What have you got planned for your personal learning and development in 2014? There are a number of conferences, symposiums and expos this year on a variety of T&D topics. These events give us the opportunity to meet industry experts in person and learn first-hand about the latest research and topics that particularly interest us. It also gives us the opportunity to meet lots of other like-minded learning professionals.
Read MoreFebruary may be a short month, but it’s jam-packed with valuable learning to help you keep that 2014 momentum going strong. Make the month count by signing up for a free webinar or two. We hope they will inspire and motivate you.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: BEST Webcast Series: ESL Federal Credit Union – Creating a Coaching Culture (Free for ASTD members)
How do you manage if you can’t manage to numbers? That was the question before the frontline leadership at ESL Federal Credit Union shortly after completing a comprehensive review of their sales program. Too much importance was being placed on raw numbers, and not enough on the customer-focused behaviours that ESL highly values. Closer examination revealed that many managers just didn’t know how else to evaluate employee performance. That is where the journey toward creating a coaching culture began. Developing managers as coaches increases the skill set of the management team while filtering the coaching process down to employees at every level of the organization, providing benefits to all.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Leadership in Crisis, Turnarounds, and Challenging Times(Free for ASTD members)
How can you thrive, not just survive, in challenging times? What kind of leadership does it take to weather crises and turnarounds? This presentation, conducted by Bob and Gregg Vanourek, is based on their proven experience in the trenches of massive turnarounds and insanely challenging start-ups. Bob was the CEO of five companies, including a billion-dollar company and two NYSE firms going through crises. Gregg was a senior executive at a market-leading online education start-up and a prominent foundation during its turbulent start-up years.
Thursday, February 6, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Five Keys for Flawless Virtual Training Implementation
Designing a training program, training your trainers, and planning the schedule are hard enough. Wouldn't it be great if, once the program launched, it would magically unfold in perfect order, with participants fully engaged, and your metrics for success resoundingly achieved? Unfortunately, the best-intended training programs often fizzle after launch. How can you ensure that your training program ends up truly meeting your organization's strategic objectives? That the program measurably shifts the culture in positive ways? That the learning sticks? Join Cynthia Clay for this one-hour webinar to learn how to implement a flawless training program from soup to nuts, and get the results you demand.
Thursday, February 6, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Design and Deliver Interactive and Effective Online Training: Part One
Virtual training opens doors, but for your learners to be successful, you must first overcome the anonymity of the online classroom with truly engaging presentation techniques. Register for this first of a two-part webinar series with Cindy Huggett, author and CPLP, to learn how to design and deliver an effective, world-class virtual training program. Learn how to:
Design successful courses with a simple three-step model.
Promote interactivity using two key design techniques.
Effectively engage out-of-sight participants.
Get attendees talking with one another.
Part two is scheduled Thursday, February 13, 2014 from 10AM - 11AM PST.
Thursday, February 6, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Looking Forward: How L&D Needs to Change (Free for ASTD members)
Much of what we do in learning and development is based upon models that are increasingly incapable of addressing today’s world. With increasing change, organizations are going to need to acknowledge outcomes that have emerged from some important and yet not fully adopted realizations. The way we think, the way we work together, and what organizations need to succeed have shifted significantly in the past decade, and we need to acknowledge that logical thinking, independent working, and hierarchical structures no longer define how we need to work and learn. In this presentation, we’ll review the new models, and review the implications for L&D going forward.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: 7 Steps to Become an Engagement Role Model for Employees (Free for ASTD members)
Employee engagement is a very individual experience where "one size does not fit all." As a manager you play a major role in creating the conditions for your employees to choose to establish relationships and connections to the business and its purpose—known as engagement. Are you engaged? Have you asked yourself how your employees become engaged? Do you ever think about your role as a manager in the engagement of your employees? Have you considered how effective you are as an engagement role model for your employees? If you are wondering about these questions, then this webcast is for you!
Wednesday, February 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Learn Better and Faster: Helping On-Demand Learners in an On-Demand Era
With today’s business demands, worker knowledge and skills are rapidly and constantly changing. Consequently, organizations are increasingly relying on learners to “learn on demand,” on need, on the job, and independently. The challenge, however, is that workers are busy, on the go, and have limited time to study. Furthermore, learners are often left on their own, without the skills to access and apply knowledge quickly and effectively. In this webinar, you will learn how to design and deliver your content to support and train today’s on-the-go, on-demand learners.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014, 11AM - 12PM PST: Real World Tactics for Creating and Demonstrating Training Value in Government (Free for ASTD members)
In today's resource-strapped government, there exists greater pressure than ever to demonstrate the value of training. Training evaluation does not need to be complex or expensive to be effective; it needs to be strategically focused on organizational goals. Learn directly from the creator of the New World Kirkpatrick Model and subject matter expert for the OPM Training Evaluation Field Guide the correct way to implement the four levels to ensure that you are maximizing and demonstrating the organizational value of your training. Three key ideas will be shared for shifting emphasis from Levels 1 and 2 to Levels 3 and 4, including action points you can implement immediately in your own work. Government and military examples will punctuate main ideas.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: Talent Acquisition Trends
This installment of the Brandon Hall Group Research Spotlight webinar features highlights from one of our newest practices: talent acquisition. This webinar will include:
Statistics on talent acquisition effectiveness and maturity
Models for excellence in onboarding and recruitment marketing
Other talent management resources related to talent acquisition
Exclusive resources available through Brandon Hall Group membership
Wednesday, February 12, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Thought Leaders Webinar: Interface Design for Learning
As designers of learning experiences, how much do we really know about how people learn? How do we design environments that support the cognitive and affective sides of learning, and how can we support creativity, problem solving, and collaboration through interface design? The answers have been hidden away in the research on education, psychology, and human computer interaction … until now.
Join us as we discuss the new book Interface Design for Learning: Design Strategies for the Learning Experience with author Dorian Peters. In this one-hour interview, we’ll examine how designing for the learning experience is different from designing for the user experience, and explore proven strategies, heuristics, and best practices for building powerful, engaging, and genuinely effective learning experiences.
Thursday, February 13, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: How to Measure L&D with Social/Mobile Technologies
This presentation will offer relevant insights for modern-day L&D organizations whose learners have smart phone devices and use social networking tools. You will learn the best practices to evaluate learner experiences using mobile devices and when in social networking platforms. You will also learn how to deliver reports and analytics to stakeholders using mobile tools such as dashboards via tablet devices.
Thursday, February 13, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Value of Learning (Free for ASTD members)
When making the connection between learning programs and bottom-line business results, organizational learning functions have a track record of limited success. Recent research conducted by ASTD and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) found that, while most feel their learning goals are highly aligned with organizational business goals, very few say that specific business outcomes are included as drivers in the development of their organizations’ learning strategies. Additionally, investments in learning measurement remain quite low, and very few organizations have staff dedicated to evaluating the connection between learning and business impact. Join Kevin Oakes, CEO of i4cp, and Rob Lauber, CLO of YUM! Brands, as they explore the metrics learning professionals are tracking today, as well as the metrics these professionals should be tracking for business impact in the future.
Thursday, February 13, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Design and Deliver Interactive and Effective Online Training: Part Two
Virtual training opens doors, but for your learners to be successful, you must first overcome the anonymity of the online classroom with truly engaging presentation techniques. Register for the second part of this two-part webinar series with Cindy Huggett, author and CPLP, to learn how to design and deliver an effective, world-class virtual training program. Learn how to:
Design successful courses with a simple three-step model.
Promote interactivity using two key design techniques.
Effectively engage out-of-sight participants.
Get attendees talking with one another.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Getting Unstuck: Addressing the Paradoxes Faced by Managers and HR Professionals (Free for ASTD members)
HR professionals and managers often find themselves in the vortex of controversy, which creates professional and emotional challenges. For many, this is the hardest part of the job! In response we look for causes: unreasonable expectations, difficult personalities, busy schedules, or the rate of change; but the ultimate cause is unlikely to be found there. How we handle these challenges is crucial for our personal and organizational success. You will learn the concept of paradox and its practical importance, learn how to distinguish a problem from a paradox, and gain new tools to address the paradoxes and double-binds faced by HR professionals and managers.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leveraging the Forces of Disruption: How Video, Mobile & Social Are Re-engineering Training
Disruptive forces—mobile, social and video—have fundamentally changed how training is designed and how learners learn. Learners are demanding access to training content 24/7, anytime, anywhere, and on more than one device. This “New Normal” requires a blended approach that aligns learning with organizational needs, provides more interactive learning experiences and collaboration, and integrates training into the workflow—all while maintaining consistent messages across geographies. Join this webinar to learn:
Processes you can implement to successfully embrace the disruptive forces of change.
How to integrate performance support and job aids into your training programs.
How trainers are incorporating collaboration and knowledge sharing into their blended training programs to reinforce best practices.
Examples of short, interactive training modules that improve retention and support sales in the moment of need.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Increasing Knowledge Worker Productivity: A New Opportunity for L&D Professionals (Free for ASTD members)
Research has revealed the effectiveness of new methods for improving knowledge worker productivity. Because knowledge work differs in fundamental ways from traditional manual work, improving knowledge worker performance requires different methods. Yet, many of the learning and development, management, and job design practices still in use are based on the needs of traditional manual work, and not on the requirements of knowledge work. This webcast will help you to create solutions for knowledge worker engagement and productivity, while also demonstrating enhanced credibility and potential in the learning function.
Thursday, February 20, 2014, 10AM – 11AM PST: 2013 State of the Industry (Free for ASTD members)
Laurie Miller, Director of Research Services at ASTD, and David Frankel, Research Specialist, will discuss benchmarking data from ASTD BEST Awards Winners, Fortune magazine's list of Global 500 (G500) companies, and other organizations from 2004 to the present. ASTD estimates that US organizations spent $1,195 per employee on learning and development in 2012. The content from this webcast is drawn from ASTD's 2013 State of the Industry report, sponsored by Skillsoft and CARA.
Thursday, February 20, 10AM – 11AM PST: Top Talent Management Trends – Linking Learning to Performance
Our world is changing dramatically—how we live, how we work, and how we perform. In order to keep up, learning and HR must also change and evolve. Join Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer at Brandon Hall Group, to learn how embracing adaptive learning models and focusing on relationships and communities will drive continuous learning and deliver better business results. This webinar will examine how organizations can make adaptive learning models focused on continuous people development, the centre of their approach to engage, build, and expand their talent.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014, 12PM – 1PM PST: Change Your Game: Become Your Company’s Most Valuable Organization
Is your learning organization seen as a cost centre or a strategy enabler? No matter what organization you’re in, change the game—stop being measured and limited by your budget, and tie the business investment into value. Leveraging work by Gartner, Info-Tech Research, and Growth Curve, you will learn a concise, repeatable approach to a complete innovative evolution—new organization, processes, focus, accountabilities, and agility. Learn from the success of Butler University, now wrapping up its IT Evolution, and change how your learning organization is valued by the CEO.
Thursday, February 27, 2014, 11AM – 12PM PST: Integrated Talent Management Scorecards: Insights from World-Class Organizations on Demonstrating Value (Free for ASTD members)
This webcast will present a talent management model that includes workforce planning, talent acquisition, performance management, learning and development, succession management, and engagement and retention. It will provide methods for evaluating the results and showing the impact of talent management initiatives. Learn how top global organizations are using scorecards to demonstrate the value of talent management at the initiative, functional, and organizational levels.
This session will enable you to:
Describe the components of integrated talent management (TM).
Explain the integrated TM scorecard model.
Design a micro-level TM scorecard.
Assess the data required to populate TM scorecards.
Friday, February 28, 2014, 9AM – 10AM PST: Show Me the Money: Where to Find Public Funding and Resources for Training Programs(Free for ASTD members)
At the US federal, state, and local levels, billions of dollars are invested in worker training programs, in addition to programs that provide grants and other tax incentives. Where can your organization find these resources, and what is the best way to leverage partnerships to apply for funding?
Join us for this informative webcast that will discuss:
Why the public sector subsidizes training.
What kinds of programs are available (federal and state).
Funding methods.
What types of businesses are eligible for training funding.
How to evaluating the effectiveness of these programs.
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.
Rounding up our list of the top five Performance Support articles in 2013, here’s article #5…
The Round-Up: #5
Top 5 Employee Performance Support Software By: Jason Silberman October 23rd, 2013
After all the theory and explanation of the first four articles in this performance support article series, it is 
good to see some practical tool options for actually implementing your performance support strategy and reducing the need for human intervention. Jason Silberman lists his top five employee performance support software programs in this article, including some big names such as Ontuitive and Kineo. It’s always wise to research, compare and contrast before investing in learning tools.
Has your organization or your clients adopted an employee performance support system for performance support? We’d love to hear more from you.
Be sure to check out the first four articles in this series…
Rounding up our list of the top five Performance Support articles in 2013, here’s article #4…
The Round-Up: #4
eLearning Guild Research: Mobile Learning for Supporting Workers' Performance By: Patti Shank May 16, 2013
Interestingly, none of the performance support articles we’ve already posted mention the role of mobile learning in augmenting performance support; this article is a great introduction to the concept. Patti Shank, internationally recognized information and instructional designer and the Director of Research at The eLearning Guild, opens with a great example for performance support “when you don’t remember how to change the toner on your printer and the printer display window shows you how to do it, that’s performance support.”
Shank stresses how the use of mobile technology in performance support is a natural next step. The 
majority of us have smartphones or tablets and have them on our person most of the time anyway, so it makes sense to integrate mobile performance support. She lists examples of what it could take the form of: PDFs, audio, video, chat apps, SMS (text messages), mobile webpages, and native applications. Shank draws on other examples from case studies with Sonic and the International Red Cross that put the concept into real-life context. You can see more here:
Casebourne, Imogen. How Mobile Learning Is Done: Nine Case Studies from Around the World. The eLearning Guild. 4 April 2013.
Has your organization or your clients adopted mobile learning for performance support? We’d love to hear your thoughts on how performance has improved.
Stay tuned for one more upcoming blog post for the remaining top five performance support article of 2013 … and be sure to check out the first three articles of five in this series:
Rounding up our list of the top five Performance Support articles in 2013, here’s article #3
The Round-Up: #3
Survive and Thrive with Performance Support by Conrad Gottfredson & Bob Mosher, June 2013
This is a short but informative article published by the Training Industry Quarterly. It is written by Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher, another Bona Fide voice in performance support from Ontuitive. The article’s focus is on developing a performance support infrastructure that allows the organization to move, adapt, and flex in response to inevitable change.
The workforce are seen as “dynamic learners” that contribute to an organization’s agility. Developing 
and implementing a performance support infrastructure gives these dynamic learners instant access to what they need in order to perform competently. The main focus of the article is on integrating the infrastructure according to the workflow process in question and designing according to two principles, proximity and immediacy. Performance support is efficient when it is accessed within 2 clicks and 10 seconds.
Do you have a performance support infrastructure in place? What are its strengths?
Stay tuned for more upcoming blog posts for the remaining top five performance support articles of 2013 … and be sure to check out the first two articles of five in this series:
In the last performance support blog post I talked about the importance of providing the right information and the right amount of information at the right time to help increase productivity and reduce time off the job spent looking for answers. I also included the first of our top five articles of 2013 on performance support. So here's article #2:
The Round-Up: #2
Now's the Time for Performance Support By: Conrad Gottfredson, April 26, 2013
Gottfredson, Chief Learning Strategist of Ontuitive, a world-leader in performance support, is an extremely credible voice in the performance support arena and has produced a wealth of very informative and insightful articles in 2013.
Gottfredson based this article on Gloria Gerry’s book “Electronic Performance Support Systems” that she wrote in 1991. The content in this book has become extremely relevant again and the desired approaches more achievable, due to the existing and emerging technologies available now. Gottfredson devised six attributes or principles of an effective performance support solution from Gerry’s definition of the same term where performance support is an: “Orchestrated set of technology-enabled services that provide on-demand access to integrated information, guidance, advice, assistance, training and tools to enable high-level job performance with a minimum of support from other people”. The Performance Support Pyramid methodology is intertwined throughout these attributes and provides a hierarchy for “anticipating the evolving information requirements of a performer”.
Gottfredson also includes a graphic that visualizes learning transfer after a training event. This 
subsequently shows how performance support steps in when that transfer does not occur due to lack of use or forgetting. Not implementing a performance support system is like sending someone into a forest without giving them a map. Overall, this is an excellent study on performance support that provides great insight and advice on how an effective strategy encourages self-supported, high-performing, independent and productive workers with minimum disruption to other people in the organization.
Do you have any favourite performance support articles or research? We’d love for you to share them with us.
Stay tuned for more upcoming blog posts for the remaining top five performance support articles of 2013 … and be sure to check out the first article of five in this series:
Let me read you your rights: Performance support is about providing the right information, the right amount of information and at the right time. It’s not a new concept; it is a relatively new and trend worthy approach to designing learning experiences. Performance support, or just in time learning, supports the 70:20:10 model (more about this model in a later blog post). This idea, researched at the Center for Creative Leadership, proposes that 70% of your learning happens on the job.
Think back over your career. Have you ever had to stop what you were doing to find an answer to a question, so that you could move forward with a task? Think about how it feels when you are in the zone and then it’s disrupted. Is it easy or hard to get back into your workflow? Have you ever attended a systems training course and subsequently forgot everything you learned because you didn’t use it right away?
An appropriately designed performance support strategy can help to increase productivity and reduce time off the job spent looking for answers. It should be seamless and obvious. You don’t stop and think about it. It could be a printed quick reference sheet, a help system embedded in a software program, an online product comparison, online sales tips, to name but a few.
As to be expected, there's a wealth of information about performance support on the web. We looked at existing credible sources and found what we think are some of the best 2013 articles that provide hands on tips and information to help design and implement the best possible performance support strategy for your organization. We've included the first of our five top articles of 2013 on performance support below. Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts on the remaining top four performance support articles of 2013.
The Round-Up: #1
16 Performance Support Tips, Strategies, and Tactics By: Jennifer Neibert, March 27, 2013
Learning Solutions Magazine published some of the best articles on performance support in 2013. This is a compiled list of tips and tricks from the presenters at the eLearning Guild’s Online Forum, “Learning at the Moment of Need: Connecting Learning to Performance," on April 11th and 12th, 2013.
It gives you a good sense of what performance support is all about and some expert bite-sized advice on how to approach your design strategy. The article questions the traditional approach to training and eLearning in today’s world where employees are expected to do more, with less time and less resources. Some of the advice includes focusing on the point of need, ensuring information is as easy to access as possible, making content short and concise and design for performance first, knowledge second.
If you attended the online forum in April, We'd love to hear what you liked, learned and remembered.
How quickly we forget what cold weather is like! Jack Frost has made a sudden appearance and we’re digging out our winter woollies. Why not cuddle up with a hot chocolate and a free webinar or two? We hope these December events will inspire and motivate you.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Getting Unstuck: Using Leadership Paradox to Execute with Confidence
Most of the issues that keep us up at night or prevent organizations from being successful are not problems that can be solved. Rather they are paradoxes that need to be managed. Unfortunately, most of us never learned to distinguish the two…or the methods to address the paradoxes.
This program helps people learn the three questions that make the distinction and provides trainers with opportunities to learn a new set of tools, language, and skills that can become part of their toolkit to help individuals and organizations address longstanding obstacles to success—so they can become more resilient and successful over time.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: 5 Tips for Turning Gamification Theory into Practice (Free for ASTD members)
You’ve heard all about gamification for learning, but how do you take the elements of gamification and make them a reality within your organization? This webinar, based on Karl Kapp’s newest book, The Gamification of Learning and Instruction Fieldbook: Theory into Practice, provides answers for turning your ideas into reality. The webinar will cover five practical elements for gamification and a step-by-step approach for implementing gamification concepts. This discussion will include several examples, lots of tips, a couple of tricks, and a worksheet or two to help learning professionals put the ideas into practice and gamify their content.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Managing a Virtual Workforce (Free for ASTD members)
Do you or your employees work outside of a traditional office? This might mean working from home on occasional mornings or being completely based at your local coffee shop. Perhaps you supervise sales staff in a large geographic area or are responsible for a team of global technology professionals. Mobile workforces are a growing and permanent trend, and management strategies need to keep pace.
This webcast will provide the basics of managing your mobile workforce—from supervisory tools to leadership techniques. You will be presented with the bedrock of a successful virtual work arrangement, including the four questions to ask yourself before deciding if a virtual work arrangement is right for your job position. Discover how to better engage employees working offsite and how to reinforce your corporate culture. Finally, learn how to optimize technology to coach and counsel employees working in the virtual cloud.
Thursday, December 5, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Leaving ADDIE Behind – A Conversation with Michael Allen
Analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (ADDIE) are all important steps in the design of effective eLearning applications or any learning program. While there have been many adaptations of ADDIE, many of them were made before we had today's tools, challenges, and opportunities. Join Dr. Michael Allen for a candid conversation with Richard Sites as they casually discuss what’s needed and possible today leveraging Agile to improve development efficiencies and effectiveness—resulting in the best learning experiences possible.
Thursday, December 5, 2013, 10AM – 11PM PST: 5 Reasons Why You Can't Ignore Gamification (Free for ASTD members)
Gamification is more than newfangled training. It is touted as the next form of work-based social media, in which people interact and socialize around a common bond of knowledge, competitive strategy, and fun. Elements of game play engage employees with just about any topic: improving operations, cutting logistics costs, and challenging employees to understand how their roles contribute to enterprise success. Many of the world’s largest brands are deploying gamification, including Coke, AOL, Nissan, Nike, and Viacom, and as more studies become available, the advantages to gaming in the workplace will become widespread. One primary lever promoting gamification is that employee satisfaction, which is closely related to employee retention, can no longer be achieved through financial compensation alone. The challenge now is to understand why gamification is so effective and how to introduce it seamlessly into an organization.
Thursday, December 5, 2013, 10:00AM – 11:00AM PST: Mobile Learning in Practice
Organizations taking their first steps into mobile learning can easily become overwhelmed by the multitude of considerations that exist: multi-device learning, responsive design, delivery platforms, tablets, smart phones, app stores, and much more. Without the benefit of practical examples and proven experience, it can be difficult to see how different approaches will work in practice, or to decide what will work best for your organization or sector. This webinar looks at the following:
Tuesday, December 10, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Virtual Presentations That Work: Breakthrough to Engage Clients and Staff
It’s one thing to be clear, concise, and in control of your message when you’re speaking to a group of people in a live conference room setting. It’s an entirely different thing to keep audience members attentive and engaged when presenting virtually. It’s not just learning how to run the meeting software. That’s the easy part. The real issues are getting people to want to participate and communicating well using the technology so that what you say is actually heard and understood. In this practical session, delivered virtually, you’ll explore the skills and techniques it takes to communicate effectively in virtual settings no matter whether you’re conducting meetings, presentations, product demos, or video conferences.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013, 12PM – 1PM PST: Capitalize on the Power of Employee Engagement in Government/Leveraging the Power of Employee Engagement (Free for ASTD members)
This is not an easy time to be working in the public sector. Heated budget battles and rhetoric about the size, function, scope, and effectiveness of government have generated criticism not just of government but also of the public servants who deliver government services. Across the country, government agencies and their employees are being denigrated and stigmatized. One proven response to maintaining effectiveness in this difficult environment is to improve the level of employee engagement. Research has clearly and convincingly shown that improving employee engagement will drive higher levels of organizational performance, reduce turnover, and yield other important workforce benefits. This session will focus on empirically proven approaches to improve employee engagement in government agencies.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 10:00AM – 11:00AM PST: Leveraging Technology for Social Learning
Social media has become a fixture in many of our lives, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other of the growing list of social technology platforms. Using technology to facilitate the natural connections and interactions between learners, instructors, and content is becoming the norm. The key is to recognize the difference between social media and social learning, and to know what social media is and isn’t. Webinar topics include:
Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: 3 Ways to Increase the Enrollment, Engagement, and Effectiveness of Your Training through the Power of Story
As trainers, we focus extensively on the design and development of our training content. Yet sometimes, even if we follow instructional design principles to the letter, our content doesn't engage, wow, or connect with the audience. What’s the missing ingredient? Join this webinar with author and training expert Pam Slim to discover how powerful, relevant, and engaging stories can humanize and accelerate the learning experience. Learn:
Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: Leveraging Mobile Learning for Sales Enablement (Free for ASTD members)
Join us for an exploration of how mobile devices can be leveraged to augment and support sales professionals, since they are often the most mobile team members who require training and performance support. New instructional design patterns for creating superior sales tools, job aids, and learning experiences for tablets, smartphones, and SMS-enabled feature phones will be explored in this how-to-focused webinar featuring content from the upcoming ASTD Infoline of the same title.
Thursday, December 12, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Crowdsourcing: The End of Administrative Onboarding
The days of administrative onboarding are numbered. Hiring priorities continue to evolve, and it’s become increasingly apparent that traditional onboarding—wherein new hire orientation is often limited to a list of HR to-dos—isn’t meeting today’s talent needs. Leaders of high-performing organizations are actively looking for ways to combat new hire turnover and foster new levels of employee engagement—and they’re overhauling onboarding to do it. But success in onboarding is not guaranteed. In order to achieve real and lasting results, there are important questions that need answers—not the least of which is, “Where to begin?” This webinar discusses:
Thursday, December 12, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Push Learners to the Edge with Story-Driven Games
How do you get the learner involved in the discovery of ideas? How do you ensure the learner is paying attention? PUSH THE LEARNERS TO THE EDGE. It may sound unorthodox, but this is how people learn best—being on edge, rushing to get things done, stretching their capacity to overcome an obstacle. These are traits of an active learner. The challenge is how to structure a learning environment so that it constantly pushes learners to the edge. In this session, you’ll see demos of story-driven games, and learn:
Thursday, December 12, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: You Can't Lead If You Can't Communicate: Simple Techniques to Get Your Message Across (Free for ASTD members)
Mike Figliuolo is a recognized presenter and author on developing leadership and communication skills in the workplace. He is an Honor Graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and he served as an armor officer in the U.S. Army. Mike has held positions as a consultant with McKinsey & Company and as an executive at Capital One Financial and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He is the founder and managing director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC—a leadership development training firm that focuses on real, practical, and applicable knowledge. His book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership is designed to help leaders define who they are and what their personal leadership philosophy is. Mike is specifically known for his programs that take participants beyond theory to hands-on application for immediate results.
Friday, December 13, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: State of the Industry, 2013 (Free for ASTD members)
Laurie Miller, Director of Research Services at ASTD, and David Frankel, Research Specialist, will discuss benchmarking data from ASTD BEST Awards Winners, Fortune magazine's list of Global 500 (G500) companies, and other organizations from 2004 to the present. ASTD estimates that US organizations spent $1,195 per employee on learning and development in 2012. The content from this webcast is drawn from ASTD's 2013 State of the Industry report, which is sponsored by Skillsoft and CARA.
Monday, December 16, 2013, 11AM – 12PM PST: BEST Webcast Series: University Health System: How to Create and Sustain Buzz in Your Learning (Free for ASTD members)
Building a strong, compelling brand for the learning and development department is essential in today’s workplace. With competing and escalating demands on time and talent, L&D must craft and implement a strategy to demonstrate its value. Learn how University Health System uses executive support, marketing communication, ROI, awards and recognition, partnerships, and more to create and sustain learning. Three things participants will take away:
Tuesday, December 17, 2013, 9AM – 10AM PST: Managing the Matrix: Hilton's Journey of Launching their School of Sales (Free for ASTD members)
When Joe Anzalone, director of the school of sales at Hilton Worldwide, was tasked with launching a common global sales learning function in the spring of 2012, he was greeted with a series of obstacles—decentralized decision making, nine different sales training programs already in use, competing leadership priorities and agendas, and a legacy of skepticism about previous US and corporate-based learning solutions. Join Joe as he walks you through his experiences dealing with these daunting challenges, how he has been able to overcome them, and what the future holds for Hilton’s global school of sales as the journey continues.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: Research Spotlight: Learning Strategies and Mobile Learning
This installment of Brandon Hall Group Research Spotlight webinars walks through BHG’s latest research on mobile learning and shares some preliminary data from the recently closed Learning and Development benchmarking survey. This webinar will include:
Wednesday, December 18, 2013, 10AM – 11AM PST: eLearning Authoring Tools: What’s Important?
What asynchronous eLearning authoring tools do individuals and organizations use and want, and why? What are the most desired features in asynchronous eLearning authoring tools at the macro and micro levels? These are the two overarching questions addressed in The eLearning Guild’s new survey-based research report, eLearning Authoring Tools 2013: What We’re Using, What We Want. In this webinar, you will learn:
Use an RSS reader? Never miss another Limestone blog post by subscribing here.
(Header image: "Writing" by Pedro Ribeiro Simões is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)
Limestone Learning is an elearning courseware development company located in Vancouver, BC working with clients across Canada, the US and worldwide. We offer end-to-end services for the development of online training programs, including instructional design, project management and training support. We can help you bring your elearning, instructor-led training (ILT), self-study or blended learning solution to life.
“I wanted to thank you personally for all your hard work with the accessibility project. We anticipate this project will help PHSA adopt learning-development best practices that are aligned with the Accessible British Columbia Act.”
LIMESTONE LEARNING • 809-1641 LONSDALE AVE, NORTH VANCOUVER BC V7M 2J5 CANADA
TOLL-FREE 1 888 463 8489 • TEL +1 604 983 9998 • FAX +1 604 983 9769
Copyright © 2009-2025 Limestone Learning Inc. All rights reserved.
Contact us ››
At Limestone Learning, we encourage and assist clients to make their elearning courses compliant with web accessibility standards — such as those described in WCAG, AODA and Section 508 — and we strive to do the same with our own website. If you are having difficulty accessing our website, please contact us so that we can correct the issue and provide you with the information or services you require.
