ASTD 2008 International Conference & Exposition

Meet This Year's Showcase Speakers. More Added Each Day!

Rev Up Your Accelerated Learning Techniques
Speaker: Adrian Cottin

Learn how to foster adult learning by creating an interactive process where the participant learns to achieve goals using either personal or group abilities, is stimulated through multi-sensory motivation, and is working in a joyful environment that encourages participation, creativity, and self-confidence. The approaches of Bill Potter, Bob Pike, Tom Japp, Donald Schuster, and Mauro Rodriguez will be used in conjunction with the speaker’s experience in adult-learning processes. After the session, you will be able to facilitate adult-learning processes using Accelerated Learning techniques that motivate learners to achieve their goals and increase abilities and knowledge.

Change Is Good: 10 Tactics to Make It So
Speaker: Elaine Biech

Is your organization going through change? Are you responsible for facilitating the process? Need some ideas to help make training stick? The speaker will present a model for change and share 10 ideas for designing your own organizational change management effort. These tried-and-true activities will help you as a WLP professional, whether internal facilitator or external consultant, to design a change management effort that is practical and enjoyable. You will get an overview of ASTD's Facilitating Organizational Change certificate program and walk away with 10 practical tools to use when you return home.

	The Total Trainer Makeover: Methods for Evolving and Reinventing YOU! Speaker: Jim Smith, Jr. *Preconference Workshop
The star performers in life repeatedly look for ways to take what they do to greater levels. Regardless of the industry or profession, they consistently look for methods to ensure that their difference still makes a difference. The Total Trainer Makeover session provides that opportunity, and more, for you. In this session, you will assess myriad components of your training style and approach including mindset, energy level, classroom management, storytelling, openers and closers, presentation skills, materials, visual aid use, and variety. You will be urged to ask yourself, “What can I do that I haven’t already done in the classroom?” and develop a new approach. You will be challenged to develop your uniqueness--your WOW--and to refrain from mirroring others. From workbook to PowerPoint slide, evaluation to activity, appearance to movement, eye communication to theater, storytelling to closing the session, you will be made over for success.
	Crash and Learn: Eliminating the Mistakes that Kill Participation and Motivation! Speaker: Jim Smith, Jr.
During this fast-paced session, we will focus on motivation, facilitation, handling difficult participants, visual aid development and use, and storytelling. You will get an opportunity to assess your blind spots and the reasons why. Think of this session like taking your car in for service. You’ve driven it for some time; now the technicians (the speaker and your fellow attendees) can run it through a series of tests and provide some timely feedback. Some of the mistakes uncovered will be surprises, while others may create cause for pushback. Nevertheless, you will “drive away” with multiple methods for connecting with your audiences.

Show the Impact of Learning and Development: Techniques to Isolate the Effects of Programs
Speaker: Jack Phillips

This session tackles the perhaps the toughest issue in evaluation – isolating the impact of a learning and development program on a business measure. While many programs are designed to influence business impact measures,the challenging question on the follow-up evaluation is this: How much of the improvement is caused by the program? Without a credible approach to this question, the evaluation study will be not credible and possibly invalid. In this session, we'll explore the different ways to achieve that through various exercises.

The Development Dialogue: The Critical Link to Engagement and Retention
Speaker: Bev Kaye

Organizations that want to foster commitment and build a strong talent pipeline recognize the importance of the development discussion. This session demystifies the development process. The speaker will describe the systems that need to be built by the organization, the support that must come from the manager, and the spark that is essentially the responsibility of the employee. When these three critical stakeholders are actively involved, profitability, productivity, and growth can readily occur. You will recognize that the development dialogue, if done at all stages of the employee life cycle--and done seriously--might just surface the talent we need to lessen the impending shortage. When there is genuine organizational support, when managers are held accountable for engagement and development efforts, and when employees buy in and recognize their own role, great improvements can be made in staffing, engagement, and retention throughout the organization.

	Creative Training Techniques: 17 Ways to Increase the Impact of Your Training Speaker: Bob Pike
The purpose of training is to get results. Lasting results come from involvement. In this fast-paced session, Bob will cover how to create powerful openers and closers, the importance of revisiting content, 11 ways to motivate adults--and five ways to kill their motivation! A comprehensive handout and secret URL will continue your learning long past the session.

Forget What You Know About Instructional Design and Do Something Interesting!
Speaker: Michael Allen

Can e-learning change behavior and introduce performance proficiency, or is it just a way to cut training expenses? Can it be meaningful, memorable, and motivational, or are the only affordable uses just boring presentations of content with a quiz here and there? You're an e-learning designer or hope to be. You know the basics of learning and teaching. You've read books about instructional design and development processes. You may have a degree in instructional design. You abhor page-turning and want to make a real difference, but you're still not sure—with the constraints of time, budget, technology, and people to satisfy—how to build e-learning applications that get beyond content delivery and questions. You want inspiration, engagement, and energy--something that can effectively improve behavior patterns and produce results. To do this, you'll need to forget much of what you already know about instructional design. In this session, the speaker will correct common misconceptions that lead e-learning astray and demonstrate designs that fulfill the promise.

Training Impact Evaluation that Senior Managers Believe and Use
Speaker: Robert Brinkerhoff

Learn how to use the Success Case Method to “tell training’s story” with impact data that is credible and compelling. You need an evaluation method that is simple and valid and does not mislead senior management with suspicious statistical gyrations and overblown estimates of ROI. This method is an innovative procedure that allows you to quickly identify and document the very best results that training is achieving, then pinpoint the replicable factors and practices that managers can use to increase ROI and drive performance improvement throughout the organization. It can help you make a CFO-proof business case for manager involvement in training and help your organization build capability to leverage learning investments into sustained performance improvement. Review real examples from Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, Grundfos, and Motorola that demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.

	Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Methods to Optimize Mental Load in Workforce Speaker: Ruth Clark *Preconference Workshop
Remember "seven plus or minus two"? Cognitive load theory is the 21st century version and the single most powerful modern learning theory available today. It can be applied to all instructional practitioners; all types of workforce learning content, from soft skills to hard skills; and to all delivery media, from classroom to digital. Drawing from more than 25 years of research by instructional research psychologists, the speaker will present guidelines, evidence, examples, and application exercises to define and describe cognitive load theory, how it is measured, its effects, and how awareness of cognitive load can drive more effective learning design through such elements as segmenting and sequencing content, exploiting worked examples, and promoting self-explanations of examples. The session is designed for instructional professionals interested in learning psychology with experience in design and/or delivery of training in classroom or digital environments.
	E-Learning and the Science of Instruction Speaker: Ruth Clark
What are the proven methods to promote learning in synchronous and asynchronous e-learning? Which learning environment is best: classroom, synchronous e-learning, or asynchronous e-learning? What does research tell us about the best use of visuals, text, and audio to promote learning? What are learning agents and how do they facilitate deeper learning? What makes a simulation or game effective? Based on more than 25 years of research on multimedia learning, the speaker will present the guidelines, the evidence, and application examples to address these questions.

Optimizing Your Work-Life Balance
Speaker: Michael Dunphy

This session is focused on practical tools to enable busy professionals to measure, analyze, and adjust personal factors related to realistic work-life balance (WLB). To be successful in the modern competitive corporate environment, and to simultaneously enjoy a meaningful family life and real down time, requires discipline, planning, and a commitment to creating and sustaining your individual balance. Prepared and executed properly, a personalized WLB plan will decrease stress, increase thinking time, optimize quality of life, and ultimately increase creativity and productivity in your profession. During this session, you will do an analysis of your current WLB radar screen, learn how to apply five practical tactics for increasing efficiency in time usage and multi-tasking, and generate a personal WLB plan with up to three future action items.

Performance Consulting 2.0: What's the Same and What's Different?
Speaker: Dana Robinson

The role of performance consultant began to appear in the workplace learning and performance (WLP) profession in the early 1990s. Since then, the role has changed. In this session, the speaker will share recent research findings on the role of performance consultant and how it has evolved. While the deliverables produced by performance consultants (the "what" they do) are comparable to 15 years ago, there are differences in how the work is performed. The speaker will articulate the three primary differences and will also provide a glimpse into the future—where is the role headed? You will leave with a tool you can use to compare your work as a performance consultant to what is best in class at this time.

	Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels Speaker: Donald Kirkpatrick
This interactive, enjoyable, and practical session, presented by the originator of the four levels for evaluating training, will focus on how to evaluate training courses and programs. You will also learn the requirements for an effective program, reasons to evaluate, and guidelines and tools for each of the four levels: reaction, learning, behavior, and results.

Casual Monday: Meeting the Demands of the New Talent Market
Speaker(s): Bob Lewis, Pat Schnee

For the old guard, "Casual Friday" was the first concession made to the new workforce. That concession was made more than 10 years ago. With "Casual Monday," we understand in two words that change is coming. In two words, it speaks to juice bars on site, climbing-wall team-building sessions, and new strategies for timeless goals. Today, younger generations have entirely different expectations of how businesses should operate and how employees should be managed. In this session, the speakers reveal the results of a global survey that answer the questions, "What are the differences?" and "How do we align those needs and expectations through mentoring and coaching to improve our business?" You will discover valuable outcomes in a better understanding of how the new workforce differs from previous generations, and the value it brings to the organization. When you understand the differences and similarities of this group, you will be able to make better hiring decisions and use different management styles to motivate its members and align their expectations to reach company goals. You will also discover that generational issues are global and affect all organizations, both for-profit and non-profit.

Beyond E-Learning: New Approaches to Managing and Delivering Organizational Knowledge
Speaker: Marc Rosenberg

The speaker will reveal how to regard e-learning from a strategic perspective. Learn to go beyond a focus on technology and courseware to come up with new ways to think about what e-learning really is, and what it can--and can't--do. Challenge yourself to think differently about e-learning and you will significantly increase the likelihood of success. This session is for senior practitioners as well as for managers of learning and performance functions in organizations, and anyone else who is seeking new ways to bring advanced learning and performance solutions directly to the workplace.