Sessions

Conference & Exhibition Day – 8th September 2010

The conference features an opening Keynote Address and 8 conference sessions. Additionally, we are again hosting 4 Workshop sessions (maximum of 12 delegates per workshop).

Whilst the Keynote Session addresses all delegates, you can choose your own Conference Sessions from the two concurrent streams and workshops. Note that workshop sessions are strictly limited on numbers so bookings are on a first-come, first-served basis.

Conference Sessions document: You can download a PDF of the Sessions here.

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

WORKSHOPS

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Delivering excellence in performance and learning
Bob Mosher, LearningGuide Solutions
Effective training is about a lot more than knowledge transfer. It’s about developing the skills for great performance and supplying the just-in-time support required at the front line. Bob Mosher will reveal why coupling learning to performance is crucial. It’s essential not just for showing the value of what we do to managment; it is at the heart of great workplace training. Bob will draw on the forgetting curve and the 5 key points of learning need to illustrate why training has to be about both capacity building (just-in-case learning) and immediate performance support (just-in-time learning). Along the way he will question many of the principles that we have held in training – including those that Bob himself worked with in his many years as a classroom trainer.

Back to open Training 2010 by popular demand, Bob Mosher is a witty, honest speaker who has been there and done it in the training world. You can’t pull the wool over Bob’s eyes, and he won’t try to pull it over yours. Expect discussion, laughs, and thought-provoking insight to begin the conference with.

Chaired by Nicola Pye, Ernst & Young

A1: Understanding your business and aligning training for success
Jonathan Kettleborough, Corollis
Times are tough. We are all having to work harder for budgets and people – and we know it will get even tougher. Against this economic backdrop many learning professionals are under more pressure than ever before to deliver effective programmes. Jonathan Kettleborough has always maintained that true training success is based on thoroughly understanding your business and having a very clear picture of where learning programmes can have a positive impact upon success. Drawing on his experience across a wide range of industries and using highly engaging examples, Jonathan will take you through the key steps you needed to ensure success in these increasingly challenging times:

• The three key things you must know about your organisation
• Understanding what contributes to success within your organisation
• Aligning intangible assets (make no mistake, this is THE key!)
• Evaluation and modification (keeping in touch and making it better)
• Communicating your success effectively

A2: Integrating rapid action learning sets into a learning programme
Dr Brian Sutton, Managing Director, Learning4Leaders/Middlesex University
Action learning sets (ALS) are a great way of learning – putting people in small, collaborative groups to assess problems and jointly come up with solutions, learning along the way. Brian Sutton believes that action learning is the best way to get from ‘knowing that’ to ‘applying what I know to make a difference’ and to ‘constructing new knowledge along the way’.  While they are often seen as a long-term, haphazard process with unpredictable results, Brian has made rapid action learning sets part of many substantial blended learning programmes, and will explore:

• How action learning sets work, and making them work for you
• Integrating Action Learning as part of a self directed learning programme
• What you need to accelerate Action Learning
• A five step process for a 60 minute Action Learning Set
• The power of question webs, and the need for an Advisor

A3: Delivering organisational change with great learning
Paul Jagger, Global Business Area Manager, IBM Learning Development Europe
Ever been given a few weeks’ notice to set up training for a major IT roll out? Or seen the Learning and Development department forgotten when a major change programme is underway? This habit of ignoring L&D overlooks how fundamentally important learning is to organisational change, says IBM’s Paul Jagger. In this session he examines why L&D sometimes seems invisible, and suggests practical ways of making sure its importance is appreciated.

• Why learning is core to successful organisational change
• Making the link between learning and successful change in your organisation
• How to get involved in the planning process
• Learning: the cure for many likely pitfalls in IT roll outs
• Remaining part of the change process

A4: Building a robust training department for challenging times
Tim Hunnybun, IT/IS Training Service Leader, Information Systems Services, Leeds University
Training  budgets are under threat – in case you hadn’t noticed. In the current economy, how can you build a resilient training department that delivers great learning with fewer resources? In this interactive session, Tim Hunnybun, IITT Training Manager of the Year 2010, explores ways of making your money go further, while revealing the tell-tale signs that cuts are on their way.

• Tools that will help you deliver more for less
• The power of ‘no’ in saving you time and money
• Analysing your internal market
• The key skills to build within your team
• 3 essential things to do when managing your budget

Chaired by Denise Hudson-Lawson, Houses of Parliament

B1: The new blended learning
Clive Shepherd, e-Learning Network
The new blended learning is different. It takes advantage of different social contexts for learning (self-directed, one-to-one, group) as well as different learning media (online, offline, face-to-face). It also seamlessly crosses formal and informal boundaries, to harness the power of social media, rapid and mobile content to supplement formal approaches and deliver just-in-time performance support. This is blended learning that goes well beyond the old approach of simply adding e-learning to a classroom course.

• Building informal and social learning into the learning blend
• Using the most appropriate social contexts for learning in each circumstance
• Employing the learning media to deliver interventions more efficiently
• Putting rapid and user-generated content to work – and ensuring its quality
• Assessing the skills and tools needed to make this all work

B2: The BBC Model for content creation of e-Learning materials
Nick Shackleton-Jones, Online and Informal Learning Manager, BBC Training & Development & Shane Samarawikrema, Experience Designer, BBC Training & Development
How do you produce great e-learning materials at speed? The BBC could be a tough environment for this, with its creative individuals, high production standards and ultra-busy SMEs (subject matter experts). Nick and Shane describe how they’ve managed it, with their six stage content development process, which covers everything from project management to great story-telling.

• The 6-stage content development process in full
• Engaging the emotions: the key to successful learning
• When you need Hollywood production values – and when you don’t
• Setting the expectations of management and learners
• Working with SMEs to bring out their best and avoid their worst

B3: A practical guide to online synchronous events
Julie Wedgwood, Productive Ltd
Most of us have been on the receiving end of an online event but have little idea what it’s like at the sharp end. Multiple award-winning learning consultant Julie turns the theory into practice, and steers a course through the unexplored for the uninitiated. Get a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s really like to teach in a virtual classroom and discover the skills required to make it work for you, your learners and your organization.

• Essential  planning and preparation
• The importance of socialization and participation
• Tools and techniques for maintaining interaction
• Multi-tasking delivery mayhem and how to avoid it
• Real organizational and learner benefits

B4: Social Learning – delivering online learning that works
Liz Cable, Social Learning Consultant, ReachFurther
Need social learning be hard work? Not according to Liz Cable. In fact, she says, when done right it sells itself. Why? Not because ‘social learning’ is the latest buzz phrase in L&D. Rather, it’s because we now have the experience to understand what’s required to make it fly. Join her in this cafe-style session to get the benefit of three years’ active experience running social learning communities, including:

• The three key roles to run a social network successfully
• How to maintain quality without sacrificing time
• What to say to managers and learners to build success
• The tools available (and yes, you can do it for free!)
• How to start simple, and build success

W3: Instructional Design
Rob Hubbard, e-Learning Network
Developing great e-Learning is about more than simply choosing a good authoring tool and learning how to use it. It is, says Rob Hubbard, about two essential things, neither of them to do with technology. It is first of all about engaging your learners, and second about getting as close as possible to what you want them to do in the real world. This activity-based learning approach avoids dumps of information, concentrating instead on asking learners to think, make decisions and see the consequences:

• Focusing on practice, not theory
• Designing content that simulates the real world
• Using Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping approach
• Engaging learners deeply in decision making, and providing intrinsic feedback
• Choosing an authoring tool that will enable this

W4: Meeting training needs with ‘Just-too-late’ learning
Neil Lasher, Learning Consultant
Today’s learners have new needs and different expectations, in designing our learning materials we ignore this at our peril. In this intensive workshop, Neil explores the changing world of Instructional Design for the new styled user, for mobile delivery and new methods of working. He will introduce the concept of ‘Just-too-Late Learning’ (as opposed to Just-in-Time learning) and the design concepts it requires. This, says Neil, is not a presentation, but a collaborative journey into the future.

• Meeting the expectations of today’s users with a thought for tomorrows.
• The reduced role of reflection and memory and the increased role of search and find
• Latching on to the learner’s emotions and identifying the difference between interaction and emotion
• Delivering great learning interventions with Just-too-Late learning
• What you can do next, what you shouldn’t, what’s in store and how to be ready to meet the new demand