Wrong month? Check out our latest list of free L&D webinars.

Here we are in the throes of tax season, waiting with bated breath for vaccine news, recovering from housefuls of kids over spring break — and trying to cram a full work week in before the Easter Bunny comes. It’s springtime chaos! If you can catch a breath this month, give yourself an hour to attend a free webinar. It may give you some new ideas, and even some time management tips.

Thursday, April 1, 2021, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: Building Sales Capabilities in Our New Digital World

Until last year, in-person, face-to-face (F2F) training was by far the primary learning modality used to improve sales performance. Organizations have had to accelerate the digital transformation of sales enablement while seeking strategies that integrate skill development and reinforcement with their performance improvement goals. Join this webinar as David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst for Brandon Hall Group — with guests Charlie Chung, Vice President of Solutions from NovoEd, and Michael Leimbach, Vice President of Global Research and Development for Wilson Learning — discuss the key elements of an effective digital sales training strategy.

Thursday, April 1, 2021, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: Debunking Myths about Certification (Free for ATD members)
Wondering about the best way to advance your career? Considering pursuing professional certification, but not sure what it’s all about? Join this webinar to hear Morgean Hirt, Director of Credentialing, and Holly Batts, Associate Director, from Association for Talent Development, shed some light on questions such as:

• What is the difference between a certificate and certification?

• Is a professional certification better than a college degree?

• Is capability the same as competency?

• How do ATD’s education offerings and professional certification relate to the new Talent Development Capability Model?

• Who decides what’s covered on the exam?

• Who writes the test questions?

Thursday, April 1, 2021, 12 p.m.–1 p.m. PT: Rethinking the Way You Author Elearning
Whether in a large enterprise or a team of one, elearning authors today are expected to deliver effective learning outcomes using minimal resources, rapid turn-around time and a razor-thin budget. The Elearning Brothers Customer Success and product teams documented thousands of elearning courses and interviewed leading Instructional Designers to learn how they set up their teams and processes for elearning success. Join Chris Willis, Director of Product Content at Elearning Brothers, to learn why modular development is emerging as a more efficient and effective elearning authoring technique. Discover how savvy learning organizations create a repeatable and scalable workflow to ensure consistent, instructionally sound results — and how you, too, can drastically reduce workload while delivering better outcomes.

Monday, April 5, 2021, 3 p.m.–4 p.m. PT: Bringing Facilitation Into the Workflow
Bhakti Karkare, who has over a decade of experience in learning and development (L&D) with global organizations like Fujitsu and Amdocs, is on a mission to bring the magic of facilitation out of workshops and meetings into the workflow. She believes, if used strategically, facilitation skills can be the game changer in unlocking an organization's capabilities. Like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are changing the way businesses adapt to an ever-changing world, facilitation skills can change the paradigm on how organizations learn, collaborate and derive value from a learning culture. Join this discussion with Bhakti on learning more about her framework aimed at helping organizations build capability and engagement using facilitation skills. 

Tuesday, April 6, 2021, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Five Key Principles for Designing and Delivering Video-Based Learning (Free for ATD members)
The need to train remote employees using video has rapidly grown in importance. For the managers and training departments that need to implement it, video-based training offers new opportunities for increased remote employee performance and job satisfaction. During this webinar, Ajay Jain, Senior Learning Advisor at Panopto, will dig into essential techniques to successfully implement video training. You’ll also explore how to measure the impact of these changes and how to further improve content using the analytic data you collect from video interactions.

Tuesday, April 6, 2021, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Your Guide to Thriving with Virtual Meetings and Events
Corporate meetings and marketing events continue to be confined to virtual experiences. Whether you are crafting an internal event for your entire employee base or a conference to invite all your customers to network and engage with your products, Samantha Decker, Marketing Director at One10, and Callie Medina, Director of Corporate Events at BMC Software, will provide you with some tangible tips and tricks to help guide your planning process.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021, 8 a.m.–9 a.m. PT: Creating a Sustainable Post-pandemic L&D Strategy
Despite trying to find our way through the pandemic for more than a year, there are still many unanswered questions and high levels of uncertainty. One thing is certain, though: workplace dynamics have been completely redefined. Many of today’s newly remote workers will remain so after the pandemic subsides, and that gives L&D teams two main things to focus on — the very definitive ideas remote workers have on how training should be delivered, and the ways in which the L&D team’s role and expectations have changed dramatically. Join David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst with Brandon Hall Group, and Asha Pandey, EI Design’s Chief Learning Strategist, as they discuss how L&D teams can adapt to the changes thrust upon them and meet the needs of a transformed workforce with a sustainable, structured approach that aligns with the goals of the business.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Foster Inclusion and Facilitate Inclusively in Leadership Development (Free for ATD members)
Inclusion has never been more critical to business success. Your employees demand it and your retention strategy depends on it, yet only 31% of employees say that their leaders promote an inclusive environment. As L&D professionals, you can begin by developing the leadership skills that set the tone for inclusion. In doing so, it’s important to not only focus on the right skills, but also provide a safe, yet challenging, space for learning. Join DDI’s diversity and inclusion (D&I) experts, Julie Yoon and Sage Krombolz, to explore:

• Seven essential behaviours every leader needs to operate with an inclusive mindset.

• Practical recommendations for how facilitators can promote diversity of thought in the classroom and ensure leaders of all background feel included and safe in the classroom.

• Ways to support leaders at every step of the learning process.

Wednesday, April 7, 2021, 12 p.m.–1 p.m. PT: Creating Animated Intros, Outros and Explainer Videos in TechSmith’s Camtasia
When designing elearning courses, a simple animation is often more effective in capturing attention and explaining a concept than a static illustration. Camtasia is great for creating quick and effective animated videos and it’s more than just a video editing tool. Whether you need animated Intros or Outros for your videos, or an explainer animation for your elearning course, Camtasia is easy to learn and use. In this webinar, Kevin Thorn, Chief NuggetHead at Nuggethead Studioz, will show you the animated Intros and Outros that come pre-loaded with Camtasia, demonstrate how to construct a simple title animation for your elearning course and how to save your custom animations in your library as a template. 

Thursday, April 8, 2021, 8 a.m.–9 a.m. PT: Best Practices for Writing Voice-Over Scripts for Elearning Courses
For adding narration to your elearning courses, you need to change your writing style a bit to make it sound more natural to the ears instead of the eyes. Although the general writing principles are the same for on-screen text and narration, there are some nuances that you need to take care of when authoring the voice-over scripts. Join Dr. Pooja Jaisingh, Lead Elearning Evangelist at Adobe Digital Learning Solutions, as she takes you through the best practices for writing voice-over scripts. She’ll show you different examples of how to convert on-screen text to narration and the details you need to add to the script before passing it on to the voice-over artist, for minimizing the number of edits and re-recordings.

Monday, April 12, 2021, 8 a.m.–9 a.m. PT: Skills, Not Credentials: The New Currency of Work (Free for ATD members)
Skills, not credentials, are quickly becoming the new currency of work. With technology advancing and unprecedented economic, social and environmental disruptions unfolding, a workforce with the skills to meet the moment can help create real value for your evolving business, which means people should be hired based on what they can do, not what their credentials say they know. It means developing people so they can perform and grow. In this webinar, hosted by Janice Burns, Chief Career Experience Officer at Degreed, and Ted Fleming, Head, Talent Development at CVS Health, you’ll learn how to:

• Create a skill-building environment.

• Optimize the impact of your efforts.

• Analyze and shape your skill landscape using skill data.

Tuesday, April 13, 2021, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: Orchestrating an Agile Learning Design and Delivery Process
L&D teams have never been asked to do more with less than right now. Instructional design (ID) teams are usually pretty small — if they exist at all — so it can be exceptionally challenging to deliver strong, impactful content under these constraints. ID teams need the right strategies and tools to keep pace with the learning demands of today’s business climate. With the right approach, ID can transform from a bottleneck into the orchestrator of knowledge flow in the organization. Join David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, and Christian Weibell, Chief Product Officer with Elearning Brothers as they look at ways companies can open up design bottlenecks and propel learning forward.

Tuesday, April 13, 2021, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Remote Learning Playbook at Box, Kustomer and Fivetran (Free for ATD members)
How are top companies like Box, Kustomer and Fivetran delivering amazing remote learning experiences for their global, distributed teams? Join this webinar to see how these L&D leaders are using learning as a competitive advantage to effectively onboard, retain top talent and scale growth across the business. In this webinar, you’ll learn how to:

• Create amazing remote learner experiences, starting with onboarding.

• Develop a core competencies framework for every level and function.

• Retain talent and build successful career mobility programs.

Wednesday, April 14, 2021, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: How to Use Surveys and Assessments to Drive Learning and Coaching In Your Organization
During this session, Tim Hagen, Chief Coaching Officer at Progress Coaching, will answer:

• How customer feedback can help drive your existing training and development (T&D) initiatives.

• How to convert a customer service survey into a coaching strategy.

• How to use engagement studies and assessments to create a culture of coaching within your organization.

• How to convert an employee assessment into a coaching strategy.

• How you can enable your employees to coauthor their training and empower your managers to become partners and drivers in the T&D process.

Wednesday, April 14, 2021, 10:30 a.m.–11:30 a.m. PT: Triaging Change: How to Prioritize and Push Back On Incoming Tasks (Free for I4PL members)
Now, more than ever, we need to accept that no one can do it all and make everyone happy. We're all facing more change faster than ever and simply adding everything to our to-do list isn’t a productive or sustainable approach. Navigating change means having thought-out, courageous conversations about what is, and what isn’t a priority. "No" is the new "Yes" because it starts this new conversation. This highly engaging virtual session, hosted by Doug Heidebrecht, Adler Certified Professional Coach and Personal Productivity Expert, will provide you with practical strategies to help you develop your skills around how to triage change and diplomatically push back on some things.

Thursday, April 15, 2021, 8 a.m.–9 a.m. PT: Leaders and Their Leadership: Common Strengths and Consistent Challenges (Free for ATD members)
Good leaders have high levels of awareness. They recognize the impact their behaviour has on those around them. Leaders struggle when they do not have an accurate understanding of how their behaviours are seen by others. When this is the case, leaders get in their own way. A common example of this is the leader who wants to provide clear direction and guidance to their direct reports but uses behaviours that come across as micromanaging. Using extensive data from leadership 360 assessments, Shawn Bakker, Psychologist, and Justin Deonarine, Industrial/Organizational Psychologist, from Psychometrics, will discuss where leaders often do well. They’ll also show where leaders commonly struggle and share insights on how leaders should focus their development efforts to become the leaders they would like to be.

Thursday, April 15, 2021, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: Mastering Live Virtual Presentations with Prezi: How to Design and Deliver Stunning Prezi Presentations and Share Them Live
It’s been a year of presenting virtually, and your audience is starting to demand that you stop hiding behind the slides. Less screen sharing, more you. But what if you could do both, having the ability to bring your content onto the screen alongside you, in a way that boosts attention and retention, as well as lower drop off? This session will help you discover how to create a gorgeous Prezi presentation, allowing you to bring that content onto the screen with you in a way that’s memorable and enables you to keep that all important eye contact and human connection. Spencer Waldron, Director of Brand Communications at Prezi, will show you how to create an incredibly rich Prezi session that takes you from the very basics to the most advanced techniques.

Thursday, April 15, 2021, 12 p.m.–1 p.m. PT: Five Contradicting Trends In Corporate Training: L&D Reality vs. Employee Expectations
As a result of the pandemic, digital training programs were no longer a “nice-to-have” but a “must-have.” Without warning, F2F training became a thing of the past. Videos, PDFs and PowerPoint presentations were the top three training formats professionals used to digitize their courses in 2020. But will these formats be enough to upskill or reskill employees in 2021? Join Christian Erquicia, Global Business Development at Gamelearn, to talk about the status of corporate training, identify methodologies gaining traction in the industry and determine if professionals will give employees the digital courses they want in 2021. If there were ever a time to revamp your online corporate training strategy, it’s now.

Friday, April 16, 2021, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: Meeting Effectiveness in Remote Environments (Free for ATD members)
Meetings are an important part of most people’s workdays. In pre-pandemic times, it was already challenging to run an effective meeting. In our virtual work worlds, there are some essential ways to transform your meetings to make them successful regardless of where you or your employees might be and no matter the difficulty or importance of the topic. Join Susan Kleinschmidt, CEO of Good Insights Strategy, to learn some strategies and tools for effective virtual meetings. This webinar will cover:

• Effective preparation.

• Ground rules for virtual meetings.

• How to avoid deadly silence, including tips for engagement.

• How to maintain focus and accomplish your meeting goal.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: Being Virtual — Going from Good to Great!
Recent times have moved many companies into having to conduct much of what used to be face to face events, such as meetings, sales presentations and conferences to having to manage, lead and attend virtual versions. Your organization may have given you access to a virtual platform, but the resulting quality of the virtual event may not be as good as what would have done were it face to face. In the future, it’s likely to move partially back to a physical office, but as a hybrid model where many interactions will remain virtual, so the challenge ahead is to improve the ways in which virtual platforms are leveraged to achieve more than just a good meeting. Join virtual collaboration expert David Smith, founder of DS Virtually, to explore how to develop levels of Virtual Fluency — the ability to connect, communicate and collaborate virtually. 

Tuesday, April 20, 2021, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: Moving from Soft Skills to Critical Skills
The kind of skills being called soft are perhaps not what the word “soft” implies. Organizations could not function without good communicators, critical thinkers and emotionally intelligent leaders. These kinds of skills are soft in the way that our internal organs are soft. Squishy, maybe, but vital. It’s time to take traditional thinking about soft skills and the way we develop them and turn it on its head. Join David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst of Brandon Hall Group, along with Mursion’s Vice President of Marketing ,Christina Yu, and Director, Anna Strasshofer, as they look at the state of critical skills development and approaches that can bring them to life for learners.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Close Your Organization’s Skill Gaps by Upskilling Your Workforce (Free for ATD members)
In today’s rapidly changing environment, you can’t afford to wait for high performers with the right skills to come to you. You must build on the potential already within your ranks. But what happens if your current employees don’t have the proper skills needed? Is it worth taking the time to teach them new skills? During this webinar, Katie Miller, Marketing Events Strategist at BizLibrary, will discuss how to determine your biggest skill gaps and why upskilling your workforce by focusing on areas like soft skills, leadership and management, software and other business skills will help your bottom line.

Wednesday, April 21, 2021, 8:00 a.m.–9:30 a.m. PT: Fun with Elearning: Create your First Elearning Project with Adobe Captivate
Ready to rock and roll with Adobe Captivate? Learn to create an exciting elearning course that hits all the right notes. Take part in this 90-minute hands-on introduction by Dr Pooja Jaisingh, Lead Elearning Evangelist at Adobe Digital Learning Solutions, to take your elearning journey to new dimensions. What’s more, earn a valuable certificate upon creating your own short project. In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Use Quick Start Projects to create a visually appealing elearning course.

• Use the ready-to-go slides and customize them according to your needs.

• Quickly create an elearning course that’s rich with interactions, graphics and animations.

• Add a quiz and publish your course to an LMS.

Wednesday, April 21, 2021, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Five Mistakes Unskilled Virtual Managers Make and How to Remedy Them
As workplaces become more distributed, managers often find themselves managing remote or virtual team members. This geographic distance sets virtual leaders up to make five critical management mistakes that can reduce productivity, derail teamwork, undermine organizational loyalty and increase turnover. Join Cynthia Clay, President and CEO of NetSpeed Learning Solutions, to explore these common mistakes and what to do about them in your organization.

Wednesday, April 21, 2021, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Skillsoft Leadership Development (Free for ATD members)
Digital transformation is here, whether you and your organization are ready or not. Join Kristin Shackelford, Solution Principal, Leadership and Business at Skillsoft, to learn, discuss and collaborate on how to solve for the most common areas of friction related to digital transformation. Accelerate innovation in yourself, your teams and your organization. Organize change management. Reskill yourself and others’ success, then close the gap between knowing and doing, so you can put all you’ve learned to work and affect transformational change. During this webinar, you’ll learn: 

• Why digital transformation should be your focus now, even while the pandemic lingers.

• What you need to do to establish common alignment with leadership on transformation goals.

• How to spot and avoid pitfalls of digital transformation execution.

Thursday, April 22, 2021, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: Creating Elearning for Global Audiences: Tips for Saving Time and Money
Creating elearning for global audiences presents some unique challenges. How do you create scalable content that speaks to your audience, wherever they are in the world? Choosing the right features can improve your workflow and allows you to benefit from economies of scale. The small decisions you make when planning, building and delivering your elearning can all add up to make a big difference. Gomo Learning Business Development Executive, Huw Edwards, and Customer Success Manager, Simon Waldram, will show you some great ways to embed value into your current — and future — courses.

Thursday, April 22, 2021, 10 a.m.–11 a.m. PT: From Activity to Impact: How Covid Has Changed Training in the Workplace
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on organizations all over the globe. The training function hasn’t been immune to these changes. The level of disruption brought about by the pandemic has presented both challenges and opportunities, while completely changing the landscape of training. Join David Wentworth, Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, and David Proegler, Managing Principal at Latitude CG, as they discuss the impact of the pandemic and the effects it will have on training post-COVID-19.

Thursday, April 22, 2021, 12 p.m.–1 p.m. PT: How to Add Hands-On Training In Remote and Virtual Training
One of the key gaps in virtual and webinar training is how to replicate the hands-on and tactile training in handling equipment, raw materials, shop floor physical facilities, processes and procedures, and F2F co-mingling. Most webinars and virtual sessions are used for presentations and for conveying knowledge. However, these are inadequate in dealing with helping learners and trainers gain the necessary hands-on experiences. In this webinar, Dr. Ray Jimenez, Chief Learning Officer of Vignettes Learning, will share case studies and pilot projects on “hands-on learning in remote learning.”

Monday, April 26, 2021, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Three Big Ideas for Producing Engaging Virtual Training (Free for ATD members)
Delivering engaging virtual classroom learners, meeting participants and webinar attendees is a challenge. In addition, virtual trainers must also master the technical side of the experience often referred to a virtual production. Commanding the technical aspects of virtual delivery is critical to online participant engagement. The art of virtual production combines a unique skill set that balances deep platform knowledge with multitasking agility, while at the same time, calming everyone down before the panic can be heard through the mute. Kassy LaBorie, Principal Consultant at Kassy LaBorie Consulting, LLC, will share insights from her recent book on the role a producer plays in making virtual training run successfully.

Tuesday, April 27, 2021, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: Creating a Coaching Culture: The New Solution to Connect Today’s Workforce
Whether your organization is now returning to the office, staying remote or implementing a hybrid model, there’s a need to connect employees together and create meaningful collaboration to support organizational priorities. Plus, employees are looking for ways to stay connected with each other and methods for accelerating their ability to upskill in areas critical to team, organizational and personal success. In this webinar, Roger Connors, Chairman and Co-Founder of Zero to Ten, will introduce a new process called Self-Directed Performance Coaching. This framework helps organizations of all sizes create a coaching culture where everyone can get a coach and be a coach to dramatically accelerate collaboration, knowledge transfer, connection and engagement, regardless of where they are working, to drive the results needed in 2021.

Wednesday, April 28, 2021, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. PT: Microlearning: Promoting Measurable Engagement to Drive Business Performance (Free for ATD members)
Learning engagement is often thought of as a measure that only reflects participation, or simply completion, in a course. What’s needed is an engaging learning experience that results in knowledge mastery and has a direct effect on people’s performance toward business objectives. To address this, Dr. Jiani Wu, Instructional Designer at Rhode Island College, will bring together a conversation to help you design content for high and positive learner engagement within your organization. Together, they redefine learning engagement and help you envision an enjoyable experience that motivates employees to acquire and retain the knowledge and skills to advance job performance and consequently drive business objectives.

Wednesday, April 28, 2021, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: What Does Marketing Have to Do with Learning Management?
Marketing has played an escalating role in L&D programs and solutions for the past few years. Organizations have begun to integrate substantial marketing strategies and tools to ensure more comprehensive compliance, promote upskilling programs, track customer education initiatives and promote organizational positivity toward change management initiatives. Join Dr. Allen Partridge, Director of Digital Learning Evangelism for Adobe, in this exploration of the expanding role of marketing in the world of L&D. You’ll learn:

• Strategies that L&D professionals have used to market learning programs and initiatives.

• Technical solutions for driving learning programs.

• Methods of converting learning content consumption patterns to leads and campaigns.

• Technical solutions for lead conversion from customer education pipelines.

• Methods of influencing content consumption patterns.

Wednesday, April 28, 2021, 12 p.m.–1 p.m. PT: “All of the Above” and Other Multiple-Choice Question Flaws
Research shows that way too many multiple-choice questions have serious writing flaws that damage assessment quality and validity, making the data from these questions hard or impossible to interpret. Poorly written multiple-choice questions can cause serious problems for participants and organizations, so they need to be avoided. In this session, Dr. Patti Shank, CPT, President of Learning Peaks LLC, will analyze some of the top multiple-choice question-writing flaws, including using “all of the above” and “none of the above” as answer choices. You’ll gain practice, leave with a helpful job aid to remind you and improve your multiple-choice question-writing skills.

Thursday, April 29, 2021, 9 a.m.–10 a.m. PT: The Major Misconception About Leading Change and How to Overcome It
During turbulent times like this, you hear many people talk about the “resistance to change” and how this phenomenon impairs an organization’s ability to rapidly adapt and respond. The problem with this mentality is that it assumes change is unwelcome, difficult and instinctively avoided by people, but in reality, we yearn for change, novelty and anything that will make our lives fresh, better and more exciting. Join Joan Peterson, Vice President of Bluepoint Leadership Development, as she’ll share Bluepoint’s formula for successfully initiating, executing and sustaining change.

Thursday, April 29, 2021, 12 p.m.–1 p.m. PT: One Evaluation Question Jim Kirkpatrick Says Every Training Professional Should Ask

Are you struggling to get the supervisor involvement that’s necessary to have effective training programs? Attend this webinar to find out the one game-changing question that will generate the support and involvement required for your programs to impact on-the-job performance and create meaningful results. Dr. Jim Kirkpatrick, Senior Consultant, and Wendy Kirkpatrick, President of Kirkpatrick Partners, will share business partnership foundational principles that every training professional must know and use to be effective.

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