Send Your Graphics to Boot Camp December 16, 2011

Presented by Belen Bilgic Schneider of Performance Development Group. 

At our December eSIG meeting, Belen presented an online presentation to our members.  Whether you are flying solo or a dynamic duo of Instructional and Graphic Designers, one thing is certain: creating a course filled with content-enhancing graphics is a challenge.  Process models and complex info-graphics lend themselves easily to a high-caliber partnership between content and visuals. Belen talked about what you can do to make your content graphics do more heavy lifting for less obvious content.  Link to Belen’s presentation: GraphicsBootCampDec2011 (pdf)

Belen Bilgic Schneider

Belen Bilgic Schneider

Director of Media Services for Performance Development Group is a powerhouse of contagious energy, Belen Bilgic Schneider is PDG’s Director of Media Services. With more than fifteen years of experience in business administration, business application instruction, and print, web and multimedia design, Belen’s unique blend of creativity and usability have helped her achieve focused and powerful results during her 6 years in the learning and performance industry. Today, her holistic approach shines through as she leads the Media Services team in their pursuit of excellence creating high-impact visuals and enhancing learner engagement.

SharePoint – Best Practices December 16, 2011

Our October eSIG meeting hosted a Panel of Sharepoint users which included Robin Eisenberg from Pearson VUE, Maureen Longstreth from Dow Chemical, and Karl Grieb from Vanguard.

SharePoint, one of the most commonly purchased enterprise applications leveraged in today’s workplace, helps you and your team work better, faster, and smarter. You can access the right people and information at the right time to make better decisions, connect with your colleagues in new and creative ways, quickly become more productive and make better business decisions. But how can you use it to make an impact in learning and development. 

This interactive session discussed how companies are using SharePoint to leverage their learning and training needs.   This website features the top 10 Sharepoint websites in 2010: http://www.topsharepoint.com/top-rated-sharepoint-sites-for-2010

How does a company in a failing market survive one of the biggest economic down turns in American History? December 16, 2011

Our August seminar was presented by Katie Kunkle and Marcelo Bach both from Soundview Executive Book Summaries. 

Company profiles are always captivating because different companies want to emulate the great successes, avoid the bad times, and learn how to make the best attributes their own.   Soundview Executive Book Summaries is a company profile that strikes to the core of how innovation and employee retention of your top talent, will always be the framework of their success.  Threatened to close their doors in 2008, Soundview revolutionized themselves into a premier e-learning resource provider .  In this session Katie and Marcelo talked about :

• Chronological path from publishing to e-learning
• How to seek out and retain top talent in the e-Learning field
• Trends of e-Learning within mid size to large companies

 About our Speaker

Katie Kunkle

Microlearning: Like it or Not People Are Learning Without Us! August 2, 2011

The advent of the Internet, Web 2.0, social media, and of course mobile devices have dramatically changed the way all of us obtain information.  Our social and cultural lives have been transformed by technology and the speed of knowledge exchange.

 With the world literally at our fingertips with a few strokes on our computer keyboards, many of us have become proactive in searching out information on a need-to-know basis without waiting to take a class or read a book. In essence, we are microlearning!

 Wikipedia defines microlearning as, “dealing with relatively small learning units and short-term learning activities.” A tweet, a short video, a podcast, a section of a blog, a wiki, a Skype call, and Google Buzz, all can be considered microlearning.

Lana’s presentation sparked a lively discussion on how we can bridge traditional training methodologies with microlearning tools.

 At this event Lana spoke about:

• The Top 100 Tools of 2010 that people are using for Microlearning
• Mobile technology and how it effects our learning environments
• Exploration of several microlearning tools

About our speaker:

Lana Bennett

After many years as a corporate training manager and instructional designer, Lana has recently started her own instructional design consulting business called Strategic e-Solutions LLC.

Like many in the learning and development field, Lana started by exclusively working as a classroom trainer.  As learning technologies developed and evolved over the years, she became very interested in ways to integrate these new technologies into training programs.  She creates learning materials in a variety of blended formats including online, classroom, and video to meet the needs of various audiences.

Lana holds a Master’s degree in Corporate Training and Knowledge Management and is certified in project management.

Tips on Becoming an eLearning Pro July 18, 2011

The eLearning SIG was pleased to host our June  session with Tom Kuhlmann,  author of The Rapid E-Learning Blog.

Tom shared some practical tips on getting the most out of the resources you have to build engaging and interactive elearning content.

Being able to create courses with minimal programming presents many opportunities.  But the reality is that there are also challenges.  Many developers work with limited budgets and resources.  How can they build effective elearning courses with these constraints?

Some topics he discussed included  how to:

• Design an effective “getting started” elearning strategy that helps move you (and your subject matter experts) in the right direction.
• Learn to visually align the look and feel with the context of your elearning course
• Apply rapid instructional design models to rework existing content into something more interactive and engaging

Here is a link to the presentation and materials presented.

About the Speaker:

Tom Kuhlmann

Tom Kuhlmann, VP of Community, contributes to our thriving Articulate community of e-learning developers. Tom is best known as the author of The Rapid E-Learning Blog, which provides practical, real-world tips for e-learning success to more than 44,000 e-learning developers. Tom has more than 16 years of experience in the training industry, developing hundreds of hours of e-learning and managing e-learning projects at Capital One, Washington Mutual, and Weyerhaeuser. He has a Master’s in Education Technology from Pepperdine, where he researched how to cultivate communities of practice by helping members build their expertise.

Transferring ILT to Online Synchronous Training – How’d they do that May 23, 2011

Presented by Kassy LaBorie at our May 19th online meeting

• What’s involved in transferring instructor led training to an online synchronous format?
• What types of activities work in this environment?
• Tips to design so learners are interactive, engaged and collaborating.

  View Kassy’s Presentation (pdf)

About our Speaker

Kassy LaBorie Kassy LaBorie is an online synchronous Facilitator, Producer, Instructional Designer, and online meeting platform technical expert. Kassy currently facilitates for InSync Training, the global experts in live online synchronous learning. Her role at InSync Training offers her the privilege to perform leading practice consulting in design and delivery of live online training to global, social media driven, training audiences. Prior to InSync, she worked as a Senior Trainer and mentor at WebEx for 5 years, helping build the WebEx University and creating classes covering all topics including Foundations to Best Practices. Delivering sessions from her office in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, home to more shades of the color green than one could imagine, she shares her passion for effective online facilitation, design and production with participants from all over the world.  When asked what message she most wants to send to all online synchronous trainers: “Please stop muting phone lines and reading slides! Let’s create a Safe and Fun learning environment by allowing the group to do what a group does best…Collaborate!  Follow Kassy on Twitter http://twitter.com/Kassy_L and Get LinkedIn with Kassy http://www.linkedin.com/in/kassylaborie

FreeWare, ShareWare, and Pretty Darn Reasonable Ware: Low and No Cost Alternatives to commercial eLearning and Productivity Software May 23, 2011

At our April 21st meeting, Joe Mullock demonstrated low and no cost alternatives to commercial eLearning and productivity software.  Joe discussed the uses of “classics”, such as OpenOffice, Audacity, and GIMP.

There were even more cool new tools and discussions including, “Google Docs: So Much More Than Just Docs”, and “Is There an App for That?–Is There More to Mobile than Playing Angry Birds?

For more information about any of these products and applications, email Joe at jmullock1@comcast.net

Why 80% of training doesn’t stick, and what you can do about it. March 1, 2011

Investment in training is terrific – as long as there’s enough value and impact. Unfortunately, no matter how great the trainer, or how great the content, or how smart or hardworking the trainee, MOST TRAINING DOESN’T STICK!

Glenn Eckard

 In our February online session, Glenn Eckard presented informative and eye-opening statistics regarding training and it’s value to your organization and employees.  He also introduced  one organization’s answer to MAKING IT STICK! 

 Click here to view the presentation.

This is a link to the slides:  Eckard 1-24-2011.pdf

About our speaker:

Glenn Eckard is the Executive Vice President and COO of Rapid Learning Institute in Springfield, PA. He was former Sales Director at RapidForms, a division of New England Business Service. Prior to NEBS, Eckard spent seven years with Progressive Business Publications before which he was a branch manager at DialAmerica Marketing Inc. Mr. Eckard is a start-up expert who, in addition to being co-founder of the Rapid Learning Institute, has personally launched dozens of sales offices, and hired and trained thousands of sales and sales management leaders throughout his career.

Avoiding Cultural Gaffs in Training and e-Learning Design January 31, 2011

Catherine Mercer Bing

 Ever worry about offending multi-cultural employees when you are creating training or e-learning modules?  Well you should!  Culture impacts so much in our daily lives that we rarely consider it, even at work.  Catherine Bing is a culture generalist who can point out what we need to consider, where, so that we can be “culturally sensitive.”   Her presentation, at our January meeting,  detailed how to avoid cultural micro-inequities when designing training modules.   CWQ History and Overview (848KB)

About our Speaker:

Catherine Mercer Bing is the CEO of ITAP International, Inc. as well as Managing Director of ITAP Americas.   Catherine Bing has 30+ years in human resources development and a graduate degree in Education.   She spent eight plus years working as an internal corporate human resources professional/consultant specializing in organizational development and learning and development and 16 years as an outside communications, HR and cross-cultural consultant.   ITAP specializes in the impact that cultural differences have on business interactions.