Wrong month? Check out our latest list of free learning & development webinars.

It’s strange and challenging to get your summer on while maintaining a two-metre distance from the friends you would have high-fived last year, but we’re managing! And when it all gets too confusing in the outdoor world, we have the great indoors and a packed menu of free webinars to keep us busy. August is full of great suggestions for keeping virtual meetings lively and creating engaging online content. Enjoy!

Tuesday, August 4, 2020, 9AM – 10AM PT: PowerPoint: Faster, Faster, Faster!
In this webinar, Taylor Croonquist, Founder, Chief Training Officer and PowerPoint Instructor at Nuts and Bolts Speed Training — a PowerPoint addict — shares his mania with all of you. It’s an addiction where one has the need to do everything more quickly, with fewer moving parts and less manual repetition. Let PowerPoint do the heavy lifting for you! Microsoft spent billions of dollars streamlining the Office interface to be fast and efficient, but not too many use any of the really cool features.

Tuesday, August 4, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: Managers Matter: Making the Most of Limited Resources to Drive the Most Impact (Free for ATD members)
Delivering effective training and employee development for your entire employee base can be daunting, especially with limited or reduced resources. Talent development professionals wonder how to navigate their job responsibilities when they are short staffed, short on budget and short on time. Managers are the gatekeepers to your company. Their interactions with their employees greatly influence team engagement. In times of rapid change and a dispersed workforce, developing remote managers with high emotional intelligence and transferable leadership skills is critical to business success. During this webinar, Lyndsey Karp, Employee Development Strategist at Bridge, will discuss the importance of targeting supervisors when your training resources are tight and especially in times of change.

Tuesday, August 4, 2020, 12PM – 1PM PT: Four Corporate Learning Design Practices: Making the Most of Remote Learning
In this session, Darcy White, Ph.D., Instructional Designer at D2L, will discuss how you can use the flexibility and functionality available to you in the online environment to effectively design corporate learning experiences. He'll focus on best practices and tools you can use to take your content to the next level and motivate your employees to engage with the professional development opportunities that are available to them. By exploring how to make the most of the learning experiences you're offering your employees, you can empower your teams to grow and adapt to a continuously changing work environment. Encouraging employees to upskill in this manner results in a boost in engagement and an increased skill-set that can be directly applied to an individual's work and benefit the organization as a whole.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020, 9AM – 10AM PT: Beyond the Conference: Fresh Ideas for Using Articulate Storyline 360
In this five-session online learning series, Yukon Learning's amazing trainers will share fresh, innovative features of Articulate Storyline 360.

Session 2: Creating Interactive Infographics — Would you like to know how to create those interactive infographics you keep hearing about? In this session, John Moore, Sr. Learning Consultant, walks you through the ins and outs of building professional interactions in just minutes using Storyline 360.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: ATD Book Talk: Lisa M.D. Owens on Designing for Modern Learning (Free for ATD members)
Join Crystal Kadakia, Founding President of Training Design Strategies LLC, and Lisa M.D. Owens, co-authors of the new ATD Press book Designing for Modern Learning: Beyond ADDIE and SAM, for a virtual author chat on designing learning experiences for the digital world. They’ll answer questions about the Owens-Kadakia Learning Cluster Design Model (OK-LCD Model), a new five-step model for training design that meets the needs of modern learning. They’ll also share examples of organizations that have successfully adopted learning cluster design. There’ll be opportunities for attendees to ask questions and share their own experiences. This discussion will be valuable for any L&D professional who’s looking for a new design model that meets the needs of modern learners.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020, 12PM – 1PM PT: Managers: Stop Asking “How’s it Going?” and Start Getting Quick Results
You can’t do your job if you don’t know what’s going on, so you gather your team for a mandatory staff meeting. You end up sitting through a meeting where each of your team members answers the unasked question of “how’s it going” in his or her own way, and you’re left to decode what’s really happening, what problems they’re glossing over, and what results you can actually expect next week, next month and next quarter. If you find yourself presiding over an arms race of ever-rosier outlooks, ever-more-closely-managed presentations of current status and ever-less-informative discussions about the real results you need your teams working on, this webinar’s for you. Ed Muzio, author and CEO of Group Harmonics, will show you what you can do to your meeting, today, to get it functioning better as soon as next week. You’ll get yourself out of the business of guessing what people mean and get your team sharply focused on the real results that you owe your own boss.

Thursday, August 6, 2020, 9AM – 10AM PT: A Complete Guide to Create an Accessible Elearning Course
Creating accessible online courses provides an opportunity for people with disabilities to learn successfully. Additionally, developing compliant courses reach a larger, more inclusive, audience and it can be a legal issue. Elearning developers need to take into consideration creating elearning that’s accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired, deaf or hard of hearing, physically or developmentally disabled. Anita Horsley, Director of Training and Development at C4EIS, will provide participants with a sample Captivate use case and workbook.

Thursday, August 6, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: Create a Competency Model and Perform a Competency Assessment to Identify Skill Gaps (Free for ATD members)
The need to upskill and reskill has increased significantly due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but the pandemic has accelerated the pace of change. You can’t take six to twelve months to build competency models or they could be outdated on release. You need an agile methodology that you can use to support strategic pivots. Once built, you need to create an environment where models will be embraced and made actionable. In this session, Cheryl Lasse, Managing Partner of SkillDirector, and Lesley Roddam, Customer Success Manager at SkillDirector, will show you how to rapidly create a competency model, along with templates and instructions, and perform a competency assessment.

Thursday, August 6, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: How to Uncover the Hidden ROI of Your Sales Training
Budgets are tight in this new pandemic economy. If you’re in charge of training a sales team, you know how hard it is to justify any new investment in your program these days. The only way to win is with a sales force that’s fully equipped with product knowledge, best practices and objection handling. Well-trained salespeople drive better results. When you understand how to quantify the full return on your training investments, you can prove the value of your initiatives and win the resources you need to ramp up. Join Jake Miller, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Allego, to find out how you can demonstrate sales training’s direct contributions to the bottom line, champion your initiatives and win.

Friday, August 7, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: ATD Book Talk: L&D in the Digital Age (Free for ATD members)
Join Brandon Carson, Director of Learning at Delta Air Lines, for a virtual author chat about the role of L&D in the digital age. Carson will expand on the ideas he presented in a chapter he wrote for Leading the Learning Function: Tools and Techniques for Organizational Impact, a new book published by ATD Press and written by members of the ATD Forum. He’ll share his perspective on how the digital age is reshaping work, and as a result, the skills that L&D professionals need to be effective business partners in this new environment. There’ll also be opportunities for attendees to ask questions and share their experiences. This discussion will bring value to anyone who wants to upskill themselves or their L&D teams to meet contemporary learning challenges.

Tuesday, August 11, 2020, 9AM – 10AM PT: How Successful Managers Influence Your Organization and Your Bottom Line
In a time when change is the only constant, and ambiguity and volatility are the norm, managers’ competencies and strategies are of increasing importance as they are the link between the organizations strategy and the people that deliver the results. It isn’t enough that an individual’s direct actions are well executed — it’s the collective actions of the team that drive success. Equipping managers with a complete toolkit develops the right level of competence and consistency of application and will lead to better employee engagement, productivity, retention, organizational culture and results. Jeff Becker, Director of Corporate Learning Solutions at American Management Association, will provide insight in how to approach and create a standard for recognizing managerial competence within your organization and highlight the impact that managers can have on the organization’s bottom line.

Tuesday, August 11, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: A Pragmatic Approach to Building a Skills Strategy (Free for ATD members)
Recent ATD data states that nearly 52% of workers’ skill sets don’t match their companies’ markets, strategies, goals or business models. That’s why two out of every three talent development leaders are looking for new solutions to transform their people’s skills and organizations. The first place to start is a new strategy that puts your workforce and continuous reskilling at the forefront. In this webinar, Janice Burns, Chief Career Experience Officer at Degreed, will show you:

• How to align leaders across the organization around reskilling.

• The importance of marketing in your launch strategy.

• Some practical insights on how to create a skills-based strategy.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020, 9AM – 10AM PT: Beyond the Conference: Fresh Ideas for Using Articulate Storyline 360
In this five-session online learning series, Yukon Learning's amazing trainers will share fresh, innovative features of Articulate Storyline 360.

Session 3: Layers and Lightboxes: How to Enhance Videos — In this session, you'll learn how to enhance videos in Storyline 360 to display additional content. Tara Widmer, Sr. Learning Consultant, walks you through building a slide that leverages layers and lightboxes to easily create a dynamic and engaging experience for your learners.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020, 10AM – 11AM PT: Hype or Home Run? Microlearning Demystified for Learning Leaders
As a learning leader, you’re feeling pressure to embrace microlearning, both from operational leaders and from the employees you train. You want to offer more shorter-form and on-demand content, but often don't know where to start. You don't know the formats to use, the pros and cons of different mediums, and the relative cost of different approaches. Even more importantly, you don't know where microlearning can fit into your learning ecosystems or how to introduce it into your organizations. In this session, led by Carla Torgerson, Director and Instructional Design at Bull City Learning, you’ll explore:

• What microlearning really is.

• Examples of how it’s being used in the learning ecosystem.

• The most common formats and mediums that are used.

• The relative time and money to develop each format.

• Change management approaches to aid you in introducing microlearning to various stakeholders.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020, 10AM – 11AM PT: Learning Agility — Five Ways Learning Will Change
The global coronavirus pandemic has turned society, and the economy upside down. We have had to adapt and change very quickly to remote working and there’s been a bit of a forced transformation of how employers and employees engage with each other. Organizations with agile learning processes and systems were able to pivot, while those with more traditional learning systems and processes struggled. Join David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst with Brandon Hall Group, and Chris Tratar, Director of Product Marketing at Inkling, as they discuss the concept of learning agility and explore five ways learning will be transformed based on recent research conducted by Brandon Hall Group.

Wednesday, August 12, 2020, 12:30PM – 1:30PM PT: Equipping Yourself to Support Continuous Learning in Your Organization (Free for IPL members)
Learning professionals have a critical role to play in building continuous learning skills. They can support individuals to develop self-directed and self-managed learning skills, Another high leverage activity is to support line managers, team leaders and coaches to encourage continuous learning as part of daily work. To equip themselves for this role, learning professionals must build their own continuous learning skills and practices. Join this webinar, hosted by Michelle Ockers, independent organizational learning strategist and modern workplace learning practitioner, to learn about:

• How continuous learning contributes to organization success.

• What continuous learning skills and practices look like.

• The role of learning professionals in developing continuous learning in an organization.

• How learning professionals can equip themselves or this role.

Thursday, August 13, 2020, 12PM – 1PM PT: Scaling Your Learning Platforms to Support the New Normal
We face today with uncertainty and volatile work environments. Workers have to emotionally adjust to new remote conditions and rapid changes in work expectations or learning static content. What’s needed is a design process and learning platforms that enable learners to think through the issues, and find and apply the right answers immediately. In this webinar, Ray Jimenez, Ph.D., Architect of TrainingMagNetwork.com and Chief Learning Officer of Vignettes Learning, will explain:

• Why traditional content and knowledge-only learning is no longer sufficient for today's work environment.

• What experience-based learning is.

• What the five-step process of creating and designing experience-based learning is.

• Which tools, software and platforms are affordable and easy to use, and how to select one to match your needs and culture.

• What you need to do to add "experience learning" to your existing content and platform.

Friday, August 14, 2020, 8AM – 9AM PT: Fail to Learn! Training Techniques from the Lost Art of Trial and Error
You have something important to teach people, but they're not paying attention. Surveys have shown that only 25% of course material actually improves learners’ performance. Why aren't people learning from or engaging with your coursework? Turns out, it's likely because you're not letting people fail enough. In this session, Scott Provence, award-winning instructional designer and author of Fail to Learn: A Manifesto for Training Gamification, discusses the surprising studies and research that shows how we actually learn more when we get things wrong.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020, 9AM – 10AM PT: Coaching Emotional Intelligence
Many experts estimate that 90% of top performers have a high EQ and according to workplace strategies for mental health stated 91% of managers and leaders stated they needed to improve their emotional intelligence. During this webinar, Tim Hagen, Chief Coaching Officer at Progress Coaching, will focus on five main areas of emotional intelligence and teach you how to coach to those areas to drive effective leadership and workplace engagement.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: Give Learners What They Want: Training with Video (Free for ATD members)
Video continues to grow in popularity as the preferred medium for learning. Naturally, video-based training is also gaining momentum. Given the rise in remote work, it’s becoming crucial for L&D teams to deliver trainings in ways that are easy to follow and engaging. Video can help. Join this webinar, led by Peter Goldstein, Video Specialist at Panopto, to learn everything you need to know about video-based training and discover just how easy they are to implement.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020, 9AM – 10AM PT: Beyond the Conference: Fresh Ideas for Using Articulate Storyline 360
In this five-session online learning series, Yukon Learning's amazing trainers will share fresh, innovative features of Articulate Storyline 360.

Session 4: Creating Motion with Sliders — You may have used sliders in Storyline 360 to show layers or change states, but how can you use them in other creative ways? Join John Berendes, Sr. Learning Director, for an in-depth look at how to create motion with sliders.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020, 9AM – 10AM PT: Video for Training: Five Things You Need to Know
Video continues to grow in popularity as the preferred medium for learning. People are naturally curious and want to learn, which is why it’s imperative that L&D teams capture this curiosity using strategies that engage and entice, similar to YouTube. In order to achieve this, it’s important to understand the aspects beyond what’s delivered, diving deeper into the how, when and where. Join this webinar, hosted by Mark Lagemann, Chief High Five Officer and Video Evangelist at Panopto, and discover the five things you need to know to successfully transition to video-based training.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020, 10AM – 11AM PT: Courageous Humility: Leading with Resilience in These Challenging Times
In today's world, leaders at all levels are facing unprecedented challenges: a pandemic, protests in the streets, racial discrimination, political tension and more. Corporate leaders cannot afford to stay silent as these world issues impact us at work as well as at home. In this webinar, Brandon Hall Group’s Chief Operating Officer, Rachel Cooke, is joined by Bonnie St. John, President and CEO of Blue Circle Leadership. Bonnie shares her perspective as an African-American and amputee with over 30 years of experience as a leader in business and government. She equips leaders with fresh, practical tools to help bridge sensitive subjects and situations without blaming, shaming or silencing various points of view.

Thursday, August 20, 2020, 8AM – 9AM PT: Quick Tips for Designing Elearning Graphics with Adobe Photoshop
Coupling instructionally sound content with appropriate graphics helps in providing an incredibly amazing learning experience. It instills a new life to the content you are covering in an elearning course. Join Dr. Pooja Jaisingh, Lead Elearning Evangelist at Adobe Digital Learning Solutions, to learn how to create and edit meaningful graphics for your elearning courses. She’ll share the tips on how to determine the size and quality of the UI assets and screen graphics, and different ways to add them to your Adobe Captivate project. She’ll also share some ways to design background images from scratch, build screen graphics, object states, animation graphics, decorative text, GIF animations and much more for your courses using Adobe Photoshop.

Monday, August 24, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: DEMO: Salespeople Hate Training, So Engage Them (Free for ATD members)
Athletes need practice to maintain skills, and so does your sales team. If outdated sales training isn't meeting your business needs, the award-winning UPtick sales learning ecosystem can provide you with a solution. Using research-driven, online 3D simulations, UPtick provides a “batting cage” for your sales team to practice their skills. High quality sales training is within your reach. During this webinar, presented by Nick Rini, CEO of Selleration; Matt Plotecher, Sr. Game Designer at Selleration; and Davie Ingram, Regional Sales Director at Selleration, you’ll learn:

• How to improve engagement and retention with immersive sales simulations.

• That salespeople need practice to maintain and enhance their skills, but they don't find traditional methods of training engaging and worthwhile.

• How to save time and increase insight for sales leaders using research-fueled simulations that identify the key strengths and weaknesses of your sales team.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020, 10AM – 11AM PT: Seven Steps to Upskilling the Workforce
Work is fundamentally changing. During this time of disruption, people at all levels need to reimagine work and skill development, and it’s the responsibility of leaders to create environments and experiences that support this new reality. Join David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst with Brandon Hall Group, and Degreed’s CLO, Kelly Palmer, as they discuss “future-ready” strategies and provide a new framework for creating the work experiences that will help companies and individuals thrive.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: Personal Branding… How Are You Building and Maintaining Your Personal Brand
Who you are and why the rest of the world should want to do business with you is one of the most important keys to your success — it’s all about your personal brand. Like anything else, care must be taken to ensure that it’s properly developed, maintained and refreshed as needed. You rely on your personal brand in every interaction with every prospective or current customer every day. Dr. Cindy McGovern, CEO of Orange Leaf Consulting, will discuss how to define and evaluate your personal brand, how to optimize it in everyday activities and play to your strengths, and perhaps most importantly, how to go about making changes if it’s not what you want. Everything you do every day contributes to your personal brand — take control and make it what you want it to be.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: “Real-World” Elearning Through Microsimulations (Free for ATD members)
Imagine you can evaluate your employees by how well they respond to situations through emails and instant messages. With microsimulations, you can. During this webinar, Matthew Shell, Market Development Manager of Capsim, and Brendan Langen, Director of Product Design and Development at Capsim, will discuss how custom “microsims” can make elearning more authentic to your workplace. They'll also share how their new platform has helped organizations select better employees, uncover gaps in soft skills and effectively train employees by exposing them to situations before they happen.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020, 12PM – 1PM PT: Oh No You Didn’t! Effectively Deal with Disruptive Learners
In a classroom setting, the dreaded “problem children” sit to the side or in the back of the room texting, chatting, talking on the phone or just being obnoxious. Virtually, they are monopolizing the chatbox or are having their own private conversation with another participant, not turning off their mic and providing the rest of the virtual learners with lovely office background noise or making bold (inappropriate) comments that you know they would not have the guts to make face to face. These folks are clearly disrupting the learning process of those around them, not to mention irritating you. In this webinar, hosted by Maria Chilcote and Melissa Smith, Managing Partners at The Training Clinic, you’ll learn to:

• Discern whether the behaviour is training or non-training in origin.

• Decide whether the behaviour should be addressed or ignored.

• Examine various approaches to help you stay calm, grounded and in control while addressing this disruptive behaviour.

Wednesday, August 26, 2020, 9AM – 10AM PT: Beyond the Conference: Fresh Ideas for Using Articulate Storyline 360
In this five-session online learning series, Yukon Learning's amazing trainers will share fresh, innovative features of Articulate Storyline 360.

Session 5: Dialing up Your Progress Meters — Progress meters are an effective way to show your learners how far they've come, and how much they have left to complete. In this session, Stefanie Lawless, Vice President, Training, shows you how to leverage the slide number variable to adjust a dial to show learner progress.

Wednesday, August 26, 2020, 10AM – 11AM PT: Creating Connections that Drive Engagement and Performance
The future could be bright if organizations continue to manage as they did during the lockdown. Amid all the stress and disruption productivity stayed even or increased in 66% of organizations, according to Brandon Hall Group research. The data shows that organizations focused on creating connections with their remote employees. They communicated. They reached out. They cared as much about how their employees were doing as what they were doing.

In this webinar, sponsored by Skillsoft and Cornerstone OnDemand, Brandon Hall Group’s Chief Operating Officer, Rachel Cooke and Claude Werder SVP, Principal HCM Analyst are joined by Ivelesse Mendez-Justiniano, Chief Learning Officer at NYC Health + Hospitals, to explore how leading organizations will continue to build connections with employees that will drive engagement and performance.

Thursday, August 27, 2020, 9AM – 10AM PT: Thrive or Perish — Retool Your Training and Evaluation Strategy for 2020 and Beyond
World health concerns have changed the way people work and how they can engage in training and development. If you believe that simply adapting your training to a virtual format is enough, you’re on the path to perish. Participate in this interactive program with Jim Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., Senior Consultant at Kirkpatrick Partners, and Wendy Kirkpatrick, President of Kirkpatrick Partners, to find out what you need to do now to be relevant. They’ll discuss the new, changing role of learning and development, and what this means for how you spend your precious time, money and resources.

Thursday, August 27, 2020, 11AM – 12PM PT: ATD Book Talk: Sharon Boller and Laura Fletcher on Design Thinking for Training and Development (Free for ATD members)
Design thinking’s making its way into training and development as practitioners shift their thinking away from training events to learning experiences. Join Sharon Boller, Managing Director at TiER1 Performance, and Laura Fletcher, Senior Program Manager for Leadership Development at Salesforce, authors of the new ATD Press book Design Thinking for Training and Development, for an overview of key concepts from the book, followed by a virtual author chat about how principles from design thinking can help talent development professionals create meaningful learning experiences. This discussion will bring value to those who have already read Design Thinking for Training and Development as well as those who are new to Learning Experience Design.

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