Ellen is a PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional, a Microsoft award), one of only 18 in the United States. Her well-known website at www.ellenfinkelstein.com offers many PowerPoint tips and the PowerPoint Tips Newsletter. She specializes in training speakers and presenters to convert Death by PowerPoint to Life by PowerPoint; communicate clearly and powerfully; and design high-impact, persuasive and professional-looking slides.

She is an Amazon bestselling author. Some of her books are PowerPoint for Teachers: Dynamic Presentations and Interactive Classroom Projects, How to Do Everything with PowerPoint, and her e-book, Slide Design for Non-Designers.

Her courses include High-Persuasion Presentation Program and Create an Outstanding Presentation Self-Study Course. You can find those as well as other courses and books in her e-store.

Ellen Finkelstein has done training for Citrix, Brainshark, Disney, Microsoft, Pennsylvania State Education Association, Maharishi International University, State University of New York at Buffalo, State University of Illinois, several law firms, Vastu Homes, and others. She does on-site training, 1-on-1 virtual coaching/training, and webinars. Her specialty is helping speakers and trainers create clear, powerful, and persuasive presentations. Learn about her training programs at www.ellenfinkelstein.com.

As a trainer, do you find that implementation of what you teach is the downfall of a lot of training? According to the ASTD, 90% of what trainees learn is lost by the time they return to the job. How do you help make the learning stick?

Enter the Never-Ending Course. In this session, Ellen Finkelstein will show you how you can start with a live course (whether in person or synchronous online) and then…

1. Repurpose your course materials so they are always available to trainees
2. Use your LMS, a wiki, or online Knowledge Base as a permanent reference for trainees
3. Continue to involve the trainer or SME long after the course ends
4. Include managers so they can support the learning and implementation
5. Use the after-the-course infrastructure to improve the course the next time
6. You’ll come away with a new blueprint for structuring training.

Chris Benz designs and leads the development of technical information to be used and reused effectively and efficiently across instructor-led training, self-paced eLearning, product documentation, help systems, websites, and marketing.

As part of The Deeper Learning At Work Group, Chris is currently working with other training and instructional-design experts to develop and produce blended courses on using research-based techniques to drive learning for effective application on the job. He previously served as the director of online events for The eLearning Guild, where he designed and led the production of hundreds of webinars and online-conference sessions.

Chris is an Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and co-founder of Duke University’s Certificate in Technical Communication program. He has authored almost a dozen retail-market books, one of which won Best of Show in STC’s International Technical Publication Competition.

Do you have personal or professional knowledge you’d like to share with the public? Your purposes might include monetizing your knowledge, marketing yourself or your business, promoting new ideas, or providing a public service. But without the technical and monetary backing of an employer or other organization, how do you market your course, collect any registration fees, deliver content, and track participants' progress--on a minimal budget?

In this case-study session, you’ll follow the journey of training and instructional-design (ID) researcher Patti Shank, VILT expert Karen Hyder, and project manager and business enabler Chris Benz as we launch our first public online blended course on a very small budget. Patti had spent thousands of hours reviewing research on effective workplace-training tactics, and wanted to monetize her work by teaching other trainers and IDs how to apply those tactics. Working collectively as The Deeper Learning At Work Group, our goal was to deliver evidence-based training/ID courses that eliminated the need for instructor and participant travel while achieving learning that was as good as or better than in the physical classroom--for a lot less money. Our first course focused on writing valid and reliable multiple-choice questions, a critical skill many trainers and IDs do not have, and we are developing many more courses that use and teach Deeper Learning At Work tactics.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• How we build the Deeper Learning At Work brand and market our courses through content marketing, presentations, social media, and business partnerships--for free
• About the low-cost and free tools we use to host self-paced content and discussions, collect registration fees, meet with participants in a live virtual classroom, and track participants' progress throughout the course
• How we use Deeper Learning At Work tactics to determine the need for, then design and develop, courses

Learning and development has a broken feedback loop, and it's holding us back as a field. Because we usually can't see our products being used, we lack the most basic information necessary to improve what we do. Traditional evaluation at best is costly and difficult to measure, and at worst ignored altogether, or implemented in such a superficial way that it's meaningless. Even good evaluation measures are not granular enough to inform future design decisions.

Agile evaluation methods will look at what we can learn from the field of software usability, and what practices we need to add to that for ensure successful blended learning design. Practitioners need to ensure they also have a feedback loop in order to move forward as designers and developers of digital solutions.

Joe Ganci is owner of eLearningJoe, a custom learning company. Since 1983 he has been involved in every aspect of multimedia and learning development. Joe holds a Computer Science degree, writes books and articles about eLearning, and is widely considered a Learning and eLearning guru. Joe consults worldwide and also teaches at conferences and at client sites. He writes tool reviews and is the recipient of several awards for his work in eLearning, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999 and an eLearning GuildMaster Award in 2013. His mission is to improve the quality of eLearning with practical approaches that work.

Kassy LaBorie is the principal consultant at Kassy LaBorie Consulting, LLC. She is a speaker, instructional designer, classroom facilitator, and author who specializes in virtual learning, teams, and live online technology. Kassy is passionate about helping organizations, learning teams, and training professionals successfully move to the virtual environment.

In her previous role at Dale Carnegie Training, she was the director of virtual training services, a consultancy that partners with organizations to help them develop successful online training strategies. Kassy also served as the product design architect responsible for developing the company’s live online training product and experience. Prior to this, she was an independent master virtual trainer, a Microsoft software trainer, and a senior trainer at WebEx, where she helped build and deliver training at the WebEx University.

Kassy is the co-author of Interact and Engage! 50+ Activities for Virtual Training, Meetings, and Webinars. A frequent speaker at industry conferences since 2006, she has presented at Training Magazine events including their yearly conference and Online Learning Conferences, Chief Learning Officer symposiums, The Virtual Learning Show, ATD’s TechKnowledge and International Conference & Exposition, as well as many local ATD Chapter events.

Connect with Kassy on LinkedIn, Twitter, and her website at KassyConsulting.com

Whether it's an online meeting, a presentation via webinar, or live online training, engagement is the main question on everyone's mind. Will it be worth my time to attend or will it be an opportunity to check email instead? Live online meeting technology is powerful and has made it easy to connect with people from anywhere in the world at any time, yet we often still struggle with getting everyone to interact.

Interaction is the answer to successful engagement and using the features of the platform is the answer to interaction. However, the features alone do not engage the participants. It is what you choose to do with those features that will make the difference in your next virtual training, webinar, or meeting. Learn what you can do to be successful in the virtual environment and avoid everyone asking for a recording or a copy of the slides five minutes into your next virtual training.

The speaker will discuss design considerations for WebEx, Zoom, Adobe Connect, other platforms, but will deliver this session live online using Zoom.

• Describe how engaging live online training activities build virtual participant engagement.
• Determine the appropriate level of interaction to create effective live online training.
• Analyze activities for specific engagement techniques to apply to your own learning design.
• Use a checklist of platform features to optimize the investment in your virtual meeting technology.

Karen Hyder, online event producer and speaker coach at Kaleidoscope Training and Consulting, has been teaching about technology since 1991, when she delivered instructor-led software courses for Logical Operations.

She was promoted to director of trainer development, helping trainers improve skills and earn certifications. In 1999 she created a course for trainers using virtual classrooms, and helped launch The eLearning Guild Online Forums in 2004 and was honored in 2017 with the Guild Master Award.

Currently, Karen provides coaching and production support for a series of online courses at Hearing First, a not-for-profit that serves listening and spoken-language (LSL) professionals and parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Karen Hyder has been collaborating with Hearing First LLC since 2016 to develop and guide delivery of a series of online courses that support listening and spoken-language (LSL) professionals and parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

In this session, Karen – who provides ongoing coaching and production support to Hearing First – will describe how using Adobe Connect to adopt and deliver an evidence-based, flipped classroom model – also called a blended-learning model – has enabled Hearing First to meet the challenge of improving learning outcomes.

Participants will learn how Hearing First leveraged an online community platform for independent learning assignments, recordings, and resources, and facilitated virtual-classroom sessions to engage with others and apply new skills. Karen will share the failures and the genius of the design and production plans; insights into Adobe Connect and other software tools; and methods for preparing and motivating subject-matter experts and participants.

Participants in this session also will explore:

• The basics of a flipped-classroom design and delivery model
• How to determine the roles of key team members
• Production and preparation and planning steps
• Technical considerations
• Three things Hearing First and Karen wish they had known before we started

Sherry is a Senior Learning and Development consultant with broad-based skills designing, developing, managing and delivering learning solutions for large-scale projects in these industries: Agriculture, Aviation, Construction, Financial Services, Government, Health Care, Industrial Automation and Services, Information Technology, Retail, Supply Chain Management and Telecommunications.

Her specialties include: Team Leadership, Customer Relationship Management, Instructional Design, Course Development, Business and Process Analysis and Project Management.

Learn how a disparate team of L+D employees and contractors are using successfully using AGILE, a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach and blended learning experiences for a complex systems integration project to ensure that all employees are ready for Day 1 of system go-live.

After attending this session, you’ll be able to:

• Identify key elements in setting an AGILE L+D team up for success
• Define MVP and its role in quickly developing effective training
• Describe methods for soliciting actionable feedback from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
• List the tools used to create the blended learning experience

Despite some naysayers, games still are quite a powerful way to engage learners and make training content stick in their minds. That’s why we decided to host a session on how to power up your PowerPoint course with a mini game!

In real time, we will show TWO different ways to create a mini game — PowerPoint vs. iSpring Suite — and see which one is faster, easier, and more compelling! :)

During the session, our expert will show you how to build a mini game on a merchandising topic:

• In PowerPoint using triggers and animations
• In iSpring using the top-notch drag-and-drop editor

Join us to find out which way will win the battle!

Stories and training have a common thread that tie them together: action. In stories, we watch the action unfold as the characters do things: observable actions. In training, we’re also asking learners to do things: observable actions. Tying these two action-packed forms together makes for a powerful learning experience. Technology has opened up new possibilities for delivering training in ways that flex to the needs of learners. But as we all know, technology by itself is not instructional design. Likewise, storytelling opens up new possibilities for training that meets learners where they are, both intellectually and emotionally. But random storytelling cannot truly support the learning experience. It also must be designed to do so.

Join this session for a lively discussion about Story Design and its versatile application to blended learning. Whether you’re engaging your learners through eLearning, virtual reality, videos or in-person, Story Design adapts seamlessly to any delivery method, using any technology. This session will get you started on thinking about story-designed blended learning possibilities.

Pauline believes that eLearning has the power to make the process of knowledge delivery easy and eliminate the barriers of time and distance between people who are looking for new ways to share information.

Working as a Customer Success Manager at iSpring, an eLearning software company, has allowed Pauline to witness the launching of online learning in many companies in different industries. Pauline is the guru of iSpring Solutions, which is both an LMS and an authoring tool, and she knows exactly how to get any eLearning project off the ground. Pauline is happy to share her experience with those who are taking their first steps in eLearning, as well as with advanced iSpringers. That's why she is appreciated so much by her customers.

Let's talk about eLearning “buzzwords” (which are actually great techniques to use!).

This session will be dedicated to microlearning, one of the trending topics. So, if you’ve always wanted to give microlearning a try, now is the time!

During the live session, we will explain what microlearning is, and how to quickly build a micro course with iSpring.

You will learn:

• The general steps to build a micro course
• How to create a micro course with iSpring Suite

After the session, you will be able to build a micro course by yourself using our basic step-by-step instructions.

Are you looking for ways to meet people where they are at? Do you have an interest in providing learning content outside of your LMS, but are concerned about how you will measure it?

I will explain how you can use xAPI to measure engagement with your content and make more informed decisions about content development, resource allocation, delivery methods. I explain the steps I have used with xAPI to collect the data to drive relevant insights that will help us to determine a strategy for the measurement of video interactions. I then show the visualizations of data present to stakeholders that allowed for more informed decisions.

By the end of the session, attendees will be able to:

• Find the resources to make xAPI work for you and/or your organization
• Adopt a process to build an xAPI proof-of-concept that drives value
• Identify the types of data visualizations from xAPI that deliver results

Lucie Hammond is passionate about technology for humanity. She founded BeingVR to help organisations embrace virtual reality (VR) for human connection, engagement and training.

Lucie has a decade of corporate communications and change experience across Australia and Europe, and post graduate qualifications in business and psychotherapy.

She is a strong advocate for disruption of the education and training industry, and believes in seizing the opportunity the Fourth Industrial Revolution brings to up-skill and re-skill humanity to create more sustainable living.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) warns fifty percent of talent will need to be re-skilled to adapt to a digitised workforce, with human skills highlighted as most sought after and transferrable for future work. This human differentiator is what inspires Lucie to approach training differently.

Lucie is a 2016 graduate of Silicon Valley’s tech accelerator, The Founder Institute, and an active participant in the start-up ecosystem in Australia. She was a finalist in the Duke of York, Prince Andrew’s Pitch at Palace competition in Sydney 2017, and is an ambassador for Women in Technology, Western Australia (WiTWA). She was recognised as one of Techboard's Highest Trending Female Founded Start up and Tech Companies of 2017 and is a member of The Speakers’ Institute, The global VRAR association, and Women in Immersive Tech.

With the relatively recent application of virtual reality (VR) to the education and training industry we have seen early adopters, both enterprise and third-party training providers, look to VR as a tool to complement and enhance learning outcomes, engagement, and knowledge transfer from classroom to on-the-job performance.

Lucie Hammond will talk to her experience, failures and learnings in humansing technology for blended learning purposes, including reference to BeingVR’s Unconscious Bias in Virtual Reality workshop, which involved designing a scaffolded learning strategy and building on traditional presentation style delivery to include interactive multimodal activities, simulations and facilitated peer discussion.

Chrysoula (Chryssa) Lazou is an EFL educator in the public sector,(Hellenic Ministry of Education). She holds a Bachelor Degree in English Language and Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a Master's of Education in Distance Education, Athabasca University, Canada's Open University. Chryssa is EnEAGK' s, the Association of English Language Teachers of Kavala, Northern Greece, ex-president, (IABL member of the Communications and Membership Committee), an IVLP participant and U.S. programs alumna with a specialization in cultural awareness and inclusive leadership and practices in education and community. Chryssa participates as a presenter and inspirer in national and international conferences and workshops and she has facilitated MOOC courses with international students. Her teaching practices are based on the Universal Design for Learning principles, involve the incorporation of new technologies and project-based learning on various fields, leveraging CLIL method and blended learning. Her most recent U.S. program participation and project implementation involves AlumniTIES Seminars that took place in Kyiv in October 2018 (with the participation of 43 educators and librarians from 25 countries from Europe and Eurasia) with a specialization in media literacy and critical thinking in the digital age. In 2017 she was a Northern Lights Award recipient and in 2019 a World Learning grant recipient.

Dr. Susan Ruckdeschel has over 25 years of teaching and administrative experience in K-12 public schools, higher education, and private educational institutions. With 16 years of experience in publishing, curriculum writing, instructional design, and online course instruction, she recently founded Blended by Design, a service provider for blended instructional design and K-12 student curriculum. Her doctoral study, completed in 2017, is titled, “The Efficacy of Blended Learning Models of Teacher Professional Development”. Susan also researched and had published “Peer Coaching for Adolescent Writers” (Corwin Press, 2010), a student writing handbook for teachers. Susan is also founder and former CEO of Literacy Solutions and more, Inc., where she wrote, edited, and led the design of over 400 online courses for school districts and teachers throughout the United States. Her research continues to focus on digital literacy and use of evidence-based practices that impact curriculum and instruction.

Ray Jimenez is the Chief Learning Architect and Founder of VignettesLearning.com. He designed the principal architecture of TrainingMagNetwork.com, with over 100,000 members.

Ray's passion focuses on helping organizations, learning leaders and learners to apply context-driven and micro-content learning design and delivery. Based on his applied research and work with clients, Ray has developed learning design methodologies and software application that reflect such context-driven learning concepts. The core of his expertise is in Story-Based Learning Designs (SBLD) and Contextual Learning Platforms (CLP). He invented the kernel learning design called "SRIA" - Set up, Relate, Interpret and Apply. SRIA applies to all modalities including micro-elearning and mobile learning.

Ray is the author of the "Story-Based eLearning Design", "3-Minute e-Learning", "Scenario-Based e-Learning", "Do-It-Yourself eLearning" books and several papers and publications. He is a sought-after speaker and thought leader and presents in conferences for ATD, Training Magazine, eLearning Guild, ISPI, DevCon mLearning and others.

Many training programs focus on using instruction methods. Learners forget the ideas and fail to apply them while needed at work. Furthermore, the content presented in these programs are never enough to help workers deal with the unexpected or unknown work issues that may surface at work. Consequently, workers' productivity is low and creates negative impacts in the organization. Workflow Learning brings training and learning closer to work. It goes beyond skills training to thinking capacities. Workers deal with real-work issues and learn along the way.

In this session, you will learn:

• What are roadblocks that stop workers and learners to apply training ideas.
• How to bring training and learning closer to work.
• How to use the 5-Step Workflow Learning implementation steps.
• How to use and create thinking capacities by developing thinking tools.
• How to pattern your Workflow Learning solutions from two cases