop into learning environments that meet their specific needs. Why shouldn’t they be able to learn business skills and concepts that will help develop their skills and grow their careers in the same way? With the growing skills gap, it is more important than ever to invest in continuous learning within the workplace. Join Senior Analyst David Wentworth of Brandon Hall Group as he explores the power of incorporating an online learning platform to attract top candidates, train new employees, and develop the skillset of their workforce. Key takeaways include:

• A look at how individuals learn best today and what that means for the future of corporate learning

• The role that MOOCs play in the corporate training environment

• How organizations can adapt their learning and development programs to keep their employees’ skills up to date

• Real-world examples of companies successfully embracing online learning platforms

Wednesday, June 4, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Three Top Tips for Applying to Brandon Hall Group’s Excellence in Technology Awards Program

Are you a solution provider that offers phenomenal, innovative technologies to learning, talent management, HR, or sales and marketing organizations? Or are you an organization that has created or implemented technologies to help streamline, save costs, and improve productivity within your organization? Then we want to hear from you, and invite you to apply for the Excellence in Technology Awards Program in mid-June. The program offers you an opportunity to showcase your products, which will be reviewed by Brandon Hall Group’s elite analyst team and industry experts. Now entering its 20th year, the Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards Program is the most prestigious awards program in the industry. Often times called the “Academy Awards” by Learning, Talent, and Business Executives, the program was one of the first of its kind in the learning industry, which was pioneered in 1994.

This 15-minute webinar will offer you step-by-step instructions, including:

• Overview of a simple process for applying

• nside tips on what the judges look for in the applications

• What not to do

Thursday, June 5, 2014, 7AM – 8AM PST: Coaching with a Global Mindset (Free for ASTD members)

This webinar will develop a foundation for understanding what coaching is and how culture influences the coaching process. Participants will harvest the creative potential generated when people who think and act differently come together. In today’s interconnected and interdependent global workplace, it is vital to shift paradigms from cross-cultural to intercultural to inclusiveness. By doing so, we build bridges across the cultural, linguistic, generational, and gender divides found when working across national boundaries, organizational boundaries, and the boundaries created by different disciplines and educational backgrounds.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Key Practices for Developing a Game-Changing Candidate Engagement Strategy

The name of the game in recruiting has changed in recent years. With competition for talent at an all-time high, sourcing has become a long-term strategy. As if talent acquisition teams didn’t have enough on their plates with finding qualified candidates and getting them in the door, they’re now expected to attract and engage talent on an ongoing basis. To accomplish this task while keeping up with their day-to-day responsibilities, some have drawn inspiration from customer relationship management techniques used by marketers and salespeople to keep leads warm and foster repeat business. The result is rapidly evolving into a standard component of effective talent acquisition best known as candidate relationship management (CRM). Join Brandon Hall Group Talent Acquisition Analyst Kyle Lagunas as he discusses key practices in CRM, including:

• Establishing a working definition and value-add of candidate relationship management

• Identifying effective CRM techniques in use by today’s most successful hiring organizations

• Highlighting tools and technologies available to support CRM as part of a long-term talent acquisition strategy

Tuesday, June 10, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Leaders as Teachers: Improve Organization Foresight and Fast Sight(Free for ASTD members)

Foresight means seeing what’s ahead. Fast sight means responding to change faster than competitors. Learn how a leaders-as-teachers (LAT) approach improves these two essential characteristics of sustainable success. A formal LAT program develops leadership capacity to analyze and learn from failure; encourage discussion, debate, and experimentation; distribute wisdom deeper into the organization to strengthen alignment and execution; and create a culture that is open to learning. When leaders teach, they create environments to help teams discover, adapt, and respond effectively to changing business conditions. This session will teach participants:

• Evidence to build a business case for a LAT approach

• Ideas to shape the size and scope of an approach that will succeed and survive long term

• Considerations for expanding the role of leader-teachers far beyond the boundaries of the traditional classroom

Tuesday, June 10, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Zeroing In: How to Meet Your Leadership Development Challenges

As many industries recover from a withering worldwide recession, organizations are focusing on new ways to expand the strategic contributions of their leaders. AchieveGlobal conducted research with 50 major companies to get a clear picture of what leadership development looks like—the challenges, goals, approaches and outcomes—and to share insights you can apply in your organization. Join us to zero in on new findings on critical ways to develop your leaders, including:

• Challenges – Surprisingly, rather than grappling with external business conditions (the economy, technology, etc.), organizations are more stressed about solving eight functional leadership development challenges.

• Goals – Regardless of the challenges they face, most organizations want their leaders to be able to improve day-to-day results in nine behavioral areas.

• Approaches – To reach their goals, organizations need to decide how much they’ll commit to learning initiatives. Consider four ways to define your learning initiatives and key questions to help you decide which approach to take.

• Outcomes – The webinar will conclude with details on how four top organizations in different industries successfully met their most pressing leadership development challenges.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Bridging the Gender Gap – A New Approach to Shattering the Glass Ceiling

Despite strong efforts in many organizations, women continue to be poorly represented in top leadership roles worldwide. This means many businesses are failing to reap the well-documented "gender dividend." So what are all these well-meaning companies doing wrong?

Chances are, they are looking at “advancing women leaders” as a development issue, or perhaps as a hiring-and-promoting challenge—when, in fact, it’s a culture change issue. Advancing women into leadership roles successfully requires bringing together all stakeholders (and both genders) in a concerted change effort, with support and energy from top leadership. The organization must change, to bridge the gender gap and make the very best use of all its talent, thereby gaining a competitive advantage. In this webinar, you will learn:

• The gender dividend: the business advantage of developing women leaders in the organization

• Why addressing this challenge as a change effort that brings many stakeholders together is essential to success

• How your change management initiative can succeed in bridging the gender gap to include everyone

• How to use your talent management strategy as a key lever

• Some specific skills women leaders need to be effective in positions of power

Thursday, June 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: A Framework for Mobile Learning

Mobile learning may still be in its infancy, but according to a new Brandon Hall Group survey, it is proving to be effective, and high-performing companies are leading the way. The challenge is where to begin. Organizations are struggling to understand whether mobile learning is important to them, and if so, how it fits into their learning landscape. In fact, according to Brandon Hall Group’s 2013 Mobile Learning Survey, only 21 percent of companies worldwide have a formal mobile learning strategy.

Join Senior Analyst David Wentworth of Brandon Hall Group and Pete Barrett, NetDimensions’ President (Americas) and General Manager of NetDimensions Interactive, as they examine what a fully mature mobile learning framework looks like and offer ways for organizations to either get started or move ahead.

Key takeaways include:

• A view of the current mobile learning landscape

• Mobile learning strategies of high performing organizations

• Real-world examples of mobile learning and performance support in action.

Thursday, June 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Let Go and Replace Very Old LMSs that Do Not Support New Learners and Business Needs

Studies have shown that companies are systematically changing LMSs into newer and better-suited learning systems to support newer learner needs and business demands. But how do you assess whether it’s time to make the change? In this webinar you will learn:

• What are the common moans and complaints based on studies about LMSs, their cousins LCMSs, Knowledge Management and Performance Support systems?

• Where are the fracture points between learner and business needs, and the capabilities and strategies of LMSs, etc.?

• How do you conduct, collect, and present data to determine whether it’s time to let go or replace your LMSs?

• What important strategies must you plan and prepare to implement the change?

• How do you ensure that the new solutions will meet new learner and business needs?

• What are models and examples of learning systems that are highly flexible, affordable, and creative, and that allow learners to go through discovery, play, and structured learning?

Monday, June 16, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Mediocrity or Greatness: Transformational Leadership in an Incremental World(Free for ASTD members)

The world is changing so quickly that just being competent or improving incrementally isn’t sufficient for sustained success. Yet most organizations are satisfied with only getting a little better, consistently resisting more transformational initiatives. This webinar presents a proven, low-risk methodology for developing transformational leadership throughout an organization. Based on the recently published book The Star Factor (written by the presenters), the webinar shows people how to discover the “wisdom” that makes star performers exceptional. This webinar will teach you to use the latest in the neuroscience of learning to develop others in your organization to think and act like the stars and transformational leaders.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Big Data(Free for ASTD members)

This webcast is based on the recently released report from ASTD and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) titled, Big Data, Better Learning? How Big Data Is Affecting Organizational Learning. The report dives into the trending field of big data and examines how organizational learning is gathering and leveraging big data for training and development.

Join Carol Morrison, senior research analyst at i4cp, and Jenny Dearborn, senior vice president and chief learning officer at SAP, as they explore the findings of the report and how organizations are using big data.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of Performance Support Symposium: Extending the Learning Blend with Performance Support

Organizations today face an urgent need to continuously support learning and performance on the job. The scope of the learning environment extends beyond classroom and online blends to include learning and performance-support opportunities at the point of work. Considering workforce mobility alone forces a reassessment of how we design, develop, and deliver solutions at the point of work. While we excel at linear learning methods in formal training, the work context requires a more diverse mix of smaller, task-level, role-specific learning and performance-support assets.

Participants in this session will learn how to create seamless, edge-to-edge solutions that extend a blend of the right learning and performance-support assets to the right learners and performers—at their moment(s) of need, in the right amount, in the right format, and to and from the right devices. You’ll learn why expanded discovery at the point of work reshapes and drives agile, iterative design and development methods that extend into the post-training point of work.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Business Side of a Successful Performance Consulting Practice – Session 2: Finding Your Niche

This series is for you if you are new to consulting or are thinking about starting your own consulting practice in the areas of training, e-learning, process improvement, or performance improvement. The series will explore issues like:

• If I’m good at what I do, why do I need to worry about the business side of my business?

• Why should I find a niche? I like doing a lot of stuff and I’m more interesting getting paid.

• Why should I worry about legal structure stuff? I hire people for this.

• What will insurance do for me? What’s the difference anyway?

• Contract! I didn’t sign up to be a lawyer.

• I already have a network. Why worry about marketing channels?

This session is about finding your market niche so you stand out in the noise of established players, wannabes, and has-beens. You will understand the importance of branding yourself in ways that distinguish you in the marketplace.

Thursday, June 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Using Kirkpatrick® to Move Beyond Training Order-Taking

Do you feel like the order-taker in the training drive-thru lane? Then you won’t want to miss this new webinar. During this session, you will discover tactics to create more meaningful communication with training requesters so that you can better understand the performance and results that the training is intended to support. You will learn the critical questions to ask that will allow you to move beyond the training talk and into conversation about organizational needs. You will witness role plays demonstrating how key conversations could occur, with a focus on where the conversation went well and where it veered off track to assist you in managing your own conversations successfully.

Whether you lead a training department or are an instructional designer hoping to get better direction and feedback, this session will assist you in creating and delivering training that impacts performance and key organizational results.

Tuesday, June 24, 10AM – 11AM PST: Why Sales Training Doesn’t Work and What to Do About It

Improving performance of the sales team is likely the most difficult task any Sales manager or trainer faces. The pace at which we work and the amount of information needed on the job is overwhelming. Traditional methods of training just don’t work. Join experts from Sales and Marketing Management (SMM) magazine and Brainshark to learn how to turn training from a one-time event into a continuous journey that leads to increased sales. On this webinar with SMM and Brainshark you’ll learn:

• Strategies to take training to the next level with continuous sales performance support

• Techniques for creating a sales training process and tips on how to implement it

• How to measure and understand what works

Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Is the Loss of Institutional Knowledge Hurting Your Company?

Over the next decade, organizations will experience the largest wave of retirements in history. To further impact turnover rates, Gen X and Gen Y workers on the average are leaving after only five and two years of service respectively. Without a solid and ongoing information succession plan to capture, transform, align, and track your employees’ tacit knowledge, your company’s ability to maintain and/or increase its performance will be affected. Register below to hear more about this challenge and to learn about strategies you can implement at your company to protect your institutional knowledge.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Positive Workplace: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Exceptional Performance(Free for ASTD members)

Everyone is talking about the positive workplace! From The Journal of Positive Psychology to Harvard Business Review and The Wall Street Journal, improving productivity through workplace well-being is the hottest topic around. Join industry-leading experts Kim Rowe and Patrick Howell for this dynamic, application-focused webinar, and learn to transform your workplace into a positive one. Find answers to some important questions:

• Why do some organizations change, grow, and perform better than others?

• Why do certain employees remain engaged, stay focused, and exude optimism, while others are easily distracted and disengaged?

• What makes some organizations great places to work, fostering lasting friendships and professional relationships?

Thursday, June 26, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Culture Factor (Free for ASTD members)

Lewis Thomas once wrote: “If the air is right, the science will come.” The “air” in organizations has to be right for everything else to come, from gaining a marketplace advantage to attracting top talent, engaging employees, and developing new ideas to sustained profitability. Effective leaders are great at creating cultures that supply that air because they know that until they get culture right, nothing else will work well, at least not for any length of time. In this webcast, we will discuss why culture is such a game changer, strategies to create a culture that produces business results, and some immediate steps you can take today to up the air quality in your organization.

Free T&D webinars for March 2014

Crocuses are popping up, and the sun is putting in a longer work day lately—could spring be approaching? Clear out the winter cobwebs and jumpstart your spring with some new business ideas for March; there are plenty of free webinars to choose from. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Diversity and Inclusion: Inspiring Learning for a Changing World (Free for ASTD members)

With globalization and shifting demographics, understanding diversity and inclusion (D&I) is a requirement for every training professional to ensure that learning is relevant in a changing world. In this one-hour interactive webinar, you will learn how key trends are transforming the workplace, workforce, and marketplace, and what the implications are from a training perspective. The presenters will provide practical tools that you can adapt in your training initiatives going forward to address this business imperative.

• Learn what D&I is and why it matters to you

• Discover D&I best practices for greater effectiveness

• Enhance your professional skills to address changing requirements for success

Thursday, March 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Agile Project Management for Learning Projects – LLAMA!

Either by design or by default, your team’s environment and work practices are reflected in the level of service you deliver to clients and customers. New technologies, rising expectations, and shrinking budgets challenge us all to new levels. How do you keep your project from falling short in delivering on time and on budget when things are constantly changing?

Agile project management is a hands-on practical approach created by the software development industry to keeping up with the ever-increasing speed of change. In this session, we’ll explore how TorranceLearning’s approach to Agile project management (LLAMA: Lot Like Agile Methods Approach) creates the team ecosystem and project management methods that set the stage for delivering amazing results for your clients (internal or external) and for your team. 

Thursday, March 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Emotional Intelligence for Effective Leadership (Free for ASTD members)

Today’s fast-paced and complex business environment requires leaders who can cope more easily in stressful situations, exude confidence, and be flexible and optimistic. This webcast will explore the exciting topic of emotional intelligence (EI) and how it provides the foundation for the qualities and characteristics of an effective leader. Participants will look at the world’s first scientifically validated model of EI, the EQ-i 2.0, and understand how leadership connects to specific EI skills. The webcast also will present a plan to cultivate EI and empower one's ability to create greater leadership effectiveness.

Monday, March 10, 2014, 9:30AM – 10:30AM PST: Disengaged to Engaged Employees – The Impact on Your Culture (Free for ASTD members)

When you look around your work environment, do you as a leader/manager recognize the signs of a disengaged employee? Do you understand the impact that this can have on your organization as a whole? Constant negativity at the water cooler may be slowly poisoning your work environment. Good employees say very clearly that if a negative culture does not change, they will seek a position elsewhere. Remember that it is always the good employees who leave—because they can!

Join Doug Lawrence as he explores the signs of disengaged and engaged employees, and how both types can impact a mentoring culture. Doug will leverage past learning experiences to help you create an organization that has an engaged, empowered, and accountable workforce—enabled through a mentoring culture. This presentation will benefit leaders and managers in any organization, and HR practitioners who are struggling with a culture that is driven by negativity and disengaged workers. If you suspect this is you, then consider joining us for this presentation.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Are You Training Sales Managers for the Right Skills? (Free for ASTD members)

Sales managers have always worn too many hats, and that level of responsibility is only increasing. Still the question remains—is their development keeping up? To keep up, many sales organizations are turning to surveys to capture important sales manager performance data. Unfortunately, survey design is not something sales professionals know much about. The result is that many sales surveys produce faulty data that lead to bad decisions. In this highly interactive session, you will:

• Examine how the role of sales manager has changed

• Learn why assessments are an effective method for developing sales manager performance

• Analyze the common mistakes made when creating sales manager assessments

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Magnetic Culture – Tools to Retain Your Top Talent

Highly successful organizations know that the key to their success is keeping their employees fully connected throughout the entire employee life cycle. Connection begins as your top talent is on-boarded and continues as they learn, collaborate, innovate, socialize, and share. How do you improve the employee processes so that those employees not only feel connected but also share this feeling with others, creating a magnetic culture? How do you enhance your culture and make it one that employees do not want to leave?

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Next Generation of Learning Content Strategies – Learning Content in the Age of YouTube and Facebook

Every organization that delivers employee training and development programs must deliver learning content. The challenge in today’s world is that traditional approaches to content might no longer help organizations find, develop, and deliver the right content to the right employee at the right time. In this webinar we will explore the critical elements of the next generation of learning content strategies:

• Curating – organizing content to provide context and access

• Defining content – in today’s world, content is anything employees can use to improve job performance

• Delivery – using next-generation strategies to merge delivery tools with content for the greatest impact

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: How to Transform Your Training Content into an Engaging Story

As learning and development professionals, we know that we’re wired for stories. The problem is, we’ve got to teach facts and figures and processes and tools—which can get pretty boring. Here’s the good news. Even this content can come to life and be “stickier” through the power of storytelling. Anyone can learn to construct and deliver stories that spark interest and improve results. Join Roger Courville and get ready to take notes as he reveals how the world’s oldest pastime can rock the modern virtual classroom.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014, 12PM – 1PM PST: Survey Basics(Free for ASTD members)

Back by popular demand! Patti Philips will walk you through the fundamentals of creating and using surveys and questionnaires. Surveys and questionnaires are common instruments used to collect data of all types. Whether evaluating a training program or assessing an organizational climate, self-administered surveys are a tool with which we must contend. This webcast presents the four basic but critical challenges that can make or break a successful survey project. Upon completion of this session, you will be able to:

• Recognize the four challenges in survey design

• Calculate the sample size given the size of the population, when sampling is appropriate

• Calculate the appropriate number of responses required, given the size of your target group

• Improve the accuracy of responses by following the tips provided for asking the right questions the right way

• Consider key issues in developing survey questions

Wednesday, March 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: eLearning Salary & Compensation 2014

What do eLearning professionals earn these days? Are salaries in your country and worldwide rising, falling, or flat? How do your organization size, industry, years of experience, and other factors influence your salary and compensation?

Join 2014 Global eLearning Salary & Compensation Report author Patti Shank as she leads a panel of eLearning professionals to compare key report takeaways. The panel will address what the almost 6,000 survey respondents said in late 2013 about their salaries and compensation, review salary and compensation trends, and discuss the trends they expect to see moving forward. Whether you have read this report or not, attend this webinar to learn more about global eLearning salary and compensation.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Personalize the Learning Experience by Leveraging CRM and LMS (Free for ASTD members)

In today’s self-paced world of online learning, students are empowered to learn on their own terms. While this flexibility may be a significant advantage to the learner, it can be a challenge to provide learners with the support they need to be successful. In this session, we will look at innovative ways that CRM and LMS systems can be integrated to provide support teams with real-time access to learners’ status and information. By more closely linking these systems, potential up-sell or cross-sell opportunities can be identified more easily, and case-management solutions can be used to address learner questions and feedback. Leveraging both CRM and LMS systems provides an opportunity to make the learning experience more personal and bring back the human element with personalized interaction.

Friday, March 14, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Our Profession: Where We've Been; Where We're Going (Exclusive Webcast for ASTD's Professional Plus Members)

Join legend Elaine Biech as she reviews the history of the T&D profession and makes a case for why you should care, what’s important, and what’s not.

Monday, March 17, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Career Development for Millennials (Free for ASTD members)

Hired the best early-stage talent? Are they staying with you as long as you had planned? Join  Dr. B. Lynn Ware to hear how your company can design its career development offerings so that they will appeal to this generation of talent and extend the employee lifecycle.

Ware will report the results of a recently completed, groundbreaking study about how Gen Y workers make decisions to change jobs. The reasons are different than you think. The results cry out for a change in company talent management practices to emphasize early career support and development, even during the on-boarding phase.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Demystifying Mobile Learning

A lot has been said about mobile learning and how it is taking enterprise training by storm. However, it has become quite challenging to separate the noise from facts. In this webinar, we will address:

• The state of mobile learning and key drivers behind mobile learning for enterprises

• Different types of mobile learning formats and use cases

• Low-cost approaches to jump-starting your mobile learning initiatives

• Pros and cons of various mobile learning models

• Recognizing potential minefields and best practices when it comes to building, deploying, and measuring learning impact

Tuesday, March 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Planning Lives and Building Engagement (Free for ASTD members)

Industry icon Marshall Goldsmith helps attendees to:

• Review why it is so difficult to achieve even simple change—and the classic delusions that keep us from changing

• Understand the classic debate between determinism and choice and see how most engagement work is deterministic

• Learn a new model for planning the future

• Understand why active questions can help people become more engaged

• Participate in the "active question" research study (optional)

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best Practices for Virtual Leadership Development

The challenge of leadership in global organizations and the deficit of emerging leaders are two of the many factors leading businesses to explore alternative approaches to leadership development.  New technologies have opened to door to creative, cost-effective, and engaging ways to train your future leaders, regardless of their location.

Today’s virtual programs are a far cry from the online programs of just a few years ago. In this Training Magazine webcast, Tom Masotto—Vice President of Product Management at ON24—will discuss best practices for using virtual environments to:

• Reach global leaders faster and more cost-effectively

• Provide busy leaders with more flexibility

• More tightly integrate learning with daily work

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: Recent Research Highlights from Brandon Hall Group's Talent Management Practice

This session of the Brandon Hall Group Monthly Research Spotlight Series highlights actionable talent management data. You will learn:

• Insightful analytics-based facts about leadership development drivers and talent management risks

• Talent management trends to plan for

• Talent management priorities on which to focus your attention for better business impact

• A framework for designing talent management excellence

• A model for diagnosing your current level of talent management maturity

• About upcoming talent management research

• Exclusive research resources available through our Brandon Hall Group membership

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture (Free for ASTD members)

Mentoring has proven again and again to be a powerful and effective workforce development tool, and the need for mentoring, knowledge sharing, and skill building continues to grow. However, traditional mentoring, where an older mentor meets with a younger mentee in person to help facilitate development and groom them for career progression, is no longer adequate in today's hyper-connected and fast-paced world.

Based on the September 2013 Infoline, "Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture," this webcast will describe how organizations today must embrace a new form of mentoring and knowledge sharing that allows workers to find and connect with their colleagues so they can learn while on the job, share best practices throughout all areas of the business, and collaborate with people no matter where they may be located.

Thursday, March 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leadership Development – Strategy in Action

According to Brandon Hall Group’s recent Leadership Development benchmarking research, more than 300 survey respondents told us that leadership development was their top priority for accelerating business performance, yet only 25.3 percent of respondents rated their leadership development programs as extremely or very effective. How do we improve leader development, increase leader excellence, and in the process achieve higher and sustained levels of business performance?

Session topics include:

• Strategy: Understanding the what and why of leadership strategy to identify leader development priorities

• Culture: Shaping organizational culture to enable experience-driven development

• Action: Identifying key moments to spark change and being a passionate and courageous agent of change

• Sustain: Creating an enduring learning organization and building an internal coaching culture to sustain it

Friday, March 21, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Gaining Credibility: Leading Executive Conversations to Improve Your Results (Free for ASTD members)

Are you a manager, director, or vice president (or aspiring one) who has found that conversations with C-level executives can be challenging? Do you want to improve your results? Executive coach Sally Williamson will share insights into what top execs value, and give you strategies to gain the credibility and influence you need to get buy-in for your recommendations and improve your results. You’ll learn:

• What top executives value and how they think

• The three core concepts that leaders listen for, and ways to deliver on them consistently

• How to define and create a compelling message

• Tips for developing a high-level conversation framework to capture executive interest and support for your projects and recommendations

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Engaging & Retaining Employees That Keep Your Customers Happy

Great performance is achieved through successful employees. Successful employees are highly engaged. Highly engaged employees receive feedback and recognition. Over 75 percent of organizations believe employees receive most of their feedback in the performance management process; less than half feel that feedback is highly effective. How do you improve the employee feedback and recognition process, increase employee engagement, and in the process achieve higher levels of performance? How do you help your employees become successful?

Join the discussion with Trish McFarlane, VP of Research from Brandon Hall Group, as she shares recent research and key practices on creating a positive talent management environment that focuses on increasing employee success, and in the process increasing performance outcomes.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: L&D Emerging Measurement Practices: From Executive Reporting to "Instant Insights"

This presentation will share the latest topics on the minds of L&D practitioners as they relate to emerging measurement practices, including executive reporting, big data, social learning, scrap learning, strategic program measurement, prescriptive “Instant Insights,” and building a business case for analytics. Glimpse into the latest trends and challenges on the minds of thought leaders and practitioners, and glean creative insights to augment your learning analytics strategies, now and beyond.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Learning and the Innovating Organization (Free for ASTD members)

In the fall of 2013, ASTD and Claude Legrand, managing partner of Ideaction, Inc., conducted an extensive survey on how the Learning and Development (L&D) community sees its role in the creation of innovative organizations. L&D has a critical role to play, because innovating organizations do not have more effective processes or more creative individuals. Instead, they have leaders, managers, and individual contributors who are trained to innovate systematically.

This webcast will discuss the results of the survey and what organizations need to do to become more innovative. Legrand, an expert in innovation for more than 25 years, will present a primer on how to create successful innovation programs, and will suggest options you can consider to help your organization become more innovative.

Free T&D Webinars for January 2014

For many of us January means embracing a new year full of possibilities. Some of us have resolutions; some of us like to wing it. Whatever your approach, it’s good to have some support. Why not check out one of this month’s free webinars and start off your year with some new learning tools? We hope January’s events will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Alignment: A Powerful Process for Peak Performance (Free for ASTD members)

Let us help you develop your conference game plan! Join us for the 2014 TechKnowledge orientation webinar for first-time conference attendees. Jump-start your conference planning by learning about key activities during the conference, the eight conference tracks, tips for success, and a broad overview about how to make the most of your conference experience.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Battle of Top eLearning Tools

There are many authoring tools in the marketplace, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. At Training 2014 Conference & Expo, Joe will give an unbiased overview of all the tools in three categories: PowerPoint add-ins, installed (non-PPT), and Cloud-based. In this session, Joe will focus on four of the top tools to see how they compare:

• Adobe Captivate vs. Articulate Storyline

• Articulate Studio vs. Adobe Presenter

Joe will give you an honest appraisal and will invite your questions and input too.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Technology Tools to Make Training Stick

Most trainers would like to see their training stick so it is used by participants in their jobs... if only they knew how and had the time. This session will feature practical, evidence-based techniques for instructional designers and training instructors to increase transfer of training, whether it is instructor-led training, self-paced elearning, or a blend. Barbara will demonstrate several new training transfer technology tools to make it quicker and easier than ever to make the training stick.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of the Best: The 2013 Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology Award Winners  

Kick off the new year by learning which organizations are recognized for making the best advances in a variety of technologies, including: LMS technologies, content authoring technology, performance support technology, learning evaluations, marketing automation, other sales and marketing technologies, mobile learning technology, social learning technology, fully integrated talent management platforms, talent acquisition technology, compensation technology, rewards and recognition technology, CRM automation, and much more. In this special webinar event, you will:

• Learn the winners of the prestigious Gold, Silver and Bronze awards in more than 30 technology categories.

• Get snapshots of the award-winning technology advances being honored.

• Participate in online surveys on technology use in the learning, talent management, and sales and marketing industries.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: How to Avoid Nine Common Mistakes with Video(Free for ASTD members)

This webcast is for learning professionals who are new to shooting video. Join video-maker, speaker, and author Steve Haskin for a fun and illuminating webcast that will show you how to shoot learning videos like a pro. You’ll learn to avoid common mistakes such as jump cuts, cross cuts, misusing the lower third of the screen (supers) and much, much more.

Thursday, January 9, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Make Adult Learning Come to Life

Need to take your training from ho-hum to Oh YEAH!? But not sure where to start? Look no further! Through hands-on activities, this session will teach you how to use several easy and quick techniques to make your training more fun, interesting, and effective. Learn to:

• Trigger retention in learning activities

• Sequence activities for impact

• Identify creative and fun activities that appeal to various learning styles

Tuesday, January 14, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Cultural Intelligence: Effective Tools for the Global Workforce

While our world is now fully global, most educational institutions are failing us drastically when it comes to preparing employees to work across cultures. While most jobs nowadays require some type of across-the-border interaction, too few employees are appropriately prepared to avoid the cross-cultural land mines that lie within the international arena. Through this session, participants will learn how to:

• Discover the different cultural dimensions at play when interacting across cultures

• Position themselves within cultures

• Learn about culturally different leadership styles

• Tweak their communication style to bond across cultures

• Adjust their culturally rooted expectations

Tuesday, January 14, 2014, 12:30PM – 1:30PM PST: Micro-Scenarios: Affordable and Easy to Build

Learning is best achieved when learners are pushed to the edge and provoked to think and make decisions. Scenarios can effectively engage and draw them into the learning process. However, these can be costly and challenging to develop. This session will help you discover the quickest and least costly ways to build micro-scenarios. Ray Jimenez will focus on helping you develop sure-fire scenarios that take hold of learners’ attention instantly including:

• How to set up micro-scenarios for very important topics

• How to find the right challenge to engage learners

• How to ensure that the content is learned while learners are having fun

• How to build scenarios that are affordable and easy to construct

• How to design micro-scenarios for mobile, tablets, and desktop eLearning

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Best of Learning Solutions: Ideas You Can Play With

We learn through playful discovery and experimentation; our brains make sense of the world through actions, interactions, and the resulting feedback loops. But are we designing truly playful learning spaces, or have we merely ported the limitations of pen and paper to computers and tablets? You will examine some of the more interesting interactive learning environments, explore how their designs use principles from psychology and neuroscience, and focus on how learning comes from interactions with the external world. Learn:

• Seven ways our brains (and bodies!) make sense of the world

• Which new technologies hint at future learning environments

• What educational-technology companies are already playing at the intersection of new technologies and learning

• A framework for evaluating new learning products

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Use Micro-Learning Techniques to Change Behaviour and Improve Performance

Micro-learning refers to the tiny bursts of learning we do every day to solve problems, make decisions, and improve performance. All training involves a micro-learning phase if the goal is behaviour change and ROI. Trainers tend not to emphasize this last mile of learning because it is too personalized, short-lived, and entangled in work. Learn how new technologies and methodologies are changing that. Discover a new method for including micro-learning in training that breaks learning content into its smallest relevant chunks, called knowledge cards. Successful examples and demonstrations in leadership, innovation, teamwork, and emotional intelligence will be presented.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: LMS Trends

This installment of the Brandon Hall Group Research Spotlight webinar walks through BHG’s latest research on Learning Management Systems trends and takes an advance look at the soon-to-be-released Learning and Development benchmarking study. You will learn about some of the intriguing results included in the LMS Trends 2013–14 report and give an advance peek at highlights of the Learning and Development benchmarking study, including spending, strategies, and learning and talent management integration. This webinar will include:

• Statistics on LMS spending per employee

• Trends on LMS deployment and satisfaction

• Information on enhancements to Brandon Hall Groups LMS KnowledgeBase

• Information on recent and upcoming Brandon Hall Group research

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Best Webcast Series: TELUS – Using Collaborative Tools to Build Your High-Potential and High-Performer Employees(Free for ASTD members)

TELUS believes “culture is our competitive advantage,” and one way this manifests is through the development of high-potential and high-performing team members. As an eight-time winner of the prestigious ASTD BEST Awards—one of only two organizations to do so—TELUS takes great pride in its human capital practices. Join us and learn how collaboration-based technologies can be used to help build your own high-potential and high-performer program.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 1PM – 2PM: Making Connections: A Training Magazine Networking Jam

Do you want to learn about gamification and see a great example in action? Do you want to make new connections to help your career and business? Do you want to learn the latest in analog and digital networking? Do you want to maximize your experience in a conference like Training Magazine's 2014 Conference, and meet your peers who plan to attend? Do you want to learn the secrets of conference hypernetworking? Then join Digital Team Building Expert, CEO of Geoteaming, and Your Training Magazine 2014 Chief Social Officer John Chen as he shares his secrets in this online Networking Jam where he’ll share his networking secrets gained from decades of practice. During this webinar, you will NOT sit passively. Instead you will:

• Meet passionate training professionals just like you

• Learn new face-to-face networking skills

• Learn how to install and use the networking and gamification technology Goosechase, which will be used at Training’s Training 2014 Conference & Expo

• Learn how to hypernetwork using Twitter at a conference to meet twice as many people

• Walk away with at least one new networking tool or technique to increase your sphere of influence

Thursday, January 16, 2014, 10:00AM – 11:00AM PST: Leadership Training That Sticks: Lessons Learned over 21 Years

With over 21 years of customizing leadership and management programs for hundreds of clients – and training thousands of leaders and managers – we know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to making leadership and management programs “stick.” Many leadership and management programs are events that come and go with little impact on the organization. However, when a leadership development program “sticks,” productivity improves, innovation increases, leadership emerges, and employee engagement and loyalty soars! In this short webinar, you will learn five characteristics that increase the “sticky-ness” of your leadership program, moving it from an event to an effective, culture-defining initiative.

Thursday, January 16, 2014, 10AM – 12PM PST: Employee Development on a Shoestring: Developing Talent outside the Classroom (Free for ASTD members)

With budget constraints and organizations struggling to do more with less, many employees (as well as those responsible for their development) are challenged to find ways to address employee development needs. WLP professionals may quote the "70-20-10 rule," which says that development happens mostly through on-the-job experience as well as coaching and feedback. Training professionals and the supervisors and employees they support need alternatives and complements to formal learning, because formal learning is not enough. In this webinar, explore other, non-training ways to develop employees on a tight budget. Consider the pros and cons of various non-training development methods, and the requirements and specifications of three employee development ideas. Then begin to develop a strategy for implementing new employee development methods for your organization.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Why Your Training Development Team Is Getting Bad Information… and How to Fix It

Content is only as good as the input your training development team uncovers to create it. You have skilled developers, but if they aren’t getting the information they need, their content will miss the mark. From requirements gathering to content, your training developers must be able to uncover the right information from all types of subject matter experts (SMEs), yet many developers struggle. Are SMEs uncooperative, or do your training developers need a different approach? Join this session to discover:

• The #1 reason why training developers don’t get the information they need

• When misinformation occurs most frequently during development, and how to fix it

• Three strategies to get accurate, useable information from executive SMEs

• Two strategies to handle SMEs who sidetrack conversations

• Three steps to fix it and get more accurate information

Tuesday, January 21, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Develop Your Change Intelligence Factor (Free for ASTD members)

The ability to change is your only real competitive advantage and the single most important critical success factor today. The stronger your change intelligence factor becomes, the easier it is for you to successfully navigate the challenges of a dynamic and complex environment. If your change intelligence factor is weak, you struggle to cope with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Change can be frightening, confusing, and downright scary. This webcast will introduce three change intelligence practices designed to help you embrace change cognitively, emotionally, and physically. Learn how to leverage your budding change intelligence in key areas of workplace life: engaging employees, holding powerful conversations, resolving conflicts, and leading effectively.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leveraging Game-Based Mobile Learning to Anchor Your Organization’s Critical Knowledge

What knowledge is most critical for your employees to perform at their best? How are you ensuring that this information is “above the noise” and differentiated from other information or training they are bombarded with every day? How do you know if they’re getting the message? And how engaged is your workforce, anyway?  This webinar will demonstrate how to leverage game-based mobile learning to deploy the most critical, “performance-impacting” knowledge to your employees, receive real-time analytics on how well they are assimilating it, and assess and drive overall employee engagement.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Virtual Conferences: If You Build It, They Will Come (Free for ASTD members)

What are the pros and cons of virtual conferences? How are they different from regular conferences? What are the technology requirements for both the government entity and the participants? How do you keep participants engaged when hundreds or even thousands of people are participating remotely? These and many other questions will be addressed as we walk through best practices of sourcing, organizing, and managing a successful virtual conference. Join us as we examine the logistics of setting up a virtual conference and investing in and evaluating the needed technology with Bernie Izler of the Bureau of Prisons.

Thursday, January 23, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Identifying and Nurturing Employee Talent

A 2012 report by Deloitte identified eight trends in human capital that will have the most business impact over the next 18 to 24 months. One of the trends identified was the development of next-generation leaders. Identifying and nurturing emerging talent increases the availability of experienced, capable employees prepared to drive future growth. During this session, Alan Fine will explore the fundamentals of a high-performance environment, and the basic activities that create empowerment, accountability, and trust for managers and the emerging talent they lead.

Thursday, January 23, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Building a Sustainable ROI Process during Changing Times (Free for ASTD members)

Sustaining ROI in the face of accelerated change, moving targets, and competing resource demands is no easy task. Only by planning for sustainability, with a long-term line of sight, can your ROI efforts endure and excel. Join Holly Burkett, principal of Evaluation Works, as she highlights core characteristics of a sustainable ROI measurement process and provides proven tactics for helping you ensure its durability and organizational value over time. Learn:

• How to assess an organization’s evaluation process and practice maturity

• How to address common barriers that can derail ROI momentum and sustainability

• Best practices for implementing and sustaining the ROI process in the face of perpetual change

Tuesday, January 28, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Manager’s Employee Engagement Toolbox(Free for ASTD members)

Review the advantages of an engaged workplace from a manager’s perspective. Engaged employees can be a significant advantage for managers, themselves, and the organization. This program explains how employee engagement makes the workplace a more productive and satisfying work environment. Attendees will gain practical and useful tools that can be readily applied in their own work environments.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Beyond the Basics: Take Online Training to the Next Level

Your GOAL is to keep your learners focused, engaged, and learning during your online training sessions. PROBLEM: We, as online trainers, are not keeping attendees busy enough. They are multitasking because they can. It’s time to take your sessions to the next level. In order to accomplish this, you need a combination of compelling content and integration of the hottest new tools. This webinar, combined with our live conference session, will do just that. Join Sheri Jeavons, President of Power Presentations, Inc. to learn our Webinars that Wow® content development format. This provides a step-by-step process to guide you through developing dynamic content for your live online learning session.

Thursday, January 30, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Three Key Elements of Effective Leadership Development: Analytics, Strategic Stories, and Modeling a Proven Approach

In today’s disruptive and challenging marketplace, organizations are reinventing themselves to sustain a competitive post. Their leadership development (LD) is limping alongside—it is not bent; it is broken. Without the benefit of practical examples and success stories, the window to leading practices for high-performance leadership development and how they work best in your organization can be foggy. It can be even more challenging to implement practices that make a measurable impact on your business. This webinar is an opportunity to explore three leading leadership development practices, compare them to what is happening in your organization, and define your calls-to-action for closing the gaps.

Free T&D webinars for August

There’s nothing like a month of sunshine to recharge our batteries. We all work so hard, we deserve some summer down-time, relaxing and soaking up the sun. Why not soak up some learning as well with a free webinar? We hope these August events will inspire and motivate you.

Thursday, August 8, 2013, 10:00AM – 11:00AM PST: What Can MOOCs Mean for the Corporate World?

MOOCs are the talk of the town in the higher education space, but what can they mean for corporate training? In this session we’ll discuss emerging trends, platforms, proof of impact, statistics, and business models. What does MOOC mean to you? What is the essence behind the acronym? What could it mean for corporate training? What do we need to introduce a successful MOOC in corporations? Get ready for some golden advice gleaned from early MOOC adopters while designing our LeaderMOOC (coming in September).

Friday, August 9, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Ace the Interview: Behavioural Interviewing Tips (Free for ASTD members)

Employers conduct behavioural interviews to find out if candidates have the skills they need and how candidates might act in specific work situations. This webinar will explore strategies and provide tips to help you prepare and present yourself at your best. You will “look behind the curtain” and learn how and why employers develop behavioural questions. You’ll also learn about a model for answering behavioural questions that ensures interviewers will get the information they need from you during your interview. By understanding the rationale and process from the interviewer’s side of the table, you’ll be better positioned for success in your next behavioural interview!

Monday, August 12, 2013, 3:30AM – 4:30AM PST: Learning and Development Trends in India 2012 (Free for ASTD members)

Christina Mandzuk, Research Analyst for ASTD Research Services, will discuss benchmarking data from 41 Indian organizations for 2012. ASTD estimates that Indian organizations spent $331 per learner on employee learning and development in 2011. One-half was spent on internal learning functions such as staff salaries and internal development costs. The remainder was split between tuition reimbursement (6.1 percent) and external services (43.7 percent). The content from this webinar is drawn from ASTD’s Learning and Development Trends in India 2012 report (which utilized research tools based on the annual ASTD State of the Industry).

Tuesday, August 13, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Managing Remote Employees (Free for ASTD members)

In today’s mobile age, work is no longer confined to your office. But while technology has helped leaders connect to their workforce faster and more efficiently than ever, it also has eroded away all the old rules that used to work in face-to-face settings. In this live webinar you’ll learn:

• Which personality types (e.g., introverts, extroverts, etc.) make the best, most engaged, most productive remote employees (HINT: It’s not what you think)
• Sure-fire ways to assess and measure remote employees’ job performance without using invasive and expensive techniques to spy on their every move
• Why you should NEVER ask “How’s it going?” to remote employees
• Three attitude adjustments that leaders must make to successfully manage remote employees
• Two keys to keeping remote employees disciplined and productive
• How to avoid the five emotional “trigger words” in e-mails that cause misunderstandings, spark conflict, and get you in trouble
• The 10-minute conversation that keeps remote employees feeling connected and engaged
• How to end every email with a “call to action” that elicits immediate productivity

Wednesday, August 14, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: New Rep on the Block – RSA’s Onboarding Success Story (Free for ASTD members)

So you have a new sales rep starting in your organization—how do you ramp them up? Do you have an effective plan in place, or are you struggling to create an effective sales onboarding process? This is the challenge RSA’s sales training team faced with enabling its inside sales team. This session will highlight the overall approach they took in gaining executive commitment, and how they built a world-class curriculum with limited resources.

RSA went from minimal training to full onboarding programs for two different inside sales roles. The result was the fastest ramp-up time for reps that RSA has ever seen. Kristen Gleason & David O’Connell talk about the key approaches that led to the success of this effort, including: incorporating an “it takes a village” methodology, making their internal customers a success, and building trust with their constituents.

Thursday, August 15, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: DECLARE: Online Instruction for Everyone

The DECLARE methodology of instructional design was developed with both the program and course in mind. DECLARE is a set of practical recommendations and content reminders used when creating training programs and courses. Register and learn to:

• Prioritize content and learner needs
• Balance the creation of engaging interactions and content
• Create relevant conceptual models that aid with student retention
• Develop SME and designer relationships.
• Develop a cohesive, consistent, and repeatable instructional design methodology and style

Thursday, August 15, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leveraging Technology for Social Learning

Social media has become a fixture in many of our lives, whether Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other of the growing list of platforms. Organizations are recognizing the power of this type of technology, especially for learning. Using technology to facilitate the natural connections and interactions between learners, instructors, and content is becoming the norm. The key is recognizing the difference between social media and social learning. Webinar topics include:

• The evolution of learning
• The difference between social learning and social media
• Current trends in social learning technology
• The possibilities of social and mobile
• Examples of social learning environments

Thursday, August 15, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Business-Relevant Ways to Convey Learning Impact to Executives (Free for ASTD members)

Regularly producing learning impact data that tells a story to executive stakeholders requires creativity. In this webinar we’ll discuss a next-generation movement in executive reporting and talent development reporting principles, created by a group of senior CLOs. The webinar will:

• Briefly describe practical approaches to measuring learning impact
• Explain how to convey impact in credible ways to executives
• Provide additional examples that articulate impact in common-sense ways
• Identify common metric errors that should be avoided when talking to executives
• Provide an overview of the talent development reporting principles movement

Monday, August 19, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Managing Incompetence (Free for ASTD members)

"You probably chose to read this because you think you are surrounded by incompetent people. It’s true. But you must know from the start—this is my twofold approach in this story—that if you deem more than a quarter of the people around you as incompetent, then you are the most incompetent of them all."

Join Managing Incompetence author Gabriel Ginebra as he explains how everybody is to some degree incompetent. “The great deeds of mankind were not accomplished by a handful of geniuses, but by a bunch of incompetent people.” Including ourselves in this category, and learning to work with what we have, makes all the difference in how people are managed.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Mobile Learning in Real Life: mLearning Case Studies

Mobile learning is exciting to talk about, and the potential seems unlimited, but ambitious vision-casting can take you only so far. Are there examples out there of mLearning being used successfully in real life? This webinar will take a look at several mobile learning case studies and evaluate the initiatives on all levels from concept to completion. The presentation will cover best practices such as the importance of a process, how to build an mLearning team, and the power of prototypes and options for analytics. Attendees of this webinar will gain a strong understanding of the many skill sets needed and steps required to deliver a successful mobile learning application. They will be better equipped to tackle the multitude of challenges that are inevitable in any mLearning strategy and development effort.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: The Leadership Assessment Process (Free for ASTD members)

Leadership assessment is a popular topic, and there are many assessment options available to practitioners. Successfully navigating the world of leadership assessment is important to ensuring that your assessment strategy will enable you to achieve your goals. This webinar will show how OPM’s Human Resources Solutions Division uses the Leadership Assessment Framework to facilitate discussions about leadership assessment needs. The framework also provides a foundation for building an assessment strategy to meet the needs of federal agencies. Objectives:

• Learn how a framework can guide your assessment strategy
• Identify factors that affect the selection of leadership assessments
• Learn how a framework can be applied to any agency

Wednesday, August 21, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: T+D: Global Evaluation Trends—What’s Happened since the Recession? (Free for ASTD members)

Much has changed since the global recession. Budgets are tight, business results are routinely expected, and accountability is everywhere. The learning and development community is responding to these challenges by changing its approach to evaluation. This presentation traces the shifts in measurement and evaluation (M&E) budgets; the roles of finance, accounting, and the CFO; the responsibilities of M&E; the use and impact of ROI evaluation; the proactive approach of learning leaders; and the barriers to successful M&E. Webcast attendees will learn to identify the issues for successful M&E, identify the barriers for M&E, take a proactive approach to M&E, and plan next steps.

Thursday, August 22, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: “Help Me Obi-Social Kenobi. Social Is My Only Hope.” Using the Force of Enterprise Social Networks to Keep Training Alive

You slave away at designing your training programs. You struggle to get people excited, enrolled, and in the “seats.” The program commences and everyone gives you awesome feedback. You feel successful. Then the momentum dies. How do you keep training excitement alive? How can you boost pre-training anticipation and post-training involvement? Enterprise Social Networks, in combination with your training efforts, can provide the solution you need. Instituting an ESN can not only help you be more successful as a trainer, but can make your trainees more successful at their given jobs.

Thursday, August 22, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Keeping Your Brand Promise: Ensuring a Unified Brand Experience at Every Touch Point

Brand is everything today—and delivering a consistently rewarding experience to everyone who comes in contact with your brand is no longer simply the realm of the marketing department. Are you confident that your organization keeps its brand promise at every interaction? Are you a learning, communications, talent, or HR professional responsible for embedding critical brand messaging within your organization and delivering it to external audiences? Are you struggling to help new hires and clients experience the brand they’ve been promised? Register to learn what companies are doing to engage employees and customers alike—and ensuring their messages are authentic both inside and outside the company. Find out how HR, Learning, Marketing, and other departments can collaborate effectively and with real impact on employee behaviours, audience responses, and business outcomes.

Thursday, August 22, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leading with Wisdom: Sage Advice from 100 Experts (Free for ASTD members)

Through the research Jann Frann did for her upcoming book, Leading with Wisdom: Sage Advice from 100 Experts, Jann shows us how great leaders connect with empathy and compassion. This includes learning how to cope with death, loss, and grief. It also includes understanding life's transitions, learning to "let go," and "leaning into fear." But how do leaders learn these skills and practices? In this webcast, participants will engage in several exercises designed to learn these skills. You’ll learn:

• What it feels like to be laid off or to be a survivor of a layoff.
• How to write your own eulogy and talk about how this brings compassion and empathy into clear focus
• How to script your last moments on Earth to remind you that now is the only time you really have.

By doing these and other activities, you’ll learn how to be a better, more effective leader!

Tuesday, August 27, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: PowerPoint as a Graphics Editor: Simplified Visual Design for eLearning

As instructional designers we want our designs to be visually appealing and relevant, and the term “less is more” is key. How much time do you spend hunting for images or that just-right graphic? What if a few strokes of a pen or the arrangement of a few simple shapes could convey the same message more effectively? In this webinar you’ll learn about the visual cortex and how you use it every day to communicate. You'll look at examples of perceived affordances, and see how making subtle changes to your eLearning graphics can be a powerful companion to instruction. You'll also look at techniques for creating on-demand graphics following basic visual communication principles.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Social Media for Government Learning (Free for ASTD members)

New social media technologies and strategies provide quick, easy solutions to many of the challenges faced by workplace learning and development practitioners in the government. Social media vehicles such as Twitter and Facebook, for example, can help L&D build learning communities, facilitate quick assignments, offer updates or follow-up tips, and otherwise extend the reach of the formal training event. But government training practitioners face additional challenges in that they must separate myth from fact as pertains to the ability of government to adopt and adequately respond to social media. This webcast will address how to:

• Separate myth from fact in approaching the use of social media tools for learning
• Replicate parts of existing L&D practice using social tools
• Extend current practice through the use of social tools

Wednesday, August 28, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Live! Connecting People from Jungle to Mountain Top (Free for ASTD members)

In this session, Fluor Corporation will share how to engage, connect, and inspire while reducing travel, connecting employees, and delivering consistent training through live video technology. This discussion will focus on implementing cost-effective delivery of traditional training to non-traditional locations.

Thursday, August 29, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture (Free for ASTD members)

Mentoring has proven again and again to be a powerful and effective workforce development tool, and the need for mentoring, knowledge sharing, and skill building continues to grow. However, traditional mentoring, where an older mentor meets with a younger mentee in person to help facilitate development and groom them for career progression, is no longer adequate in today's hyper-connected and fast-paced world. Based on the September 2013 Infoline, "Creating a Modern Mentoring Culture," this webcast will describe how companies today must embrace a new form of mentoring and knowledge sharing that allows workers to find and connect with their colleagues so they can learn while on the job, share best practices throughout all areas of the business, and collaborate with people no matter where they may be located.

Thursday, August 29, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Talent Optimization: Where Learning and Talent Meet

Up to this point, most organizations have expended their talent management energy on measurement and control. Unsurprisingly, the results are less than compelling. Organizations need to focus instead on effective performance—on impact where it is needed, in both the short and longer term. In other words: talent optimization. This approach uses data on competencies, personnel issues, recruitment, and other parts of corporate HR to optimize the development and deployment of talent. Instead of looking at talent as an isolated HR initiative, organizations need to work across business departments and integrate with them in order to truly be effective. Key takeaways:

• New frameworks for talent management
• Linking talent processes to learning
• Leveraging integration for reporting and analytics
• Social’s role in integration

Free T&D webinars for April

Spring has sprung, and crocuses and daffodils are brightening the scene. Infuse your April with some springtime energy by signing up for one of the free webinars being offered this month. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013, 9AM – 10AM PST: Good Company: Business Success in the Worthiness Era

Good companies—those that are good to their employees, their customers, their communities, and the environment—make more money than their less worthy competitors. Yep—it’s true. Come hear economist Dr. Laurie Bassi share the hard-nosed evidence, describe the convergence of forces behind these findings, and discuss what this means for HR and learning professionals. You’ll leave armed with powerful new evidence and a fresh perspective you can use to get the resources you need to help your organization be “good company.”

Thursday, April 11, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: State of Sales Training, 2012

This webinar is based on the ASTD/Blackboard research report, State of Sales Training 2012. Presented by Lee Perlis, senior marketing manager for Blackboard ProEd, and Paul Terry, general manager for Blackboard ProEd, the report provides insight into sales training efforts within various organizations so that members of the sales training community can tailor their programs to help each sales team member reach his or her full potential. Nearly all the respondents (94 percent) reported that sales training helps them do their jobs better.

Monday, April 15, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: How to Make Yourself Indispensable with Strengths-Based Career Choices

Learn the secret to becoming indispensable by shaping your career around your natural strengths. Hear from HarperCollins author Ingrid Stabb on using the Enneagram StrengthsFactors model, how to communicate your type advantage in the workplace, and how to use your strengths to give yourself an edge.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013, 5AM – 6AM PST: Mission Critical: Managing Compliance Training in Europe

Almost every organization has to deliver some sort of compliance training. In some companies, it may be as simple as communicating the internal rules. In others, it can be a matter of life or death. Companies in Europe and around the world face constantly changing regulations from a myriad of external bodies and agencies—with different drivers, strategies, and assessment methods. Join David Wentworth and Ray Ruff as they walk through some of the results of Brandon Hall Group’s 2012 Compliance Survey, identifying global trends and looking at some of the challenges facing companies in Europe and beyond, as well as best practices across various industries.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013, 10:30AM – 11:30AM PST: Net Smart: How to Thrive Online

How can we use digital media to help ourselves and our learners become empowered participants rather than passive consumers? In his latest book, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, Howard Rheingold shows how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and—above all—mindfully. Howard’s book outlines five fundamental digital literacies: online skills that help with attention, participation, collaboration, critical consumption of information and network smarts. In this session, Howard will talk about how attention works and how we can use our attention to focus ourselves and our learners on the tiny relevant portion of the incoming tsunami of information; the quality of participation that empowers the best of bloggers, netizens, tweeters, and other online-community participants; and how successful online collaborative enterprises contribute new knowledge to the world in new ways.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Transitioning a Federal Agency Business Unit to Telework

Many people in the federal government and beyond have heard about the USPTO's wildly successful telework transition program. Danette Campbell, Senior Telework Advisor for USPTO, and her team will present best practices for transitioning a business unit to a telework environment. They will walk you through the challenges and successes of implementing a telework program, using the USPTO as a case study. This session will provide you with useful ideas for managing such transitions in your own organizations.

Thursday, April 18, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Executive Onboarding: Manage through the Stages of Onboarding, from before the First Contact Well Past the First 100 Days (Free for ASTD members)

Leadership transitions are some of the toughest challenges people face—professionally and personally. Nearly half of new leaders fail in their first 18 months. Often, those failures are the result of crucial, devastating mistakes made in the very beginning. The business world is changing rapidly; we’re all new leaders all the time, and we must treat the next 100 days as the first 100 days of the rest of our careers.

Learn how you can take charge, build or rebuild your team, and deliver better results faster than anyone thought possible—and how you can coach others to do the same.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Leveraging the Best in Culturally Diverse Professionals (Free for ASTD members)

Your workforce is becoming more diverse, whether your company is nationally or globally focused. As your professionals expand in culture, race, ethnicity, or gender, it’s critically important to know how their motivations, communications, and needs are different. You can no longer use one “playbook” to effectively manage this changing workforce. This webcast will address some critical factors for success in motivating and managing the 21st-century workforce. 

Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Solving the 5 Biggest Challenges of Coaching and Developing Leaders (Free for ASTD members)

When you think about coaching developing leaders, do these questions swirl through your mind?

• What is the best way to get leaders to trust me?
• How do I get them to share what's really going on?
• How do I get inside their heads?
• How do I help them get results with speed and impact?
• How do I prove to them that I can help them?

This webcast will address each of these challenges. You will also learn how to establish a deep level of rapport with leaders and establish their trust, access their personal and unscripted thoughts, help leaders get results quickly, capture their undivided attention in a convenient and practical way, and demonstrate proof of your effectiveness and their results.

Thursday, April 25, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Thinking of Replacing Your LMS?

Your business needs are changing fast, and so are the demands placed on your current learning technology. Learning leaders must stay a step ahead of their business, but that can be difficult when dealing with antiquated technology and limited delivery options. Do you have that nagging awareness that it’s time to switch your learning technology, but haven't wanted to face the reality of doing so? This webinar can help reduce your fear of change and increase your odds of success. Join us to discuss best practices from hundreds of successful transitions, including:

• Insights on business strategies for change
• Selecting solutions for the future, not just today
• A technology migration framework, highlighting both the risks and the rewards of migration
• Tips for preparing your organization and data for a straightforward change
• Insights into managing expectations and change-management goals
• Award-winning case studies and practical steps to help you make a successful transitio

Thursday, April 25, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Needs Assessment for Organizational Success

Needs assessment gurus Roger Kaufman and Ingrid Guerra-López present the four tiers of needs assessment, as detailed in their latest book Needs Assessment for Organizational Success (ASTD Press, 2013). As the authors state, "Analysis is important and useful only if you have evidence that what you are dealing with is the actual problem. Otherwise, you might think you are dealing with the actual problem, when in fact you are merely dealing with a symptom. The consequence is moving ahead, only to find that you implemented useless and expensive cures." Learn what is meant by Mega, Macro, and Micro needs assessments, and discover how to put an ounce of good assessment to work for your organization.

Free January 2013 Webinars

Happy New Year! We hope you had a successful and happy 2012. Stephanie and I wish you much success on your training and development endeavors in 2013. Now I’ve been remiss this month in getting my blog post of free January webinars posted in time. I thought rather than abandoning the January list and moving directly to February, I’d list what’s left for January. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

See you online!

Thursday, January 17, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Game-Based eLearning – How Does Its Effectiveness and ROI Compare to Traditional eLearning?

There is lots of buzz about “gamification” and game-based learning over the last year.  Why should your organization consider adding it to your talent development strategy?  This webinar may provide the key to igniting the performance of your workforce in 2013! Bryan Austin will share 6 reasons why hundreds of organizations are implementing game-based eLearning, and how your organization can inexpensively benchmark its effectiveness versus traditional eLearning in transferring learned skills to the workplace to improve performance.  He will also share a plan to assess the return on investment (ROI) of game-based eLearning versus traditional eLearning.

Thursday, January 17, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: The 2013 Employee: How they Engage, Learn and Develop into Leaders

How do you deliver great employee experiences in today’s climate of change? Evolving employee expectations, record job dissatisfaction levels, and economic slowdowns are amplifying this challenge and exposing the silos in how we manage and engage talent. Bring your HR, Learning and Leadership professionals together for a beginning of the year webinar with Stacey Harris, VP of Research and Advisory Services, Brandon Hall Group, and Kenexa co-presenters as they share best practices and trends in:

• Creating a holistic onboarding experience, for new employees as well as those who are changing positions and taking on leadership roles
• Connecting your HR, Learning, and Leadership functions to collaborate together and deliver an engaging and enriching employee experience
• Shrinking employee time to autonomy and increasing ongoing learning
• The continuation of learning - leadership training and development

Wednesday, January 23, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Power of Storytelling in the Virtual Classroom

Brain research confirms what storytellers know from experience: we learn through stories. We’re wired for it – the pattern, rhythm and structure. As a professional trainer, you use the most up-to-date facts and processes to impart knowledge and skills, but without a good old-fashioned story to put it all together, you make your learner’s job harder. Join Roger Courville, author of The Virtual Presenter’s Handbook, as he discusses practical tips for how to weave a story that will draw your learners fully into your virtual classroom. Attend this interactive webinar to discover:

• What stories to tell (hint: no “once upon a time”)
• How to choose the story elements that are right for you
• 3 steps to telling a story fit for virtual classrooms
• 4 tips for combining voice and visuals for improved impact  

Wednesday, January 23, 2013, 12:30PM – 1:30PM PST: How to Apply Advance Story-Based eLearning Design Techniques to Immerse Learners

A story-based lesson can employ the “SRIA Model – Setup, Relate, Interpret and Apply”– to improve learning. But what is the approach to create a full program where there are several lessons? How do we make the lessons work in rhythm and harmony so each lesson moves the learner from one type of emotional learning to another? How do we immerse the learner so that each lesson builds up to a final “learning realization” or “high”? In this webinar, you will learn:   

• What neurosciences and cognitive learning research tell us about the relationship between learning and the art of music,painting and writing.
• How to employ the structure and rhythm of musical notes, photos and words to raise the learners' awareness and emotions of critical content to learn?
• How to use the "Advance Story-Based Design for Learning Oscillation".
• How to identify which content warrants a different tempo, theme and visual flavor to impart the right meaning.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Finding Time to be a Leader (free for ASTD members)

The scarcest resource a leader has is time (not money, people, or influence). This is why the top frustrations of leaders are typically: not having enough time, struggling to balance priorities, not being proactive enough, and spending too much time doing work that someone else should be doing. This webinar will show you how to discover your own personal green light work and give you tactics for shedding all the yellow, orange, and red light work that is misusing (or wasting) your time, hurting your leadership effectiveness, and stopping you from hitting all your goals.

Thursday, January 24, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Employee Engagement: Practical Tools and Strategies

Is “doing more with less,” resulting in burned out employees?  Are you finding it difficult to keep employees engaged? Even before the economic downturn less than 30% of employees were fully engaged – so the problem is growing every day.  In 2010, companies with highly engaged employees performed 22% better than the total stock index, while those with disengaged employees performed 28% worse. This presentation will give you practical tools to assess the engagement of your workforce and create strategies for increasing engagement.

Thursday, January 24, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Thinking of Replacing Your LMS?

This session will help you reduce your fear and create a strategy for success during the process!
Your business needs are changing fast, and so are the demands placed on your current learning technology. Learning leaders must stay a step ahead of their business, but that can be difficult when dealing with antiquated technology and limited delivery options. Do you have that nagging awareness that it is time to switch your learning technology, but haven't wanted to face the reality of doing so? Join David Wentworth, Senior Learning Analyst for Brandon Hall Group, and Saba's Shruti Kala, Senior Manager, Product Marketing, as they share insights that can help reduce your fear of change and increase your odds of success. They'll discuss best practices from hundreds of successful transitions for creating a strategy for the upgrade, as well as tools and tricks for preparing your organization for a limited-impact change.

Thursday, January 24, 2013, 9AM – 10AM PST: Informal Learning (free for ASTD members)

This webinar is based on the ASTD/i4cp's research report, Informal Learning: The Social Evolution. It will be presented by Kevin Oakes, CEO of i4cp. Joining Kevin will be Dan Pontefract, Senior Director, Learning & Collaboration at Telus. The purpose of this report is to examine the ways in which informal learning is evolving and how organizations are leveraging it to improve performance. This Study is based on an analysis of a survey of 351 respondents. Nearly all the respondents (97 percent) reported that informal learning played a role in their learning initiatives within their organizations.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Shut Up and Deal the Cards: Card Games for Training

This webinar begins with a survey of 20 different types of cards that can be incorporated in training activities. It then focuses on three powerful training templates: Classification Cards explore concept categories (such as conflict-management modes) and stages in a process (such as stages in team development). With these cards you can play any game that is played with a regular deck of playing cards. In this interactive webinar learn how to create hundreds of your own card games that can involve 1 to 100 players for 5 minutes to 52 weeks.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: The 21^st Century Mindset: Unlock Critical Thinking to Unleash Organizational Performance

We all use a variety of thinking styles in our daily lives, but we tend to favor some but rarely use others—and that hurts our ability to make good decisions. Knowing your preferred style will help you approach problems and decisions with the right mindset so you can be more successful. Join David Wentworth, Senior Analyst with Brandon Hall Group, and Dr. Judy Chartrand, as they offer you a unique opportunity not only to learn more about critical thinking and what it means for organizations, but to learn about your own thinking styles. My Thinking Styles™ from TalentLens helps you find the right balance between, so you can make the best choices, in life and at work. Between now and January 29th, Pearson is giving BHG members access to a complimentary administration of My Thinking Styles and a personalized Development Report. Then on January 29th at 1:00 EST, Dr. Judy Chartrand will give a brief overview of the Seven Powerful Thinking Styles and she’ll help you interpret your results. Your report will unlock a unique combination that will help you be more successful with your decisions, relationships, projects, and every aspect of your life – so don’t miss out!

Wednesday, January 30, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Mixing it up! Merging Learning, Information, and the Social Enterprise to Maximize Impact

The increased value of learning through social enterprise collaboration and communications and the integration of quality information to support learning on-demand is a key focus area at Oracle. Hear and see what Oracle's Virtual Information Services (VIS) program has done to engage employees first with the key learning content for on-demand learning and how the integration of that information into programs and the collaboration around that information through social enterprise tools has increased awareness, productivity, engagement, and overall learning and business impact across the organization. Providing alternative ways of learning is enabling Oracle to become more productive but it starts with access to the right information at the right time - information integration, social, mobile, digital libraries.

Thursday, January 31, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: The Future of Virtual Learning and Collaboration

In the past, online education and e-learning failed to live up to its potential. Fortunately, the future of virtual learning is here. It’s now possible to create rich, robust and collaborative learning environments that can be delivered anywhere and anytime.  Join this Training Magazine webinar, presented by UNC Executive Development, to learn how you can realize the full potential of virtual learning in your organization. You will hear directly from one of the industry leaders based on years of experience delivering world-class online learning. 2U Inc. was recently recognized by Forbes magazine as one of the 10 start-ups changing the world. Attend this webinar to learn how the company is transforming online education and how you can do the same in your organization.

Thursday, January 31, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Transformational Learning – Building a Learning Organization From the Ground Up (free for ASTD members)

In July 2010, the Global Learning and Development function at Savvis did not exist. By early 2012, the L&D function was not only in existence, they are thriving. Business unit leaders are advocates for learning, there is a direct connection to organizational strategy, leadership capability is positively moving, learning impact is measured, and the team is positively influencing the parent company. A Cinderella story? The transformation was driven not by a fairy god mother rather a well-articulated vision and intentional steps that maximized the possibility of success for this team. Learn the steps this team took to transform learning at Savvis, and how they helped the organization substantially increase learning consumption, decrease time to productivity, and increase leadership effectiveness.

Free Summertime Webinars

Although the calendar proclaimed it officially summer last month, sunny summer days have been very slow to arrive in Vancouver. But with summer vacations just around the corner for clients, project work can slow down a bit so it’s a great opportunity to catch up on new industry trends, research and ideas. Check out the free webinars being offered this summer. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: ROI Basics: Calculating the ROI

Join Patti Phillips, President & CEO, ROI Institute for her fourth and final webinar in the ROI series. To calculate the ROI you must convert impact measures to money, compare it to the program costs, and identify intangible benefits. During this webcast, you will learn a variety of methods to convert measures to money, five steps to convert a measure to money and cost categories that make up the fully-loaded program costs.  Click on the link to also access the recordings of her three previous ROI webinars if you happened to miss them.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: Mobile Learning: Delivering Learning in a Connected World

This webinar is based on ASTD and i4cp's recently published report, Mobile Learning: Delivering Learning in a Connected World. This report looks at the current landscape of mobile learning in a world in which the ubiquity of mobile devices seems to have created a perfect environment for delivering learning solutions to our workforce, where or when they need it. Upside Learning’s Kevin Oakes, i4cp's CEO, will discuss how mobile technology is changing the world and our experience of it. From an organizational perspective, mobile learning allows for a spectrum of possibilities that were not present before, and they continue to evolve before us. The findings of this Study indicate that companies with learning functions that help meet both learning and business goals tend to be higher market performers.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Create Interactive Scenarios in Articulate Storyline

Join Tom Kuhlmann, VP of Community at Articulate and author of the widely popular “Rapid e-Learning Blog” as he shares his simple 3C model where you challenge the learner to make a decision, offer some choices, and produce consequences that provides relevant feedback or additional challenges. Then he’ll show you how to quickly create them using Articulate Storyline. You’ll learn to:

• Use the 3C model to build decision-making scenarios
• Build interactive models using states, layers, and triggers in Storyline
• Craft interactive branched scenarios, and
• Discover how to create, share, and re-use what you build.  

Wednesday, July 11, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: Design is Everything: 5 Techniques for Designing an Interactive Virtual Class (ASTD members only)

If you want to create a powerful learning experience for your online learners, your virtual training must be engaging – which means your virtual classroom design must be exceptional. In this first webinar in the 2-part Virtual Classroom Design series, learn 5 techniques you can apply immediately to take your interactive virtual training to the next level. 

Thursday, July 12, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: “What if I die today?” – Story Impacts eLearning Exercise: Building Stories using StoryLine

Using the book, “Story Impacts Learning and Performance” as a point of reference, Ray Jimenez will share how he uses engaging stories and Articulate StoryLine to author “What if I die today?” – Story Impacts eLearning Exercise. Ray will provide in advance, the source code to the self-reflection exercise, authored in StoryLine. You can investigate the authoring design prior to learning more about the approach during the actual webinar. You will learn how to:

• Build basic game-like story elements using animation, objects, scenes and slides, timelines, layers and triggers
• Use variables for multiple decision points
• Provide game-like feedback for progress tracking

Thursday, July 12, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: Taking Learning Mobile: The Power of Learning Everywhere (ASTD members only)

Once a learning organization has committed to “go mobile,” it may seem as though the hardest decision has been made. Soon after this path is chosen, though, reality sets in. There are many things to consider as you work to build your initial efforts for the varieties of mobile devices. This webinar will focus on how to get started with mobile learning, including deciding on an initial project and changing your design approach. Join Chad Udell, a seasoned expert on mobile learning and author of the new ASTD book, Learning Everywhere, as he demystifies the choices involved in developing mobile learning content, and provides real-world experience on how to get down to business creating mobile learning.

Thursday, July 12, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Empowering Employees: Sustainable Career Management Models

In the next five years, businesses will experience major demographic changes as far as their workforces are concerned. Just to name a few: Workforces will continue to become more diverse; millennials are projected to represent more than 50 percent of the overall labor force; and the capabilities required to lead in tomorrow’s economy will be different than the capabilities required today. Join Stacey Harris, VP of Research, David Wentworth, Sr. Learning Analyst for Brandon Hall Group, Jeff Gill, Director, Talent Management and Acquisition and Amy Jo Womack, HR Systems Manager for Valerus as they share the latest research in creating Career Enhancing programs that work for mid-market organizations.

Thursday, July 12, 2012, 8AM – 9PM PST: Building the Business Case for Learning Measurement

Often the only barrier that separates an organization from getting the software it needs is a compelling argument. During this webinar, KnowledgeAdvisors will help you structure your information so you can make the following compelling argument to your leaders, “We need an evaluation measurement system. Here’s why, and here are the benefits.” While this argument will use MTM as an example, you can use the fundamental structure to argue for any software.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: Informal Learning Basics: What ARE the Basics?

Informal learning might represent as much as 70 percent of workplace learning and be one of the most talked-about topics in training today. But what is it really? What forms can it take? When can it make a difference in workplace performance and when might it actually detract from it? What role, if any, do Training and Development professionals play in informal learning? Join Saul Carliner, author of the new ASTD best-seller, Informal Learning Basics, as he introduces the basics of informal learning.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: A Unified Approach to Learning Management

As always, the way your learner’s access information (technology – web/mobile) and the number of channels available and utilized to learn (classroom/self-paced/social/informal) continue to increase, these pose challenges regarding how to effectively and efficiently manage learning for your organization. The need of the hour is a unified approach to this problem. Current organizational challenges in managing learning demand a system that understands that different technology options) and different channels of learning are a part of the whole learning experience. Join David Wentworth, Senior Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, and Jason Clymer, VP - Client Acquisition and Partner Development at Upside Learning as they shed more light on the idea of unified solution approaches as they discuss the need and advantages of an untied learning ecosystem.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: Facilitating in the Live Online Classroom: 5 Techniques to Master Delivery (ASTD members only)

What do the best virtual trainers do? They engage learners by presenting, facilitating and teaching in ways that bring the online classroom together. Join this final session in the Virtual Classroom Design series, to discover the 5 techniques master trainers and presenters use to deliver their virtual lessons with real energy. Learn how to:

• Effectively engage out-of-sight participants
• Maintain high enthusiasm during delivery
• Harness your voice for the microphone
• Prepare for unforeseen technical issues

Thursday, July 19, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: Developing a Client Centric Culture – A SunTrust Case Study

Differentiating your organization in today’s market can help increase revenue and develop stronger client relationships. SunTrust was able to evolve and deploy a client centric culture that enabled their organization to display growth, improve client relationships, and enhance the talent and development of their sales managers and leaders. SunTrust’s strategic approach to a sales talent and training development program allowed their sales managers to link sales, service and client loyalty while remaining committed to putting clients first. As part of Brandon Hall Group’s Excellence Award Winners Webinar Series, join Mary Slaughter, SVP, Talent Management & Development from SunTrust Banks, Inc.; David DiStefano, Chief Executive Officer, Richardson; and Rachel Ashkin, Chief Operating Officer, Brandon Hall Group, as they share how SunTrust effectively developed and implemented a new sales and sales management curriculum designed to address the current business climate and desired sales leadership competencies.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: I Want to Work THERE! 3 Keys to Creating an Engagement Culture

An organization’s culture has a tremendous influence on employee engagement. A culture that features opportunity, personal accountability, inclusion, community, and validation will lead to engaged employees. But how do you create that culture and how do you maintain engagement throughout an employee’s time at your company? Join Cornerstone OnDemand’s, Bob Kelleher, CEO of The Employee Engagement Group and Kevin Sensenig, Global Vice President, Learning and Organizational Development, Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc. and discover best practices from two employee engagement experts. Explore how to create an employee engagement culture through three steps:
1. Hire the right people
2. Foster engagement through onboarding
3. Maintain engagement for the long term 

Tuesday, July 24, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: What Research Tells Us about Games, Gamification and Learning (ASTD members only)

This decidedly unacademic presentation provides a broad scientific overview of what research has taught us about the effectiveness of games and game-elements in changing learner behaviors. We will consider how playing a video game changes a person’s behavior, how avatars can shape in-game and out-of-game behavior, and how storytelling helps learners memorize facts. We’ll answer questions like: What makes a game…a game? How do points and rewards fit into games? Why are challenges, feedback, and interactivity the keys to successful games? Do serious games have to be entertaining to be educational?

Learn how to use the existing research literature in your own design and delivery of learning. This webinar also includes several practical case studies outlining how the research tips, techniques, and practices can be applied in a real-life online learning situation.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Moving Knowledge for Rapid Business Impact

Learning at work is changing – and not just in how it is delivered. The drivers behind “why” learning is even relevant are shifting as well. Executives and managers recognise the value and power of distributing information quickly, to support anything from security compliance to product launches to corporate values. This top-level recognition marks a move from ‘HR-driven’ to ‘business-led’ learning, something with profound implications for learning and development professionals. What systems do we need to meet these new business needs? What influence do millennials and other learners have? And what impact will this have on the L&D function as a whole?  Join Stacey Harris, VP, Research & Advisory Services, Brandon Hall Group and Donald Taylor, Chairman, Learning and Performance Institute as they draw on a range of practical examples to explore the trends changing the face of workplace learning today.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Critical Competencies for 21^st Century Leaders

Successful leadership involves managing one’s self and relationships with others to move toward a specific business goal. The role of a leader is to grow others - helping people grow their skills, knowledge, and confidence to develop leadership themselves in a real, practical context. The real world has other plans, however. Business goals are fluid, people are stressed, and one-way technological messages continue to invade every moment of our lives. One thing remains the same – leadership is all about people. In this session, learn how you can clear a little chaos and build a high performing team and how to take the time to consider a new approach to leadership while faced with predictable, constant chaos.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012, 9AM – 10AM PST: Hit the Ground Running: Establishing a Model Executive Onboarding Program

This webinar paints a compelling picture of the importance of executive onboarding in an organization. You will be introduced to OPM's government wide executive onboarding framework and the steps that are critical to developing and implementing a successful formal executive onboarding program from pre-boarding through the first year. OPM will also present a unique product to the Federal sector, the New Leaders Onboarding Assessment --- an assessment designed help government manager and executives more quickly assimilate into new organizations. The New Leaders Onboarding Assessment was developed and offered to agencies through OPM's Human Resources Solutions division.

Thursday, July 26, 2012, 11AM – 12PM PST: Real World Training Design

Despite the assumptions of most instructional design methodologies, your training events don’t happen in a neat little "bubble." And neither does your design process. What are some of the most common pitfalls and contraints? How do you navigate them for the results your organization replies on? In this webcast, author, speaker, and real-world designer Jenn Labin presents some of the most common challenges training designers face, plus solutions to keep your project moving forward.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Effective Manager Training and Education – Building a Foundation for Organizational Success

Over half of all newly promoted managers fail in their roles within two years. We often assume our top performers are instantly ready for the more complex demands of management and supervision. Success for both new managers and their teams depends on support, development, and a solid approach to setting clear management expectations. Join Stacey Harris VP of Research and Advisory Services at Brandon Hall Group, and Chris Osborn of BizLibrary as they talk about the evolving set of demands and competencies all of our managers need, and they will share research and key practices for preparing both current and future managers for success.  

Wednesday, August 1, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Story-Based eLearning: Antidote to Boring Programs

According to Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook CEO), “Our lives are made up of stories – that is why we provide ‘TIMELINE’ in Facebook because we help you tell your life-stories”. From Confucius to Zuckerburg, people learn from each other by sharing experiences and stories. Nowadays, this fact becomes increasingly significant with the advent and continuous development of mobile learning, on-the-job learning support and communities of learners. The challenge has been how to design learning points that are story-driven to help learners learn instantly. In this session, learn how to use the power of story dynamics, both telling and listening, as antidotes to boring eLearning programs. A free pre-webinar study kit that includes white papers, demos and examples is available for this session.

Thursday, August 2, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Gamify Your Training: Use Gamification to Increase Employee Engagement and Improve Feedback

Half of all office workers use Facebook at work. Why? Because it's far more satisfying and rewarding than the vast majority of the tasks we're given during the workday. Facebook has a highly engaged audience for the same reasons we enjoy watching football, playing video games or gambling at a casino. The process is called Gamification and you may already be using several game mechanics now. Gamification is the application of game mechanics and game-thinking in non-game environments to increase fun and engagement. This webinar will explore how specific mechanics influence behavior and how you can add them to your own training programs.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012, 12:30PM – 1:30PM PST: Interactivity, Games and Gamification: Creating Engaged Learners

Based on the bestselling learning book, “The Gamification of Learning and Instruction” this session introduces, defines, and describes the concepts of gamification, games for learning and interactivity. It then dissects the elements of games and describes how they can be applied to the design and development of interactive learning.  The presentation is based on solid research including peer-reviewed results from dozens of studies that offer insights into why game-based thinking and mechanics makes for vigorous learning tools. Moving beyond the theoretical considerations, the presentation explores three methods for designing interactive learning based on concepts from games.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012, 10AM – 11AM PST: Informal Learning and Social Media: Upskilling for 21^st Century Training

New tools for and ideas about learning are bringing in a new age for training and development practitioners. We now have real means of extending our reach, learners who can identify and satisfy their own learning needs, and opportunities to support workplace learning and performance like we’ve never had before. This session provides an overview of some 21st century skills we’ll need to develop to stay current and viable in a rapidly changing, but more learning-focused, time. 

Wednesday, August 29, 2012, 9AM – 10AM PST: Demonstrating Executive Reporting Solutions for L&D

This webinar will provide both strategic and tactical information about reporting L&D results to business executives. Examples of reports, scorecards and dashboards will be demonstrated. As well, you will review three classifications of expertise that exists to support an organizations’ desire to advance its own executive reporting. A review of these consultative solutions will provide insight into the depth and breadth of resources that exist to fully support a practitioners desire to improve upon the metrics provided to the business.

Free September webinars

It's hard to believe that summer is almost over. With September approaching, I thought I'd post some free webinars that are being offered next month.  Invest some time in keeping yourself up to date with the latest industry information. I've signed up for a number of the webinars so hope to "see" you online.

Thursday, September 1, 10am – 11am PST: Fostering Learning Beyond the Classroom

Karie Willyerd, co-author of The 2020 Workplace and former CLO at Sun Microsystems will explore how you can keep your training and development initiative up to pace with the rapidly evolving dynamics of how, when and where employees acquire knowledge.

Wednesday, September 7, 10am – 11am PST: How to Select an LMS for your Small/Medium Business

Learning management systems (LMS) are playing an increasingly important role in workplace learning and development. These systems provide learners with access to content and provide managers with the ability to track who knows what. Due to high costs and technological infrastructure requirements, large organizations have traditionally been the first to adopt learning management systems. Price and technological barriers are now dropping, making it easy for small- and medium-sized businesses to obtain an LMS.

Thursday, September 8, 10am – 11am: Web 3.0 and the Transformation of Learning

This webinar takes a look at the next evolution of the Web and what it means for the learning function. The differences between high- and low-performing organizations in terms of how they approach these new technologies will be highlighted.

Thursday, September 8, 10am – 11am: From Rapid Authoring to Rapid Reuse – Why Building Mobile Learning Requires a Scalable Content Strategy

The rapid rise of mobile learning has created a resurgence of interest in reusable content models. Nuggets of content, relevant to the individual learner, that are re-assembled and delivered on-demand and to any device. Learn how open, XML-based single-source learning content management solutions are providing a critical advantage an organization’s mobile strategy in terms of time-to-market, product innovation and efficient content development. Real-time demonstrations will be presented that leverage existing content to create flexible iPad and smart phone applications and will show you how easy it is to customize mobile content for different learners and customers.

Wednesday, September 14, 10am-11am PST: The Truth about Social Learning

"Social learning" and "informal learning" are among the training industry's hottest phrases these days. But there's so much confusion over what they mean, and what they mean to those of us in the business. Join Jan Bozarth to look at real examples of social and informal learning as it happens in workplaces all the time, every day. She’ll also generate some ideas for locating, supporting and facilitating social learning opportunities toward the greater goal of enhancing organizational performance.

Tuesday, September 20, 10am – 11am PST: Building a Business Case for Performance and Learning

Join Stacey Harris, VP of Research for Brandon Hall Group as she shares insights on how to create and deliver a business case that resonates, no matter the size or market of your organization. In this presentation, Harris will offer guidance and practical examples on creating a business case for investing in a more effective approach to performance management and employee development. Key take-aways include:

• The business leaders perspective
• Insights on the value of connecting performance management and employee development
• Elements in creating and delivering an effective business case for companies of every size
• Illustrations of business cases that made an impact

Tuesday, September 20, 10am – 11am PST: How to Add “Gamification” to Your eLearning Design

Do you know how Gamification can boost learning effectiveness?  Gamification is the application of theories in gaming, its attendant rewards and its motivational impact. It has caught the attention of both learning designers and elearning developers because gamification presents new opportunities to raise the learner's engagement and learning applications. But how to make it a practical enhancement to the elearning design is a mystery. In this webinar, Ray Jimenez will present case studies on how to apply gamification to enhance your eLearning projects.

Thursday, September 22, 10am – 11am PST: Navigating the Social Learning Roadmap

With more companies and organizations recognizing the value of social learning, we are fast on our way to a major shift in learning. The emergence of social media has enabled us to capture what we do quite naturally, LEARN.During this webinar, you will:

• Discover the career implications of a social learning culture

• Evaluate the value of a social learning strategy within their organization.

• Navigate steps to creating a social learning culture

• Forecast obstacles in the organizational culture that block social learning

• Fuel engagement within the framework of a social learning culture.

Tuesday, September 27, 10am-11am PST: How to Measure Informal and Social Learning Investments

Informal learning measurement (social networks, performance support, coaching) is on the rise. It is important to think about measuring this investment and comparing it against formal programs to determine its mix and place. Questions such as what, when and how to measure informal learning are challenges faced by practitioners using informal learning. This webinar will discuss informal learning capabilities, how to measure them and what resources are available to make measurement practical.

Thursday, September 29, 10am – 11am PST: Creating eLearning Stories and Exercises with Articulate Storyline®

There are two daunting tasks when using stories and exercises in eLearning: creating a good design, and authoring the software. Instead of focusing the quality of the lessons into engaging learning, designers and developers spend more time in the production work. This slows down the delivery and increases the cost. This clinic will present proven ways in using stories and exercises to engage learners as well as step by step methods to develop events, characters, choices and consequences and to quickly convert them into eLearning by using Articulate's new software, Storyline®