Do you have a list of resolutions for the new year? Whether your 2017 to-do list is professional, personal, or downright whimsical, those items are worth doing. And with the holiday season winding down, it’s time to get in gear! There are tons of free webinars this January that can help you get traction on your goals. 

Wednesday, January 4, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: Revolutionizing Corporate Learning (Free for ATD members)

Corporate learning is constantly evolving. A rapidly changing economy and a new Millennial workforce are putting new pressures and expectations on learning and development (L&D). As L&D moves to the centre stage of corporate strategy, there are also new opportunities. The most successful corporate learning programs will be those that provide accessible, flexible, and relevant content for employees at all career levels and stages. In this webcast, three experts discuss the shifts in work and learning, and the challenges and opportunities for L&D leaders in this new landscape. The webcast will include topics such as the:

• Democratization of learning in the corporate environments.

• Science and mechanics of learning.

• Importance of corporate learning in the changing economy and the role companies like Coursera play in this revolution.

Wednesday, January 4, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Research Spotlight: Removing the Barriers to Women in Leadership

Workplace equality between the sexes has long been a challenge for organizations worldwide. While progress has been made through awareness efforts and education, a challenging environment still exists for women—and especially for women leaders aspiring to executive leadership roles. When respondents to Brandon Hall Group’s 2016 Women in Leadership Study were asked to rate their organizations on gender parity, only 12 per cent said they had an equal number of men and women in C-level positions.

Join Brandon Hall Group’s Rachel Cooke and Melissa Benavides in a special Research Spotlight webinar as they discuss how cultural biases can create barriers that are limiting to individual women, as well as entire organizations. Are you conscious of what may be holding you back and prohibiting your success or your team’s ability to work together efficiently? Join us to learn how to break down barriers that block women leaders—and their organizations—from achieving greater success.

Monday, January 9, 2017, 5:30PM – 6:30PM PT: Borderless Talent Development: ATD 2016 BEST Award Winner (Free for ATD members)

An engaged team member is an inspired one, so our focus is to surround our team members with what matters to them. One of the most persistent business risks is attrition, which can be as high as 90-plus per cent, jeopardizing customers, operations, success, and morale. TELUS International saw this challenge as an opportunity to invest more in its team members. With the development of a global learning model, it's breaking new ground with a "borderless" approach to training and development, and setting a new standard as an international employer. In this webcast, you will learn how TELUS International is:

• Driving the ability to attract, engage, and retain team members who can be confident there is a development path that allows them to grow their careers.

• Creating a robust leadership pipeline to meet business demands.

• Preparing new frontline team leaders for success in their roles so that they can hit the ground running.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: Career Development: Today’s Meta-Priority

Given the nature of today’s workplace, instantaneous access to information, and pressure to meet the ever-escalating expectations of customers and shareholders, leaders juggle an unprecedented number of priorities. Productivity and performance. Costs. Employee engagement. Quality. Scarce resources. Retention. Yet, research suggests that if leaders can address one key priority particularly well, the rest follow. And that “meta-priority” is career development. Study after study links career development to employee satisfaction, engagement, retention, productivity, and even revenue and profitability.

Getting career development right should be job #1 for leaders because of its ability to fuel all other priorities, enable the flexibility and agility required to respond to the wild world of work, and support what matters most to the organization.

This session offers seven strategies to help leaders at all levels prioritize career development and realize the benefits and results that it offers. 

Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Five Elements for Defining Your Learning Culture

Research shows that more than anything else, a culture of learning is something that attracts good people and gets them to stay. It impacts engagement more than rewards and recognition, work/life balance, and even ping pong and free sodas. Creating that culture can be challenging; however, the effort to create one is rewarded in performance, engagement, and other ways.

Discussion topics include:

• Elements of a strong learning culture.

• The Learning Culture’s impact on engagement and loyalty.

• The importance of variety.

• Training design strategies.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 10:30AM – 11:30AM PT: 5 Must-Tackle Training Initiatives for Modern Sales Organizations in 2017 (Free for ATD members)

Today’s sales climate is more competitive than ever, which makes enabling your sales reps to be more effective sellers more important than ever. Unfortunately, training, best practice sharing, and content improvement often operate in silos, fighting each other for the sales rep’s valuable time. This siloed approach is ineffective, creates friction for the rep, and takes too much time away from what sales reps should be doing—selling.

Modern sales organizations have an opportunity to obliterate the silos and provide an integrated approach to training, coaching, improving content, and sharing sales process best practices. As we move into a new year, there are five initiatives you should consider to make 2017 your best sales year yet. Join us to learn how to:

• Integrate ongoing training into a sales rep’s daily life.

• Digitize the sales playbook and turn it into an agile, helpful tool.

• Improve training participation by delivering it in context with the sales opportunity.

• Provide “just in time” training, content, and best practices, when the rep needs them.

• Integrate your sales tech stack to eliminate friction and get end-to-end analysis on what works and what.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 12PM – 1PM PT: How to Convert Boring Classroom Courses into Engaging Webinars

How often have you attended really boring webinars? And when did you last participate in a truly engaging webinar and said, “Wow, I was engaged and time flew by quickly”?

Webinars are both friend and foe to trainers and designers. They’re a great way to deliver learning faster and at the least cost, but they also have traps. Boring classroom courses could mean disastrous webinars.

How then, do we take advantage of the opportunity to convert boring classroom courses into a new form for more engaging webinars?

Topics:

• Finding the crux of your ideas and making them the engagement points in webinars.

• The five tests to guarantee that your audience is glued to the webinar.

• Interaction techniques for implementation before, during and after webinars.

• Avoiding mishaps and accidents that dampen engagement in your webinars.

Attend the webinar and preview webinar recording snippets to illustrate high-engagement webinars.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 12PM – 1PM PT: My Way or the Highway: Engaging Learners in the Age of Personalization and Overloaded Brains

Since the first Training Conference was held 40 years ago, almost everything has changed—especially learners’ brains being so overloaded that they now expect “just-in-time, just-for-me, just-enough learning.” In this highly interactive webinar, Ann Herrmann-Nehdi will share highlights from her upcoming session at Training 2017, to show you how to build engaging “just for me” learning experiences—especially webinars—while extending the learning cycle using brain-friendly approaches. You’ll discover how to artfully navigate learner needs to keep ahead of a changing world while facing an ever-increasing load on their brains.

Ann will share an easy-to-apply framework and a few practical “mind hacks” from her upcoming session to help you help your learners really engage—getting the results you both need!

After this webinar, you’ll be able to:

• Describe key brain-based approaches that create the most engaging learning possible.

• Identify how to personalize learning based on learner preferences.

• Apply practical “mind hacks” to make it easier for you and your learners to get the learning they need even with an already overloaded brain.

Thursday, January 12, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: 6 Techniques for Memorable Content

Whether you’re developing content for self-paced or instructor-led training, the best training content is the kind that people remember. And why is influencing people's memory so important? Because once training is over, people make decisions to change behaviour or attitudes based on what they remember, not on what they forget. Join this webinar where Dr. Carmen Simon, Bay Area cognitive scientist, explains six evidence-based techniques to stay on your people’s mind and spark action. Specifically, you’ll learn principles related to getting attention, sustaining attention for prolonged periods of time, and staying on learners’ mind long-term. You’ll also discover a surprising new way to look at memory and positively impact what your audiences will do in the future. After all, what’s the use of remembering content if no one acts on it? 

Thursday, January 12, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Moodle & Totara LMS: A Recap of New & Improved Features

2016 brought an abundance of exciting new features and enhancements to Moodle LMS and Totara LMS. With the release of Moodle 3.1 & 3.2, as well as the long-awaited release of Totara 9 (the first release since their move away from Moodle LMS), the two learning management systems saw a lot of positive change. This includes the addition of competency-based learning and frameworks in Moodle, and the availability of eCommerce integrations for Moodle and Totara. To get you up-to-date on what Moodle and Totara LMS look like today, we’re going to show you some of the new features in both learning management systems. As well, you’ll get a preview of Totara 9 and some of its new features! 

Friday, January 13, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Assess and Develop Potential Talent on Succession Planning (Free for ATD members)

Does your healthcare organization have a succession plan or strategy in place? Building and implementing a succession strategy is key to sustaining high-quality patient care while fostering employee engagement. Understanding your organization’s future talent requirements, recognizing potential, and growing your talent pool are challenges in the highly dynamic industry of healthcare.

During this fourth installment of a five-part ATD Healthcare succession planning webcast series, globally recognized talent and workforce expert William Rothwell applies a healthcare lens to succession planning, exploring steps 5 and 6 of the Rothwell Model: assess promotion potential (Step 5) and develop people (Step 6).

In this webcast, the facilitators will:

• Further explore trends and challenges in healthcare.

• Review the Rothwell Model and steps 1–4.

• Compare present individual competencies against the requirements for the next level.

• Develop an individual development plan that is aligned with organizational goals.

• Discuss strategies to narrow developmental gaps between present competencies and those needed in the future.

• Review a case study of an academic medical center succession planning journey.

• Devote time to a Q&A panel with faculty.

Monday, January 16, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Leading in a Changing Workplace: Applying Emotional Intelligence for Productive Work Relationships (Free for ATD members)

With our workplace becoming more dynamic and chaotic, it is more important than ever to apply emotional intelligence to your everyday work scenarios. This webcast will show you how to:

• Explore the four dimensions of emotional intelligence (EQ) and how they apply in a changing workplace.

• Identify the business case for using EQ to be fully effective.

• Identify your personal "triggers" and how stress can create tunnel vision.

• Discover how EQ can help you obtain buy-in for your ideas and better understand others' needs.

• Identify how to use EQ to build more productive interactions with your boss, peers, internal clients, and direct reports.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: Maintaining Sanity as a Department of One!

Ever feel like a rubber band that’s ready to pop? Then YOU must be a department of one! The good news is that you CAN do it. Learn strategies and tips to help move you from feeling “over done” to “can be done!”

In this session, you’ll learn to:

• Examine the various roles and determine priorities when managing solo.

• Develop a Mission/Vision for your training function.

• Build your partnerships throughout the organization to increase your bench strength.

Using a self-assessment, you’ll evaluate and prioritize the roles you need to play in order to support your organization in achieving its performance goals. Vision and mission statements will be defined and shared. You’ll discuss the importance of building relationships, and a nine-cell partnership chart will be introduced outlining roles for success. You’ll identify what you are doing now and what you need to do in order to start/continue to build these relationships within the organization to expand your reach! 

Tuesday, January 17, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Flipping the External and Internal Fill Rate: What Needs to Take Place

Based on Brandon Hall Group’s latest Talent Acquisition research, 17 per cent of requisitions, on average, are filled by internal employees, and the rest of the requisitions are filled from external sources, such as from job boards, employee referrals, social media, and so forth. Is this the most efficient way to ensure your organization’s talent needs are met? Is this the most effective way to ensure that skill gaps in your workforce are closed?

Organizations face many challenges when filling positions and when providing their own employees with a line of sight for potential new positions and development opportunities. Does the organization repurpose its career site for employees? Or, is it better to use a dedicated internal mobility technology solution?

This webinar will leave you with the following takeaways:

• The current talent acquisition, internal mobility landscape.

• The challenges for flipping the internal/external hire rate.

• Technology solutions that can help with the transition.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017, 11AM – 12PM PT: Focus on More than Just Millennials: Create an L&D Strategy to Serve the Modern Learner (Free for ATD members)

There’s been a lot of hype about Millennials and the myriad ways these digital natives are changing the world. New research reveals that this generation’s values and learning preferences aren’t as different from those of other learners as many learning and development (L&D) pros were led to believe. Changes in technology have profoundly influenced the ways workers across generations learn and develop. To truly meet the needs of these modern learners, organizations must rethink their L&D strategies.

Attend this webcast on designing learning programs that meet the needs of all your learners. We’ll discuss:

• Myths and misconceptions about Millennials and their learning preferences.

• Characteristics of the modern learner.

• Six elements of the modern learning formula.

• How the industry award-winning Capgemini University team addresses the needs of digital learners.

• Recommendations to action.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017, 12PM – 1PM PT: How to Be a Micro-Learning Trainer and Designer

Companies are demanding shorter and faster learning from trainers, designers, and virtual presenters.

However, there are no schools or degrees for these new evolving skills. One can only guess or embark on an adventure using intuitive thinking and trial and error. But what if you hit bumps along the way or if your goals totally bomb? What happens to your reputation or the success of your attempt to help learners? What do you need to consider in your design, training sessions and virtual lessons?

Topics:

• What are the differences among micro-learning, classroom, elearning, and virtual learning?

• Where does micro-learning work best?

• What is the biggest value of micro-learning for work, learning and business?

• What you must do to implement micro-learning in the classroom, virtual training and, eLearning

• Where do you find BIG returns on micro-learning?

• What’s the fastest way to design and train using micro-learning?

• How do you start small in micro-learning ?

• What experiments and tests do you need to conduct?

• How do you make learning small, cheap, fast and easy for you and your learner?

Demos, examples and advance links will be provided. 

Wednesday, January 18, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Best of Learning Solutions: Designing with Animation

Animation is a powerful tool for creating engaging eLearning experiences. Sadly, most animations are used without purpose as a design embellishment. When this happens, the use of animation distracts the learner from the content, rather than helping to elevate the content.

In this session, you will explore how animation can be used with purpose to create meaningful and engaging eLearning experiences. This session will demonstrate multiple before and after examples, where you can learn how animation can be used to explain complex ideas and create valuable learning content. You will learn how to use animation with purpose to provide meaning to your learning content. You will learn how to elevate your eLearning content through the use of animation. 

Wednesday, January 18, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: How GE Develops Leaders Globally Through Online Learning (Free for ATD members)

GE is renowned for its Crotonville leadership institute. However, only 15 per cent of GE employees attend a Crotonville classroom experience each year. To reach the rest of its more than 350,000 employees, GE has launched a series of new online learning initiatives, with thousands of learners taking part each week.

This webcast will share details about GE’s BrilliantYOU and how GE pushes the envelope of what can be taught online, like leadership and creativity, using the NovoEd Learning Platform. You’ll receive:

• An overview of GE’s BrilliantYOU initiative, including its purpose, goals, and lessons learned.

• Recommendations to overcome challenges of migrating leadership training online.

• Modern tools to deliver training of high-stakes skills, such as the NovoEd Learning Platform.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: New I4PL Competencies (Free for I4PL members)

Join this webinar to learn more about I4PL's new Competencies for Performance and Learning Professionals! 

Wednesday, January 18, 2017, 12PM – 1PM PT: YouTube U: Leveraging the World’s Largest Video Platform for L&D

When's the last time you looked something up on YouTube? ... Don't you think your learners might be doing this too? In the last decade, YouTube has given us TED Talks, Khan Academy classes, explainer videos, tons of bite-sized science, and taught us how to fix pretty much anything. But the platform's features are ever-changing and not well understood by those in the professional learning field. Even while we personally enjoy its content, many of us still regard YouTube with fear, and miss out on all the opportunities it presents.

Get an overview of everything YouTube by the guy who developed the first YouTube-Certified Online training at Google. We'll discuss strategies for common training needs, actually configure a YouTube channel, learn how to capture, edit, and augment content entirely within the YouTube platform, and avoid some of the most common L&D mistakes on YouTube. 

Thursday, January 19, 2017, 9AM – 10AM PT: Brain-Based Learning in the Virtual Classroom

What if the training you deliver in the virtual classroom was so vibrant and compelling that people clamoured to attend your sessions? Your ability to connect with, engage, and stimulate the thinking of your participants is directly linked to your understanding of the neuroscience of learning. Our brains ignore what is predictable and boring. This webinar explores the brain’s needs for novelty, contrast, meaning, and emotion to capture and keep attention online. Increase novelty by creatively using relevant games and problems. Enhance contrast by incorporating a variety of facilitation techniques. Build meaningful connections with collaborative, social learning approaches. Harness learner emotion with storytelling frames.

This webinar explores six brain-based guidelines that leverage the interaction and collaboration tools in the virtual classroom to create active engagement:

  1. Active engagement = active brains.

  2. Neurons that fire together wire together.

  3. Vision trumps all other senses.

  4. Social learning fires mirror neurons.

  5. No pain, no gain (failure precedes success).

  6. Practice makes permanent.

Propel your virtual classroom from boring and predictable to compelling and vibrant. This interactive, engaging webinar will not only teach, but actually model these techniques.

Thursday, January 19, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: LMS eCommerce Integration with LMSCheckout

In the world of open-source learning management systems, there are many third-party integrations that extend your LMS, providing you features and functions that fulfill the specific needs of your business.

eCommerce integration using LMSCheckout is one option for Moodle and Totara users to sell their online courses and programs. A course storefront that seamlessly integrates shopping cart and eCommerce functionality with your LMS, LMSCheckout allows you to not only sell courses, but also enrol learners easily. Benefits include increased revenue, reduced manual effort, and a fully integrated system. Attend this webinar to see how your organization and your learners can benefit from an eCommerce integration like LMSCheckout.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017, 12PM – 1PM PT: Growing Leadership Performance in the Biggest Company Ever: An Interview with Jay McNaught, Walmart, Global Leadership Development

Go to any bookstore and look for the leadership section. There are a ton of resources for growing leadership because it is TOUGH WORK.

Jay McNaught started at Public Service Indiana, then took his talents to Duke Energy, then Pfizer, and is now stationed at Walmart, and he knows his way around leadership. Like most of us, he has seen leadership initiatives that work and others that don’t. He is currently pushing the limits of integrating technology and community to drive leadership performance, which is critical to Walmart’s ongoing success.

As the organizers prepare for this session, you may send questions you’d like to have Lou ask Jay in this insightful webinar to info@russellmartin.com. 

Thursday, January 26, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Automation – Delegating to Robots! (Free for I4PL members)

Have you ever found yourself staring down hours and hours of the same, boring, low-value task? Stop gritting your teeth and doing things manually—there are a lot of tedious technical tasks that you can automate, leaving more time and brain power to the areas you can add more value.

In this session, you'll learn how to use a variety of tools and common software packages to:

• Convert/optimize/edit large batches of images, video, or audio.

• Rename files.

• Search and replace in many files.

• Run common tasks on your computer.

• Create HTML learning objects from Word.

• And more!

With these powerful tips and tools, you'll be more efficient and able to do more in less time than ever before.

Thursday, January 26, 2017, 1PM – 2PM PT: Six Steps to an Effective Needs Assessment (Free for ATD members)

Are you being the business partner your organization needs you to be? Start the new year off with new and deeper skills that will bring value to any organization. In this webcast, inspired by the all-new second edition of ATD's bestselling book Needs Assessment Basics, author Beth McGoldrick introduces the six-step framework and suggests how to add value to the organization and meet the needs of the business.

In this webcast, you’ll learn:

• The six steps to an effective needs assessment.

• Where a needs assessment and training project usually start.

• How to help the organization be successful.

Friday, January 27, 2017, 10AM – 11AM PT: Let Them Choose Part 2: Commit to Designing a Workshop Using the Cafeteria Learning Model (Free for ATD members)

Are you intrigued by Cafeteria Learning but wondering how to make it work inside your organization? Learn how to go from: “Our stakeholders/learners would never buy into this” to “Why haven’t we done this before?”

Join Let Them Choose authors Jillian Douglas and Shannon McKenzie, along with guests Erica Davis and Stacey Vrooman, for first-hand accounts of the ins and outs of designing Cafeteria Learning in industries as varied as government, healthcare, and hospitality. You’ll see samples of design documents and their iterations along with samples of final deliverables to get a full overview of how this innovative learning technique comes to life.

• Assess the kinds of projects that are well suited for Cafeteria Learning.

• Describe typical obstacles to implementing Cafeteria Learning and how to avoid them.

• Describe how to utilize a Cafeteria Learning design document.

Tuesday, January 31, 2017, 11AM – 12PM PT: Adaptive Learning: Unlocking Performance through Personalized Pathways (Free for ATD members)

Imagine that you could give learners a personalized course, made specifically for their strengths, weaknesses, confidence level, and engagement patterns. Imagine a course that adapts in real time to their activity and adjusts moment by moment to their performance and interest level.

The field of adaptive learning—which uses computers to actively tailor content to individual needs—draws upon diverse knowledge domains to make this learner-centred vision of education a reality. This webcast will discuss how:

• Adaptive learning can improve training efficiency, effectiveness, and engagement.

• Adaptive learning can optimize focus, memory, metacognition, and engagement through learning theories.

• Learning analytics can be used to benefit trainers, managers, content authors, and learners.