Are you just starting your organization’s learning program or trying to revamp your learning and development approach? This session will address the issue of how to implement a hybrid solution within an organization from on-boarding to succession management. The session will examine how to blend your approach to implementing and delivering learning activities to ensure you are achieving the desired results.

Participants in this case-study session will learn how the DoD set up their program. You will walk through the analysis, customization, assessment, planning, development, and finally the measuring of effects via feedback loops. You’ll examine the decisions made to use either an online or an offline solution. You will hear how they set up a LMS and determined the delivery method for each learning item. You will get practical advice on what the DoD organization views as being best administered in the online environment and what is best left in the physical world.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to set up learning solutions to organizational needs
• How to make the LMS work for your learning solutions
• Which activities are best online and which you should keep offline
• How to provide a personal touch to newcomers to your organization

Audience: Novice to Intermediate level participants. This session is of interest to those who are either just starting their organization’s learning programs or are revamping their learning and development approach.  Knowledge of ISD, ADDIE, and overall talent management would be a plus, but is not required.

Effective leadership is vital to growth and expansion for all businesses. This has become especially true in the health care arena, where so much is continually changing. Affinity Health Systems (AHS) concluded that the strength of their leaders will determine the organization’s viability.

Participants in this case-study session will learn the process AHS used to determine the competencies leaders currently need to ensure success of the business. This session will assist other learning leaders by hearing how Affinity Health strengthened their leader competencies through a six-month project that used focus groups with senior leaders to develop a variety of success profiles for every level of organizational leadership.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why identifying key business drivers is critical
• The purpose of engaging senior leaders
• How to select and manage leader focus groups
• How to build four levels of leadership success profiles

Audience: Novice-to-intermediate participants who want to build an effective leadership program.

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.

The airline industry is always in a state of dynamic change with mergers, market conditions, new equipment, and serious pressure for continuous improvements. The human-in-the-loop scenario is real, and is a critical component. Currently, Pilots, Flight Attendants, and Maintenance Personal have compliance training requirements and a level-of-mastery check. Training ranges from self-paced (reading) to instructor-led to full-motion simulators, and often the content is complex and the performance requirements are set very high.

This session will detail the creation of a framework to move these  personnel toward a system that adapts relative to their work environment, specific job, level of mastery, and experience within their personal learning pathway. Participants will learn the importance and creation of a competency model, and the links within the model at the behavioral (task) level to training content. The learning objectives for this audience, based on the chosen competency model, provides a foundation for a high-level curriculum and course outline to which you can apply the accelerated learning framework to determine the optimal learning design and accelerate both the learning pathway and the learning process in the training.

In this session, you will learn:

• A process to move toward adaptive-learning content
• The Competency Development Methodology
• How to map Competency to Curriculum
• Business drivers for Adaptive Learning

Audience: Intermediate. To get the most out of this session the audience should understand their audiences, the differences between groups, and the environment where adapting content would be valuable. An understanding of competency models and strategic learning initiatives is helpful.

Keeping position expectations current in the Learning Field is challenging, especially as positions require Instructional Designers to be specialists as well as jacks-of-all-trades. Complicating the challenge is a Human Resources hiring methodology based on a finite set of skills rather than position expectations. Once we find a candidate, there is a new challenge of keeping attitudes on your team positive and away from the old line, “that’s not my job.” Changing the mind-set of learning professionals to help them transition from an organization of skill-based positions to one that uses role-based thinking can be difficult.

Participants in this case-study session will learn how JetBlue University successfully transitioned their Learning Solutions team during 2010-2011 from skill-based to role-based positions to improve products, meet development requests, provide opportunities, and grow their offerings. You’ll review the data, process, and lessons learned to identify the roles relevant to your learning organization’s demands and industry standards, satisfy the skills-based recruiting proposed by human resources while meeting the needs of the work groups. You’ll discuss how to grow roles rather than just growing skills.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why role-based positions help position a team for growth
• How to brainstorm the roles needed within your organization as well as learning-industry roles
• How to compare traditional skill-based positions with role-based descriptions
• How to generate ideas as a group for ways to encourage role-based thinking within your existing team, without changing structure
• The lessons learned at JetBlue University

Audience: Those interested role-based work environments.

Most organizations have a wide variety of talent and people with a broad range of knowledge, but they rarely get the opportunity to speak openly with their colleagues from other departments or fields about instructional technologies and learning trends. This is because many organizations have a siloed approach to their workflow. Hearing from instructors, facilitators, engineers, IT professionals, project managers, 3-D artists, interactivity specialists, and videographers in one setting can unleash so many possibilities and ideas.

Participants in this case-study session will learn how to overcome closed-communication workplace environments by creating an atmosphere where people from cross-disciplines can come together and talk in an open forum. You will learn how Bellevue University hosts a monthly roundtable for faculty and staff that focuses on current instructional designs and learning trends in higher education. You will also learn why they chose a roundtable format, the challenges they faced, and how they overcame them. 

In this session, you will learn:

• Best practices for creating a discussion forum in your organization
• Why creating an open forum is important to your organization
• Why it is important to talk to people from cross-disciplines on a regular basis
• The benefits of hosting a regular discussion forum in your organization

Audience: Those interested in how to create an open forum where colleagues from cross-disciplines can exchange and discuss ideas and thoughts on the latest instructional technologies and learning trends.

New demographics, global economic shifts, and emerging technologies have created a “borderless workplace” – an environment in which age, geography, gender, and organizational boundaries are vanishing. A global recession and a talent shortage have many organizations recognizing that competitive advantage relies on building strong learning cultures. L&D organizations are asking what’s required structurally to advance organizational learning, deep specialization, and talent mobility. Questions like, if you want to build a culture of learning, what learning models and technologies are most supportive of that outcome. How do you organize the learning function – do you centralize or decentralize your learning organization?

Participants in this session will see examples of high impact organizations, including Deloitte, IBM, Thomson Reuters Knowledge, and Vestas Wind, that are driving significant business improvements with innovative approaches to employee learning. You will also hear about new, research-based insights into how organizations can succeed by transcending geographies and generations with learning approaches that drive improved business results.

In this session, you will learn:

• Best practices for getting globally dispersed learning professionals to work together
• How to work with globally dispersed audiences most effectively, and how to address their needs
• How continuous informal learning will drive further adoption of internal and social networking across the enterprise
• How learning will play a critical role as companies increasingly need to reinvent themselves by restructuring and re-engaging
• About the drive to adopt new technologies that enable mobile learning to deliver just-in-time training on the job anywhere

Audience: Intermediate participants should have a basic understanding of the learning function.

For too long, old paradigms, like pushing knowledge to a global workforce through disparate learning events, i.e. courses, has dictated to corporate learning. Effective learning needs to happen as a process, not as a series of disconnected events strung together out of context. In a new, integrated model for corporate learning, technology should seamlessly deliver carefully selected, timely, role-appropriate learning opportunities at the right point in a person’s career development – learner needs must drive the LMS, not the other way around. The Integrated Learning Manifesto offers a new model for corporate learning that is not driven by delivery method or media. Today's corporate learners’ desire learning that is Social, Relevant, Self-directed, Integrated, Focused, and Timely.

Session participants will learn about the early pilots of onboarding and leadership of a large global corporation that are moving towards the Integrated Learning model. You’ll explore how the Microsoft SharePoint platform can help speed the move toward integrated learning that bridges multiple corporate systems, including the LMS, HRIS, document repositories, and learning portals.

In this session, you will learn:

• The six demands of today's corporate learners
• The Integrated Learning Manifesto vision for personalized integrated learning
• How the Microsoft SharePoint platform can enable integrated learning
• How to begin taking steps toward integrated learning in your organization

Audience: Intermediate-to-advanced participants should be familiar with the typical corporate learning environment, and various systems found in the corporate HR ecosystem such as the LMS, HRIS, document repositories, and learning portals. Familiarity with Microsoft SharePoint is helpful.

What worked five years ago isn’t necessarily working today. If you don’t change with the times, you run the risk of no longer being relevant to either your learners or your business partners. This is a challenge that most learning departments face today. This session will offer techniques for transforming learning, staying relevant, and improving relationships with key stakeholders.

Participants in this case-study session will learn how Canadian Tire’s Learning Solutions team is expanding their role to become strategic partners with their corporate clients. They are working to move their clients from saying “I need an eLearning lesson” to “I need your help in building a solution to support my business goals.” Looking at some pivotal projects from the past year, you will see demonstrations of how they are moving to provide a broader range of solutions, at a lower cost, and with shorter timelines. You’ll learn tips for enabling this transformation.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to partner with other solution providers to expand your offering
• The benefits to saying “yes” to opportunities outside your comfort zone
• Techniques for aligning training to business focus areas to stay current and relevant
• How to adapt processes to become streamlined and cost effective

Audience: Intermediate-level participants with internal stakeholders who are concerned about cost and efficiency.

The ability to think and act strategically is valued by mid- and senior-level leadership in organizations. The ability to create a strategic training plan can help raise awareness of the value to the organization and help you position your organization for success in obtaining necessary resources to achieve its goals. Creating strategic training plans takes time, but with a ready template and a moderate amount of business knowledge, most managers and non-managers can develop strategic training plans. Strategic planning is typically not a course taught as part of an instructional design degree, leaving training professionals without the skills needed to effectively communicate from a business perspective.

This session will provide participants an overview of the knowledge and skills needed to create a strategic training plan. Such plans will help the training organization increase its value by aligning the mission, objectives, and goals of the training organization to those of the overall organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• The purpose of strategic training plans
• How to align organizational goals with departmental goals
• The benefits of creating a strategic training plan
• How to develop a simple and moderately complex strategic training plan
• Who you need to involve in the development of a strategic training plan

Audience: Novice-to-intermediate participants should come to this session with examples of their organization’s mission statements, values statements, and organizational goals. Only share non-proprietary information during the session.

As a result of developing good management systems for scale, MSH, with funding from the United States Agency for International Development, has successfully scaled-up virtual program offerings supporting 3,700 health professionals using six languages from more than 70 low-resource countries around the world. These offerings build participants' management and leadership capacity to achieve organizational results.     

Participants in this case-study session will learn how MSH set up a management system that successfully assured high-quality facilitation, Web development, content adaption, and management training for new managers and support staff in order to offer up to 12 programs (often concurrently) per year in multiple languages. You will learn how they updated manuals; created a team of support managers and staff; developed a systematized approach to content management, course adaption, and translation; captured program improvements; and created a database to track and prioritize lessons learned, suggested improvements, and upgrades for future offerings.

In this session, you will learn:

• The elements of a successful virtual program-management system enabling scale-up of MSH’s virtual program suite
• How MSH managed translations and the adapting of program content to the local context
• How MSH trained and supported multiple project management teams during concurrent course offerings
• The lessons learned from this experience

Audience: Novice to intermediate participants knowledgeable about eLearning project management. Other organizations facing similar management or scale-up challenges in eLearning will find this session interesting.