Virtually There Session Recap

Does your life ever feel insane? Between professional and personal responsibilities, most people get overwhelmed by trying to balance it all. And when your career focuses on ensuring others have the skills they need to effectively and efficiently do their jobs, the pressure builds.

So how do we balance it all in the face of constant chaos? Because the InSync team ponders this question regularly, we figured you likely do too. We invited expert Monique DeMonaco, the author of the best-selling book, Most People Don’t Need a Therapist, They Need a Change, to share her best practices for creating a sane life in an insane world with Virtually There participants.

What did we learn? To unpack the suitcase and focus on self-awareness.

Virtually There Session Recap

More likely than not, your organization now has a global component. Whether you work for a Fortune 50 company with regional offices all around the globe, or a small startup with a single team in a different country, the demographics of your training audience have changed.

How do you adapt to this new modern workplace reality? Jennifer Hofmann, President of InSync Training, recently answered this question during her Virtually There session, Implementing a Training Program Across a Global Organization – A Practical Guide.

Before you start transitioning your training to support a more diverse learner group, answering a more fundamental question will put you in the right mindset: Why do we need to change our training programs at all?

Virtually There Session Recap

Job aids can make or break a blend. They provide support for learners in their informal moments of need on the job. Job aids provide key information when things go wrong, when launching new internal systems or processes, when employees want to learn more, or when it’s time to complete an especially complex or uncommon process.

Like all training resources or instructional elements, creating job aids requires a thoughtful approach. But how do you get started designing easily understood, usable, reliable, supportive job aids? Experts Russ Powell and Joe Halpin, co-founders of Peregrine Performance Group helpfully put together an easy-to-follow seven step design process for exemplary job aids.

Virtually There session recap

As training adapts to innovative, ever-changing workplaces, our approaches to designing learning and supporting employees evolve, too. We know blended learning gives us flexibility, but it can overwhelm us, too.

Recently, Russ Powell and Joe Halpin, the founders of Peregrine Performance Group, believe, “One of the most effective ways to build training is to focus on performance, build a job aid, and build the training around it.” Sounds like a great plan. But what counts as a job aid? Why does this blended method work so well?

This blog will cover the basics of job aids, as Russ and Joe shared during their recent Virtually There event How to Recognize and Create Damn Good Job Aids. Click here to watch the entire session for a helpful 7-step process you can use to create your own exemplary job aids.

Virtually There Session Recap

As trainers, we often have to design and deliver technical or hard-to-understand content to our learners. Oftentimes, the content itself doesn’t naturally draw people in or lend itself to being easily remembered. By leveraging new edtech, innovative instructional design techniques, and engaging facilitation, we make an honest effort to engage learners and improve organizational performance.

But what if bells and whistles don’t hold the key to one of our biggest modern learning challenges? Karin Rex, instructional design expert, believes an easier path can get us to our goal of creating last learning experiences: story.

Watch the webcast of Karin’s fantastic Virtually There session Storytelling on Steroids with VideoScribe, for the full story.

Virtually There Session Recap

Many teams now include dispersed members. Whether your team includes employees in different buildings within the same region, or you lead a virtual team where everyone works from home, if you contribute to a global organization with groups on different continents, learning experiences can often prove to be tricky with limited face-to-face interaction.

Experienced designers and facilitators recognize the power of social learning to overcome the challenges commonplace for today’s workforce. Daila Boufford, Manager of Learning Design for Ansrsource, knows first-hand how thoughtful design which includes social learning can combat learner disengagement and improve overall team cohesion.

What steps can you take to ensure social learning success? Daila recommends three approaches.

Virtually There Session Recap

When thinking about designing or facilitating live online learning, what scares you the most? For many, the technology feels like an intimidating part of the equation.

• What if learners can’t navigate the environment?
• What if we lose audio in the middle of the Subject Matter Expert presenting key information?
• What if the slide deck fails to load within the platform?

Virtually There session recap

Our learners have a lot going on. Work, media, and the responsibilities of day-to-day life bombard them with data. Their brains must process a metaphorical mountain of information. Individuals consciously and subconsciously determine which stuff to pay attention to, and which to ignore.

Theoretically, training content focuses on critical information, right? We may think so, but if our learners have other priorities, our L&D programs get lost in the noise.

Virtually There Recap

Did you know that you have stories constantly running through your subconscious mind? It’s true! Without realizing it, you frame every interaction through narrative, creating underlying bias. Good, bad, or indifferent, your bias influences how you navigate the world.

This fundamental brain biology impacts professional relationships, too. Before every conversation or task, you anticipate how it will unfold.

Virtually There Recap

Think about your day-to-day role. Do you host meetings? Facilitate training? Give presentations? Whether you run these events or not, they represent an important part of our professional lives. Often, we see these events as time wasters, rather than important investments of our focus.

As learning professionals, team members, and managers, we strive to engage and involve our audiences so that they can remember the information we share with them. We hope to take them beyond listening and towards true learning. With the right approach, we can achieve that lofty goal.

Brain-based learning expert Sharon Bowman shared her presentation model and guided our Virtually There participants through a process for getting the brain to pay attention.