Day 1

8:30-9:00

Welcome/Telling Ain’t Training
Harold Stolovitch, Conference Facilitator

We derive our most valuable lessons from what we experience, not from what we're told. Take a light-hearted, experiential approach to transforming telling (a waste of time) into activities that result in long-term retention and behavior change. Through a series of hands-on exercises, participants will not only have fun learning, but also willacquire some research-based principles for building retention and improving performance

Session Objectives:

• State and apply six principles for transforming the dreaded info-dump into worthwhile learning.
• Apply four cognitive strategies to improve information retrieval.
• Name six universals from learning research, which strongly increase the probability of learning.

10:30-11:00

Break

A Universal Model for Training

Harold Stolovitch

Imagine a simple, five-step model that you can apply quickly and easily to convert virtually any subject-matter content directed at almost any population of learners of almost any size into high-probability-of-success learning. And this model works with any medium or delivery system. Best of all itis derived from learning research and has been applied in all sorts of circumstances with remarkable results. Not only does this model apply to new training, but you can also use it to retrofit existing content-focused courses, transforming them into effective and engaging learning events. In this session, you will experience the model in action through a fun whole-group role play and then actually apply itto test out how well it works. You will leave with worksheets you can immediately apply to your own projects.

Session Objectives:

• Discover a research-based, five-step model that allows you to transform content-focused telling into effective training.
• Using a set of worksheets, apply the five-step model to arbitrary content and test its effectiveness with sample learners.
• Apply the five-step model to not only create instant training, but also build an instructor or facilitator guide that others can use to maintain learning consistency across instructors/facilitators and multiple learner audiences.

12:30-1:30

Lunch

Making E-Learning Work for You and Your Learners

Marc Rosenberg

E-learning offers amazing opportunities for you to deliver training in ways that can be quite efficient and effective, and also exciting!The key is not so much the technology but how you use it and how you prepare your learners for it.This session will introduce you to a variety of e-learning options and will focus on the many ways you can make technology-enabled learning, or "e-learning" engaging for your learners.We'll also focus on ways to blend technology into a classroom-based curriculum and offer some do's and don'ts for making e-learning succeed. Finally, we'll take a look at how subject matter experts, instructional designers and I.T. departments will have to collaborate more to make e-learning succeed.

Session Objectives:

• Define e-learning in a training context.
• Briefly describe different types of e-learning (async/sync, KM, communities, EPSS).
• Identify ways to engage learners via technology.
• Identify opportunities to blend e-learning into classroom programs.
• Describe new roles and relationships for e-learning success.
• Identify ways to assure effective e-learning vendor selection.

3:15-3:45

Break

Case Study Method: Why, Whenand How to Create and Use Case Studies
Harold Stolovitch

Case study method has shown itself to be a powerful means for building higher level learning and increasing retention.Why?Because it engages learners in analysis of real-life situations, forces them to make decisions and confronts their perspectives with those of others.Case study method offers a means for increasing transfer of learning to the workplace.It is a powerful non-telling approach to training.

Session Objectives:

• Define what a case study is
• State strong rationales for using case study method in training
• Build cases in a systematic manner based on a seven-step model
• Run and debrief a case in a group context.
  

Day 2

8:30-9:00

Coffee and Pastries

Learning Research and Theory to Practice

Harold Stolovitch

Training practitioners can get caught up in the pressures that emanate from urgent business needs, organizational pressures, and the omnipresent concern to meet impossible deadlines. Transform research findings into practical, application rules that are easy to apply and challenge many myths that are perpetuated in the training and development world. You’ll develop a stronger understanding of what works from a research-based perspective. Identify what is unfounded lore that may even be harmful to your participants’ learning health and counterproductive to your organization.

Session Objectives:

• Discover twelve powerful lessons from research and theory that will increase the impact and effectiveness of your training
• Derive at least three practical principles you can immediately apply that add organizational value to your training and development efforts
• Eliminate from your repertoire useless or even harmful training practices.

10:30-11:00

Break

Cognitive Strategies:How to Build Learning Faster, Better, Cheaper
Harold Stolovitch

Cognitive strategies are mental methodologies we use every time we study and learn. They form a database of thinking and learning packages that we can draw upon and apply to specific learning situations. They help us organize learning so that we can internalize it more readily and recall it more rapidly. This session offers you an experiential initiation into the six major types of cognitive strategies. You practice what it teaches.

Session Objectives:

• Name and explain six types of cognitive strategies
• Apply all six cognitive strategies to learn new content
• Identify specific instances to which you can apply various cognitive strategies to build learning faster, better and cheaper.

Teaching in a Virtual Classroom

Marc Rosenberg

Using technology to teach students at a distance is growing. More and more experienced instructors will have opportunities to teach in this manner. But what does it mean to teach when your students are all over the country, or even the world? How do you keep them engaged? How will you prepare them? What tools do you have at your disposal? What skills will you need? How will a course that you've taught in a classroom change now that you're teaching it online? These and other questions will be answered as we explore the world of the virtual classroom.

Session Objectives:

• Describe the general components and capabilities of a virtual classroom.
• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the virtual classroom format.
• Identify training techniques that work well in a virtual classroom and those that don't.
• Generate ideas for preparing and motivating students for virtual learning.
• Identify new skills that will be needed by the virtual instructor.

12:45-1:45

Lunch

1:45-3:30

Panel of Presenters

This “grand finale” session brings together the two conference leaders and all the participants in two major activities:a final and unique question and answer session, and action planning. In the Q&A session, participants will write down a question that is still on their minds; one that they feel has not yet been answered but is too important to wait till they get home. In a unique rating activity, the most interesting questions of the group will “rise to the top” and form the basis of the Q&A session.

The final activity – action planning – will build a bridge between this conference and practical, on-the-job application. The conference leaders will facilitate an action planning exercise where participants will determine how they will implement the ideas and techniques gathered in this conference once back home.

Session Objectives:

• Apply a unique Q&A activity to a wide range of learning contexts.
• Obtain answers to remaining priority questions.
• Identify key learning outcomes of the mini-conference that can be applied back on the job.

Instructors

Harold Stolovitch, conference facilitator, has been a teacher, researcher, and consultant in the areas of learning and performance for 40 years. He's an emeritus professor of Instructional and Performance Technology at theUniversity de Montreal and a clinical professor of Human Performance at Work at theUniversity of Southern California. He is a principal of HSA Learning & Performance Solutions LLC, an international consulting firm. He has published hundreds of articles, chapters, and books on learning and performance. He is a past president of ISPI, a Thomas F. Gilbert Award recipient, and a Member for Life. He is a frequently invited presenter internationally.Most important, he is theco-author of the ASTD best-selling books Telling Ain’t Training and Training Ain’t Performance.

Marc J. Rosenberg, conference presenter, is an independent consultant, speaker, and educator and leading figure in the world of training, organizational learning, e-learning, knowledge management, and performance improvement. His career includes 18 years in learning management positions at AT&T, and four years as the e-learning and knowledge management field leader for DiamondCluster International. He was a pioneer in the development of electronic performance support systems (EPSS) and is the author of the best-selling book, E-Learning: Strategies for Delivering Knowledge in the Digital Age (McGraw-Hill). He has authored more than 30 articles and is a frequently quoted expert in major business and trade publications, including ASTD’s T&D Magazine.He is a past president of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), a founding editorial board member of Performance Improvement Quarterly, co-editor of ISPI’s Performance Technology: Success Stories, and a contributing author to the Handbook of Human Performance Technology. He is a member of the ASTD E-Learning Brain Trust Advisory Board and also serves on the Advisory Board for The E-Learning Guild.