There has never been a better time to step into the world of performance support. Almost 80% of learning is done in the context of work at “the moment of apply” — a moment that most learning offerings don't target. Now, more than ever, employees require performance support and organizations are ready to provide it — whether they know it or not! This session will ground you in the fundamentals of performance support.

Participants in this session will look at what performance support is (and what is not). You’ll learn the five types of performance support, the vital roles they can play in your organization, and where to start introducing them. You will learn how performance support complements emerging trends and technologies like mobile learning and social networking.

In this session, you will learn:

• What performance support is (and what it is not)
• The five types of performance support, the vital role they can play in your organization, and where to start introducing them
• How performance support complements emerging trends and technologies like mobile learning and social networking

Audience: Those interested in performance support as an addition to their training strategy.

Northeastern collaborated with a Fortune 100 client to deliver a large-scale online training program that focuses on business opportunities for professionals who must understand the language and mindset of the business and C-Suite executives who control corporate IT budgets. This successful online program helped the participants think strategically about enterprise growth and improved productivity. The original ILT program was too costly and lacked the necessary scalability for a worldwide workforce. The new program was delivered entirely online using synchronous and asynchronous technologies. It provided a scalable, cost-efficient means to deliver high quality and effective training to large numbers of participants in over 30 countries. It supported the client's needs by teaching business-centric solutions for selling across industries, and it engaged participants in a just-in-time, highly accessible, and successful training fitting into the client's learning roadmaps.

Participants in this case-study session will learn how to successfully migrate costly and time-consuming face-to-face training to an online environment to improve access and flexibility and reduce costs.

In this session, you will learn:

• The advantages of delivering professional development in an online format
• The steps to migrate existing F2F training to an online delivery format
• Common tools and technologies used to deliver synchronous and asynchronous online professional development
• Considerations for delivering synchronous online professional development worldwide
• The survey data on the effectiveness of online delivery of professional development

Audience: Those interested in learning how to create a scalable program to replace ILT with online approaches.

Stakeholders often come to us asking for courses, but the courses are either overkill or aren’t what is needed. And sometimes they do need “courses,” but only to check off a box. But in either case, developing courses ties up resources (including learners’ time) that they could use for better purposes. When we are asked to build courses, we have a responsibility to challenge and validate that creating a course is the most effective and efficient approach.

This session provides participants with ways to think about being more efficient when allocating course development resources. You’ll learn what questions to ask to get at whether a course is really needed, and whether more efficient options such as Twitter, discussion forums, PDFs, or other lower-tech options would more efficiently (and more effectively) meet learners’ and stakeholders’ real needs. Participants in this session will learn how training is not always the best option for improving performance, and it introduces some other alternatives along with the scenarios that can be most successfully implemented.

In this session, you will learn:

• The questions that you should ask and answer before beginning any learning program
• How to determine if a higher- or lower-tech option is more appropriate
• When a course or non-course is more appropriate
• How to steer stakeholders to more “efficient” options

Audience: Novice-to-intermediate participants should have basic or foundational level of training experience and knowledge.

Organizations are looking for easy and inexpensive ways to drive informal learning and alert students to upcoming formal training opportunities. However, many organizations do not know where to start that process, or what it will cost. Blogs often make great informal learning sites. They are simple to use, flexible, and a free-to-low-cost solution. As they become more popular with learners, blogs become easy-to-use content management systems that allow non-technical people to post content online easily. Also, many free tools (plug-ins and themes) allow you to easily modify blogs.

Participants in this case-study session will hear how SunGard is using informal-learning sites to promote formal learning. You’ll get numerous ideas on how to create blogs, both as informal-learning sites and as drivers of more formal learning. You’ll learn the types of content to which students will respond; with the focus on usable, effective, and inexpensive-to-build blogs.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to set up a blog as an informal learning site
• How to internally promote an informal learning site
• How to promote formal learning from an informal platform
• How to use tracking to determine the value of an informal learning site
• How to avoid potential downfalls when setting up a blog as an informal learning site

Audience: Novice-to-intermediate participants. A basic understanding of the Internet, Web browsers, and informal learning would be beneficial, but is not required.

National continuing-medical-education societies (Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME)) now mandate that education must result in performance improvement. However, one of the major challenges business medical professionals have is limited time for education. The adoption of mobile smart devices by research doctors and laboratory professionals in hospitals and labs is rapidly increasing. Therefore, there is growing interest and desire to craft a strategy to delivery education and performance support on mobile devices for these target audiences. There is also a strong interest in how mobile devices can impact learning and performance improvement.

Using a case-study approach, session participants will experience a step-by-step “best-practices” process in the design of non-profit mobile learning strategies. You will learn how ACCP developed a program to meet the limited time available for education, along with meeting performance improvement demands.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to design a comprehensive mobile solution to address member needs
• The unique challenges associated with learning and performance support on mobile devices
• How to create a mobile learning needs assessment
• Inclusion techniques for multiple stakeholders
• How to utilize a decision matrix to rank-order mobile learning solutions

Audience: Intermediate participants should understand basic principles of instructional design and know how to conduct a needs analysis.

Podcasting is a potentially powerful tool for business, allowing messages to quickly and easily disseminate to a large audience at an extremely low cost. While traditional Podcasts were audio files only, video Podcasts are on the rise and are increasing the possible uses for this technology. It is now possible to use Podcasts for more than communication — you can also use them for training and to support performance at the jobsite. Podcasts are fast and cheap to develop and can reach a large audience quickly using basic technology readily available in most companies. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of this tool, participants can make informed decisions as to when, where, why, and how to use Podcasts to their greatest advantage as part of their learning and performance support tool kit.

In this session, participants will explore what Podcasts are and how people have typically used them to date, and discover ways that they might use audio or video Podcasts for more than communication.

In this session, you will learn:

• What Podcasts are
• The strengths and weaknesses of Podcasts
• The types of organizations that use Podcasts
• Whether you can use Podcasts for training (by themselves or as part of a training program)
• Whether you could use Podcasts for performance support

Audience: Those wanting to explore how to use video and audio Podcasts for training and performance support.

Don’t you wish you could add simple animation to objects in your Captivate project the way you can in PowerPoint? Now, with the release of Adobe Captivate 5 (and 5.5) you can! Effects in Captivate allow you to add all kinds of simple animations and other effects to Captivate objects such as pictures, text boxes, shapes, and you name it! Using effects can greatly enhance your project and make your content come to life for your end user … and it’s super easy!

Participants in this session will learn how to easily add effects and get some ideas on using them EFFECTIVELY in your Captivate projects.

In this session, you will learn:

• What “effects” are
• The variety of effects available in Captivate
• How to add effects to objects in your Captivate project
• How to use effects to enhance your online courses

Audience: Novice participants with basic knowledge of and/or experience with Adobe Captivate.

LMSs have a variety of capabilities, but often they are not used to their full potential. As organizations review their bottom lines and re-evaluate their investments, LMSs need to “prove their worth” for continued support and additional investments. Think of all the aspects related to providing education opportunities – classroom space, instructor time, workbooks, presentation materials, resources, course evaluations, networking environments, tracking instructor-led and online course offerings, reporting attendance or completion, assessing knowledge retention and corporate impact. Not all LMS systems can handle all of these functions, but knowing the possibilities may spark interest in investigating them.

Participants in this session will learn how to use a LMS to help learning departments and LMS administrators market the system to the organization. You’ll learn the various opportunities a LMS provides, ranging from the traditional tracking and assessing to the more cutting-edge learning support through auto-enrolled courses, synchronous chat rooms, asynchronous forums, and document or Internet site resources. There are many ways to present material for the learner, and you’ll discover how to coordinate the presentation.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to utilize social learning support such as chat rooms and forums
• How to illustrate compliance tracking with reports
• How to construct assessment tools with checklists and follow-up surveys
• How to present materials with both internally and externally created content
• How to create an online resource repository for learners and instructors

Audience: Novice-to-intermediate participants. You should be familiar with LMS functionality as well as various creation tools such as PowerPoint and Articulate.

Many instructors in the corporate and academic environment are realizing the need for synchronous elements in their online classrooms, and are seeking an inexpensive and effective environment for real-time communication and collaboration. This session will present ideas on how to use Skype’s functionality to achieve these goals.

Participants in this session will learn alternative and innovative ways to provide information to online learners in a synchronous environment using Skype functionality to address these needs. You’ll get a brief overview of the technical requirements and the Skype functionality most relevant to online learning, see demonstrations of the functionality, and learn best practices and steps for implementation.

In this session, you will learn:

• How synchronous elements can enhance online instruction
• The Skype functionality most relevant to online learning
• Technological requirements for using Skype
• Best practices and ideas for using Skype for learning
• Suggestions for implementation and the potential obstacles

Audience: This session is for individuals interested in learning about Skype functionality and how to use it in their online classrooms.

The workforce was not using the current work instructions to build a highly specialized product at Northrop Grumman because of inconsistencies, and an overwhelming amount of text, concepts, and the use of certain visual graphics. This led to confusion and misunderstanding … resulting in high rework and low yield. In order to determine the best design solution, Northrop Grumman conducted an extensive study of the problem. This study, and the resulting product, has streamlined not only the ease of use of their build instructions but also provided new tools for the engineers and support staff to help build a knowledge base. It provides better training opportunities by helping to identify gaps and to standardize OTJ training.

Participants in this case-study session will learn about the infrastructure and methodologies Northrop Grumman used to create new content design, address conceptual training, provide basic skills training, and use the new platform to gather knowledge-and-process techniques.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use simple iconic representation for visual cues
• How to use a simple collaboration technique to capture knowledge using video and a wiki
• How to use reusable objects for conceptual training
• How to use 3-D modeling to aid in OJT training
• A simple method to capture tribal knowledge
• Ideas to help standardize training and make it available 24/7

Audience: Intermediate participants. Some knowledge of instructional design concepts may be helpful.

eLearning courses still use the book metaphor as a standard, and that is really beginning to hinder progress because eLearning is not linear like a book ... it demands a structure that allows for more dynamic interaction. We need to find a new metaphor for eLearning that is more flexible, more engaging, and less structured. One possible solution is Learning Maps: a geographical representation of eLearning content. The idea has been worked out in detail by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.

In this session, you will explore the possibilities of this metaphor, see the results so far, and discuss the application of this or possible other metaphors. Come learn about a possible next step in eLearning design.

In this session, you will learn:

• About learning maps, the possible new eLearning metaphor
• Why we need a new metaphor for structuring learning
• Other possibilities and directions for this new metaphor

Audience: This topic is for everybody with an interest in the future of eLearning. It will stay on a conceptual level, so no technical knowledge is needed.

A looming issue in eLearning is the training community’s need to effectively integrate and partner with project management in the corporate environment. Project managers tie together all the disciplines in a project. The difficulty is that trainers need to talk to the larger community, including project management, to get to the completion of a project. Six Sigma has become hugely important in the world of project management. It's a form of project management that incorporates a school of thought, a common language, and a toolkit widely applied in the corporate environment. It’s not possible to speak of contemporary Project Management without understanding the contribution of Six Sigma.

Participants in this case-study session will explore a situation about technology implementation to support changing business requirements. When eLearning professionals adopt a Project Management mentality and gain Project Management proficiency, they recognize that Project Management is a tremendous asset to shaping perceptions and collaborative identity for eLearning.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why Six Sigma makes a difference in managing projects to successful conclusions
• The common language of Six Sigma
• How to get to the heart of what training needs to accomplish by being part of the project management process
• Project management best practices in eLearning

Audience: Participants should have some idea of how project management works.

The challenge for all learning leaders and practitioners is how to create a solid, consistent, and precisely-targeted-to-the-need-at-hand RFP process. You are likely to work with your procurement or purchasing department, as well as folks in I.T., H.R., finance, legal, and other areas of the business. Developing a sound RFP is not rocket science, but it does require a systematic understanding of your problem, a clear articulation of your needs and requirements, and a well-defined set of steps that result in a document that clearly reflects your needs, assumptions, constraints, and criteria. It also requires a good business writing style and some internal political savvy.

In this session, participants will learn the basics of writing a strong RFP: what to include and what to leave out, what to do before writing the RFP and what to do once you send it out, how to decide which vendors should receive the RFP, and how to select the right vendor to win the work. You’ll learn RFP “dos” and “don’ts” (key mistakes), and see examples of RFP components.

In this session, you will learn:

• The difference between Requests for Information (RFI) and Requests for Proposal (RFP)
• The key components of a well-developed RFP
• The benefits of conducting a “requirements analysis” prior to creating the RFP
• How to avoid the key mistakes most often made in developing an RFP
• Ways to manage vendors during and after the RFP process

Audience: Managers, project managers, and those who have to write or review RFPs or RFIs.