New technology promises to take e-Learning out of the traditional, classroom-based paradigm and into a true "digital native" context. These new e-Learning tools will allow employees to engage in more active and realistic training activities, and they will incorporate emerging social learning and informal learning methods. Download this white paper to discover the implications of these next-generation e-Learning trends and answer these Three Fundamental questions: What unique traits set today's cutting-edge e-Learning tools apart from their predecessors? What are some specific examples of next-generation e-Learning tools? How can these tools increase e-Learning ROI and enterprise productivity?  

Successful sales organizations weather tough times with thoughtful initiatives, skilled salespeople, and healthy client relationships. Are We There Yet? If not, it sure feels like it. Housing is so bad that your mortgage is upside down. Credit is so tight that you can't borrow a garden hoe. The dollar is so weak that a pint in London sets you back a day's pay. So, is it a "technical recession"? Who cares, really, because for reasons of their own, customers and prospects are sitting on their checkbooks. And what's the impact on you of this excruciating state of suspended compensation?   Sales cycles longer than the River Nile. Client conversations that move smoothly from price, to price, and finally on to price. Formerly friendly clients who won't give you an Altoid. And, of course, the invasion of the tirekickers.   You say you've done everything obvious and nothing works? Maybe it's time to narrow your focus.

Where are you as you read this - home, office, taxicab? What kind of device are you using - mobile, laptop, printed version? The fact that there are so many possible answers to those questions is an indication of how our work lives - and indeed our private lives as well - have become increasingly mobile, global, networked and virtual. Download this white paper for the latest numbers, trends and insights into how they can be used to leverage virtual learning environments to meet today's critical talent needs.

It’s a debate that’s raging throughout the digital content world, from content marketers to eLearning professionals: "What is the ideal online medium for conveying my message?" The contenders? A flurry of tactics, ranging from ebooks to white papers to webinars to blogs to infographics to social media. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Each has gained favor in segments of the marketing and eLearning worlds. Conscious of the weaknesses of these alternatives, content creators continue to seek new and more effective media for their messages. Ask them to describe an ideal medium, and you’ll hear something like this: It would be up-to-date, like a live webinar It would be multisensory, like a video It would be navigable, like a white paper or e-book It would be actionable and trackable, like a landing page It would be interactive, like a website It would be sharable, like a social update It would be deeply engaging, like a video game It would be searchable and discoverable, like a blog It would be simple to follow, like a slideshow

Sales Enablement: How do we do it? The phrase sales enablement has become a standard term in the language of those who support sales performance. There are currently 37 LinkedIn groups with this phrase in their titles. There are software companies, products, consultancies, and all kinds of online resources that include sales enablement in their names, descriptions, or value propositions. It's a great descriptive phrase for marketing products and services, but, like many such catch phrases, means different things to different people. This free white paper from Dr. Carl Binder, originator of The Six Boxes®, will help your sales leadership team understand and implement these concepts and - yes - enable your sales team to perform at its highest potential.

Engagement, the employee’s commitment to their organization and their willingness to perform beyond expectations, has become a focus area for management. Engagement is more than mere job satisfaction; fully engaged employees are motivated and dedicated to making the organization a success. At the most simplistic level engaged employees lead to happy, loyal customers and repeat business. Importantly engagement also leads to improvement in retention levels. In short, it impacts the bottom line. Dale Carnegie Training asked MSW Research to undertake a benchmark nationwide, cross industry study of 1500 employees to explore engagement in the workplace. The study discovered that although there are multiple factors affecting engagement, the personal relationships between a manager and his or her direct reports is the most influential. 

"If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think." David Ogilvy David Ogilvy, the famous marketing and sales executive, said it this way, "If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think." Nelson Mandela said it like this: "If you talk to [people] in a language [they] understand, that goes to [their] heads. If you talk to [them] in [their] language, that goes to [their] heart." The ability to communicate—whether to persuade or just to understand—goes beyond using words well; it requires the ability to use words in a way that has meaning for those with whom you are speaking. The ability to talk with someone in his or her native language isn’t just about them understanding you; it’s about you understanding them—their experiences, their thinking, their beliefs, and their values. While definitions lie in words, meaning lies in the people who use them.

Is it possible to blend tried and true theories of instructional design while meeting the needs of your learner population and stakeholders who are begging for games? Does gamification of eLearning even make sense for your organization or the needs of your learners? In the webinar "Aligning eLearning Game Designs to Bloom’s Taxonomy", Angel Green will provide a sneak peek to Allen Interactions’ Taxonomy Alignment for Gaming (TAG) —based on Bloom’s Taxonomy— to help instructional designers in their quest to incorporate gaming into their learning designs. You're welcome to download this complimentary infographic, but please also join us for the webinar.  See below.

For the first time ever, Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) are faced with the challenge of meeting the needs of four generations in the workplace. As more professionals from Generation Y join the work force, it is now more important for trainers, human resources personnel and C-level management to continually understand generational differences and adapt strategies for retention. Understanding generational differences in the workplace and in training styles is the key to great leadership, higher retention rates, happier employees, and an efficient workforce.

A recent report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development found that evaluation was a top priority among learning and development (L&D) professionals (Personnel Today staff, 2012). Despite this fact, calculating return on investment (ROI) on development programs is still rarely done; a McKinsey Quarterly report found that only 8 percent of organizations actually evaluate the value of L&D initiatives (Palmer, 2010). And too often, those who do track ROI rarely go beyond asking for feedback from participants immediately after the event.

A Letter from the Author Dear friends and colleagues: The gamification of corporate learning has become a hot topic of discussion over the past year in industry publications and blogs, and certainly among talent development professionals. Why is there so much interest? Of course, everyone will have their own point of view on that question. Mine is this: despite the allure of traditional elearning from a cost and ease-of-deployment perspective, numerous organizations’ workforces have not consumed that training with much gusto. There seems to be a lot of consensus in the industry that most traditional elearning provides only modest learner engagement. That’s a big problem for talent development professionals and the workforces we serve. We know engagement is a critical success factor in skill development, and without it very little performance improvement is likely to result from the training. Most of you who are currently thinking about game-based elearning are doing so to address the engagement issue. But what about the learning results? What about the comparative performance impact of game-based elearning versus the traditional elearning most organizations deploy today? In this white paper, we will explore those questions, and provide a rationale that I believe many of you can use to benchmark the impact of game-based learning in your organization. Bryan L. Austin Chief Game Changer

Use Dr. Conrad Gottfredson’s "Five Moments of Need Model" to map your mobile learning needs to the right type of solution.

Attention spans are dropping at the same time technology is advancing, leading to a digital skills gap costing the U.S. economy 1.3 trillion dollars in lost productivity. Therefore there’s an ever-growing need for new and better ways to teach, learn and train the 21st century workforce -- and Microlearning is the solution. This white paper is designed to educate L&D professionals on the advantages microlearning can offer their organizations and a brief introduction on how to create it. In this white paper you’ll learn: Why microlearning is better for learners Why microlearning is better for trainers and creators The principles of effective microlearning and how to create it for your own organization  

Despite billions spent on leadership development, the investment doesn’t seem to be having the impact one would expect. This may be due to the lack of traction these programs typically have when it comes to lasting behavior change. This white paper provides 22 lessons that will help increase the likelihood that the skills learned in a leadership development program will "stick" and be used on the job.

2013 Integrated Talent Management Survey Results   Two different divisions trip over each other, recruiting the same candidate. A consulting firm is unable to meet staffing needs for a new, tightly scheduled project. An organization doesn’t have a clear picture of up-and-coming leadership for succession planning. A business merging with another company can’t easily identify overlap of staff skills. Sound familiar? All of these scenarios point to poor integration of HR solutions. At SilkRoad, we feel this topic is so important that we surveyed 380 HR professionals on their integrated talent management systems and processes. We've compiled those results into a comprehensive (and complimentary!) report. This report highlights the survey results and explores the most pressing questions confronting talent management professionals, including: How truly integrated are talent management functions in organizations? What are the most common talent management functions that companies integrate? What are the biggest pain points organizations experience due to lack of integration? What kind of data do professionals want, but can’t access? Big Data: What is it and are talent management professionals planning to use it? How important is "social" talent management to professionals, and what do they see as its greatest application? Are companies enabling mobile access to their HR data?

It is hard to fault the idea that appraisal reveals an employee’s abilities and a development plan should follow naturally from that. The smooth link looks good on paper. The reality is a good deal messier. It is not that HR is doing something wrong, just that the process is harder than it looks. Understanding why it is hard will lead to better results. Download this complimentary ebook and gain a full understanding of the link between appraisal and development, and what you can do to smooth this tricky process.

The reality of business today means that organizations will have to grow the talent they need when they can’t find it. Developing talent internally over the long term will be most of the solution. You’ll want some recommendations in your back pocket when your CEO turns to you for answers. Learning managers will be seen as the go-to resources when it comes to compensating for major skill gaps in talent. By socializing learning, mobilizing the technology, creating strategic stretch assignments, partnering with institutions, and speaking to the bottom line, HR can make learning an integral solution to filling skill gaps in the organization.

Social business tools are not entirely new. Enterprises have been using virtual tools such as chat and message board tools for years. Yet today, Gartner predicts that by 2016 half of all large organizations will have internal Facebook-like social networks, and that 30% of those will be considered as essential as email and phone.   Why are we seeing such a rapidly accelerating interest and business investment in social business implementations, especially as Gartner notes in Enterprise Social Networks (ESN)? How do you understand how ESNs can help you and how do you get started? Don't get overwhelmed. Download this free eBook from Bloomfire to learn how.

I spent this summer writing the second edition of my book Web-Based Training. One of the topics that required updating was blended learning. In the four years since the book was published, the term has taken on several new means. In my research I found the term blended learning referred to four different concepts.

As instructional designers we are constantly being bombarded with new technologies and new trends. It’s difficult to distinguish which are fads, and which are worthy of our investments of time and resources. The safest, and often most expedient course of action is to continue to focus on the delivery technology we know is NOT a fad, the traditional classroom. After all we’ve been using the traditional classroom forever, how can we possibly go wrong teaching in a classroom in front of an audience? As new technologies, like the virtual classroom, eLearning, and social media, are introduced, we continue to play it safe by trying to make these technology experiences replicate the classroom.

You want your managers to deliver results. Not just any results - you’re looking for breakthrough results. In order to get that done, they must be viewed by their teams as smart, likable, hard working, and caring. But there’s another quality that can make or break a manager’s pursuit of success. Managers can only get their teams to execute the strategy successfully if they start with themselves. They must understand the strategy itself and see how internal/external forces and trends impact the business. They must know the customer needs and requirements, as well as be a role model of the culture, behaviors, and values of the organization. This paper will help managers discover, synthesize and internalize these critical qualities. Download Below.  

Managers are the connective tissue of your culture, creating a series of invisible, interwoven links between individuals, leaders, the business, and the strategy. When managers are living, promoting, and celebrating your culture, they are bringing it to life every day at the team level. This is critical because that’s where the real employee experience takes place.

Use this infographic in your organization to kick-start discussion on how to bridge the chasm of The Disengagement Canyon. For change to be successful, it must be clearly defined, aligned, understood and sustained. To do this successfully, address the 3 Critical Engagement Points in the infographic.

This paper is focused on the mobile virtual classroom but don’t worry, we’ll be covering the other concepts (globalization and social networks) in future publications. (The concepts are useful here to help explain the context in which we will be discussing the mobile virtual classroom and its place in the modern virtual classroom.)