Later this month, ASTD will be hosting their annual conference in Dallas,
Texas. This conference is a great opportunity to meet with learning and training experts across industries to see what technologies and innovations are improving the way we learn at work.

Whether you will be attending the conference in-person or will be following along online, there are plenty of ways you can engage with Blackboard during ASTD 2013. Here are a few of our favorites:

1. Attend informative sessions on “On-Boarding Best Practices: Ramp Up, Report Out” on Monday, May 20^th and “Your Missing Link: Measuring Sales Training ROI Through CRM” on Tuesday, May 21^st to learn key strategies and technologies that can help your company align business goals with training.

2. Learn from training technology experts at the Blackboard booth 227, who will be on-hand to discuss your professional learning needs and to demonstrate some of our latest training solutions.

3. Put your social media skills into practice by following @BlackboardProEd and #ASTD2013 throughout the conference, including updates from our sessions and the keynote presentations.

See you in Dallas!

We’ve all experienced it before: professional training that feels like information overload, where instructors pile on as much information as they can in a short period of time with the hope that something sticks. While this may seem like the only way to give employees all of the information they need during limited training time, it’s evident that learning is more impactful when the focus shifts to identifying  the most pertinent information and breaking it down through the “bite-sized” training method.

Blackboard’s own Paul Terry recently discussed his thoughts on this new approach to learning in a Training Industry Quarterly article entitled “Improving Learning Outcomes with a Bite-Sized Strategy.” In the article, Paul discusses key best practices in bite-sized training that can help companies overcome the “data dump” method with more effective, engaging corporate learning.  These strategies include moving training to mobile devices and fostering in social learning, both of which help to streamline information in a way that is more relevant to the way today’s employees learn and work in their daily lives.

You can read the entire article in Training Industry Quarterly by clicking here, and tell us about your experiences with bite-sized corporate training in the comments below!

When it comes to finding the right learning management system (LMS), many associations struggle to find the right solution to meet their needs.  But in their new Association Learning Management Systems report, the leaders of Tagoras highlight some of the top LMS’s that can help associations educate and engage with their members. Those of us at Blackboard were proud to be featured in this list, and our own Paul Terry had the opportunity expand upon our work with associations in a recent interview with Tagoras Managing Director Celisa Steele.

In his interview, Paul emphasized the importance of social learning in associations, as this peer-to-peer engagement is critical to fostering strong relationships between association members. By capturing the highly relevant information shared through such social learning, LMS solutions like Blackboard can help associations meet their constituents’ needs while unifying the group towards their common goals.

You can listen to Paul’s entire interview with Tagoras by clicking here, or visit our website to learn how Blackboard can help foster social learning at your association.

In the corporate training space, we often discuss the importance of learning in companies that operate on a large scale. However, we also know that small and medium businesses employ the majority (nearly 60%!) of the private workforce in the U.S. , and between 60-80% of all new jobs come from small businesses. Training is equally important at these small businesses as it is with their larger counterparts, though the training itself must meet the unique needs and characteristics of companies with fewer than 500 employees.

With this in mind, here are some best practices for professional training in your small business:

1. Train early: One of the best ways to onboard new employees to your company is through effective training that is engaging and immediately invests them in the company. Provide training that is not only useful, but allows new hires to get to know their colleagues and the mission of your company so they can feel like a part of the team from day one.

2. Train often: Just because your employees have been successfully onboarded to the company doesn’t mean that training is over. Continuous training and new learning opportunities can give your employees the ability to participate in leadership development while staying up-to-date in your industry. This not only insures employees will have the knowledge they need for success, but it also cultivates talent that can grow with your business.