@kkeairns eLearning Blog

Wow, I just checked, and it has been over a year since my last blog post! In the past year I changed careers from online education in higher ed to a training and learning and development role in state government. There are a lot of similarities and differences in these two worlds but I’ll save my reflections about that for a future post. I’ve learned so much this last year!

Today, I feel compelled to share some of the things I learned today at an AWESOME Digital Learning & Development conference sponsored by the The Alchemy LAB. Below is a screenshot of a few of their upcoming sessions.

I learned about this conference and the Alchemy LAB just yesterday from Alex Joyes, a senior learning and development specialist at a Canadian Bank. I met Alex at a 2-day Cornerstone training that we both attended in Santa Monica in February, 2020; back in the good ole days when we were able to do training in-person. I really didn’t want to spend my Saturday at a work-related digital conference but the sessions looked interesting, so I decided to pop in for just a few minutes. 

The first session I attended was titled, “Interact and Engage! Activities for Engaging Virtual Training.” Kassy Laborie’s session was so good I attended 3 more sessions which were all fantastic! Kassy kicked off her session by explaining the difference between a Webinar and Live Virtual Training and I was intrigued.

The Alchemy Lab is using a platform called Crowdcast for their L&D conference. Crowdcast allows you to clip out and then share video clips via embed code or a url. On a side note, I was disappointed that the embed code won’t work in WordPress unless I upgraded to WordPress “Premium.” I was happy to discover I am still able to embed YouTube videos (see below). Here is one of the many tidbits I wrote down from Kati Ryan’s excellent session about onboarding.

“What we do AFTER training is more important than what we do DURING training.”

Kati Ryan, The Alchemy Lab Digital L&D – May 9, 2020

Check out a video snippet from Kati session called “Wake and Shake Them Up: Injecting Fun Into Your Onboarding Training.”

I have embed code for Kati’s presentation and others but for now, I can’t share them on my blog. If you happen to be reading this on May 9, 2020, there is still time to register for tomorrow’s sessions.

Because of COVID-19, I’m converting a 3-day in-person New Worker Training to a Live Virtual Training over 2 weeks. One of the takeaways from today that I’ll implement in our training is sharing how to use the interactive components of our platform BEFORE our virtual training. This may also give our participants a “heads-up” that they will be expected to engage with the presenter, the content, and one another during our virtual New Worker Training.

I think most of the folks who attended the L&D conference were able to figure it out without the tutorial but many audiences need this type of resource.

That’s all for now!