Last week, our feature article Learning Support Technologies in 2016 offered a high-level overview of technologies and areas of practice that can change your business and the position of learning and development within your organization. In this spotlight, take a deeper dive into three of the technology areas mentioned last week (the Experience API, video, and gamification) and further explore where we are headed with these links to the Guild’s December Online Forums.

Online Events Archive. Reporting Out: xAPI, the Internet of Things, Gnomes, and a Learning Experience Checklist. Meg Fairchild and Patrick Selby. Handouts, recording.  What does this explosive growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) mean for workplace learning? The Experience API (a.k.a. xAPI or Tin Can API) allows learning professionals to track a variety of learning experiences happening through the IoT, outside the traditional boundaries of SCORM and LMSs. This opens up vast new opportunities for instructional design, experience tracking, and data mining. Learn how a design team explored the convergence of xAPI and IoT, using a learning experience checklist as a form factor.

Online Events Archive. Current and Future Trends in Video-Based Learning. Ari Blixhorn. Handout, recording. Despite its value as a learning medium, video still hasn’t crossed the tipping point as a technology for formal and informal corporate learning. Recent advances in video technology and shifting workforce culture are changing that. The rise of the “corporate YouTube,” the ability to search inside video content for any spoken word, and workflow-free media production are making video more accessible to both L&D teams and individual employees. Similarly, demographic and pedagogical trends, including the flipped classroom, user-generated learning content, and the flood of Millennials into the workplace are changing employee expectations about how video can be used to share information. If you’re in charge of your organization’s learning initiatives, this will prepare you for the imminent wave of video and give you ideas for how to incorporate multimedia into both formal and informal learning strategies.

Online Events Archive. Gamification in Learning Report Card: Lessons Learned in the Trenches. Carol Leaman. Handout, recording. This is a companion to this week’s feature article in Learning Solutions Magazine, also by Carol, Report Card: Is Gamification All Hype or Does It Really Work? Despite being a promising trend in learning, many gamification-for-learning implementations could be falling short of their promise, due mainly to poor design. The challenge has been that hard data regarding the effectiveness of specific gamification elements has been scarce until now. This presentation, together with this week’s feature, provides you with hard data from millions of discrete interactions. The result is information about the value of gamification and the key elements that make it successful.

Online Events Archive. Stop Listening to the Experts: Here’s What You Need to Know About eLearning. David Anderson. Handouts, recording. Technology is changing, and the tools we use are changing so that they are easier to use and more powerful. As a result, the way we design learning experiences is changing: new expectations, new demands, new ideas and trends. It is increasingly difficult for designers to know where to focus their skills and competencies in order to remain competitive. David’s presentation explores the challenges, and practical ways you can build your skills to keep up. If you are a course designer, manager, or learning professional responsible for content and course development, you should study this video.

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Learning Solutions Conference & Expo 2016: Sharing What Works (Orlando, Florida, March 16 – 18) will feature sessions on these and related topics. Register by January 29 and save $100! Your registration includes Ecosystem 2016, focused exclusively on learning-infrastructure systems and strategies. It’s designed for professionals who are responsible for managing learning and development and optimizing investments in employee development across their organization.