Welcome and Interactive Launch: Show Me the Money
After a brief welcome and event overview, participants launch into a brisk, interactive activity in which they not only invest in their learning (price $1.00 U.S.), but also discover entirely new dimensions to what a dollar really means.  High learning return on investment guaranteed.

Learning Objective
Demonstrate how personal and active engagement in the teaching-learning process yields high learning return on investment.

Telling Ain’t Training
We derive our most valuable lessons from what we experience, not from what we are told.  In this light-hearted, experiential session, you participate in a variety of rapid, hands-on activities that demonstrate differences in long-term retention and behavior change between telling and focused learner-centered activity.  Through a series of participatory exercises, you not only have fun learning, but also acquire some research-based principles for building retention and improved performance.

Learning Objectives
State and apply research-based principles for transforming the dreaded info-dump into worthwhile, performance-based learning.

If I Know So Much, Why Can’t I Make People Learn?
Every successful sales person begins with the key principle “Know Your Customer.”  This is also true of successful training professionals.  In this session, you interactively explore your learners as you travel through their senses and brain.  Along the way, you not only discover a fundamental trainer-learner paradox, but also six “universals of learning research” that guide you to increase the probability of learning in meaningful, long-lasting ways.

Learning Objectives
• Describe how learners process information and convert it to effective learning.
• Build comprehension, retention and performance by overcoming the expert-novice gap.
• Name six universals from learning research, which strongly increase the probability of learning and retention.

Lunch

Break

Cognitive Strategies: Faster, Better and Cheaper Ways to Make Learning Stick
Cognitive strategies are mental methodologies we employ 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 content 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.

Learning 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.

Coffee and pastries

Games and Gamelike Activities for Learning and Performance: Spice It Up
Games and gamelike activities possess amazing power to generate learning and performance.  The way they are structured, their barrier-breaking nature and their requirement to actively participate combine to create dynamic, effective experiential sessions.  The key to designing a successful game or gamelike activity is through adaptation of existing structures that have already been proven to work.

Learning Objectives
• Define “game” and “gamelike” activity.
• State a rationale for using games and gamelike activities for learning and performance.
• Given an array of models, create a viable, work-related game or gamelike activity to meet a clearly defined learning or performance objective.

Break

Hit or Myth: Learning Research and Theory to Practice
Training practitioners are usually caught up in the pressures that flow from urgent business needs, organizational demands and the omnipresent concern to meet impossible deadlines.  This session transforms research findings into practical, application rules that are easy to apply and challenge myths that are perpetuated in the training and development world.  During this interactive session, you acquire a stronger understanding of what works from a research-based perspective and identify what is unfounded lore that may even be harmful to your participants’ learning health and counterproductive for achieving your organization’s goals.

Learning Objectives
• Discover five powerful lessons from research and theory that can help you 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.

Transfer of Training to the Workplace
You taught them.  They even learned.  But are they applying it back on the job?  Your wonderful, carefully designed training efforts may result in excellent learning.  However, most of the research evidence suggests that little of what is gained in learning gets applied back on the job unless…  In this session you examine the key players in the transfer of training process, what impact each has and, very importantly, when each wields maximum influence on transforming learning to on-job application.

Learning Objectives
• Identify the three key players in transfer of training to the job.
• Identify the time period in which each key player exerts the most transfer influence.
• Identify simple, inexpensive strategies to increase on-job application of your training.