Technology providers constantly update their products. Asurion offers mobile protection, extended warranties, and other technical support and services to their clients.Asurion aims to help people get the most out of their connected lives.

With no formal training program in place for new technologists, Ultimate Softwares employee learning team needed to find a way to quickly onboard new technologists and give them the knowledge needed to be productive in their role. In 2014, Ultimate Softwares employee learning team set out to create individual learning paths for new technologists.

How do you keep a workforce engaged and educated in a business that offers more than 40,000 in-store items, and hundreds of thousands more online? Home Depot: Home Improvement Meets Performance Improvement features interviews, photos, and details about talent development solutions Home Depot has initiated, such as a just-in-time performance support that associates can access from mobile devices while assisting customers.

Walmart Academy training centers have plans to incorporate virtual reality (VR) learning solutions by the end of 2017. Specifically, by using an Oculus Rift headset, about 140,000 Walmart employees are expected to be trained on simple, real-world customer service scenarios—such as dealing with spills or preparing for Black Friday. This may be the push that VR training needs to finally go mainstream.

To build the kind of rapid learning cultures that thrive in times of transformation, organizations are experimenting with microlearningdelivering short, focused learning experiences throughout an employees day, week, and career.

Welcome to the age of immediacy. In Learning in the Age of Immediacy: 5 Factors for How We Connect, Communicate, and Get Work Done, learning strategist Brandon Carson argues that these five edge technologies are here to stay.

FM Global, one of the largest international property insurance companies, has become a top organization in its field with more than 5,000 employees worldwide.FM Global is unique among insurers because it relies on engineering data to help its clients prevent loss. Once a year, FM Global offers its engineers a three-day, instructor-led course on identifying wind exposure.

Today, seven in 10 American adults are social media users, with Facebook being the most widely used platform, followed by Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter. With so many employees already using social technologies in their personal lives to connect with one another and share and gather information, it's only natural that many forward-looking companies have leveraged social media for learning.

To bring some clarity to this topic, the Association for Talent Development (ATD) surveyed 596 talent development professionals, finding that 38 percent currently use microlearning and another 41 percent plan to start within the next year. The majority (92 percent) of those whose organizations currently use microlearning indicated that they believed their use of microlearning would increase in the future.

Google the term disruption and you will find many results. Lets start with a few definitions so were all speaking the same language Futurist Eric Haseltine says any one of four conditions can usher in a disruptive innovation: In the early 1600s, a spectacle maker, Hans Lippershey, invented the telescope (at least in the Western world).

To show that virtual classrooms are well-established and thriving, the Association for Talent Development and the Institute for Corporate Productivity, surveyed talent development leaders about their use of virtual classrooms with instructors and learners interacting in real time. The new report, Virtual Classrooms Now: Using Technology to Reach Todays Workforces, found that nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of organizations use virtual classrooms for employee learning.

Talent development functions are increasing their focus on self-guided development, which makes user-generated content learning content created by employees and shared using social mediaa natural fit for their needs. Instead, they build cultures that emphasize trust, teach employees how to share meaningful content, and formalize policies that clearly spell out expectations for social media use.To better understand the strategies and practices talent development leaders are using to leverage social learning effectively, the Association for Talent Development (ATD)...

Novo Nordisk Inc. (NNI), a North American affiliate of the global pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which is headquartered in Denmark, operates in a highly dynamic marketplace. He revised and relaunched NNIs eight leadership competencies (eg., setting direction and strategy and inspiriting and motivating employees) to highlight Novo Nordisks culture of leadership and focus on continuous improvement.Dwights team already had some internal and external sources of leadership content the challenge was organizing this content around the newly relaunched leadership...

The argument: Social collaboration tools make it easier and cheaper for employees to learn from one another. Most everyone is on social media, so it makes sense for talent development functions to consider using these platforms to engage employees in the learning process. But is it as simple as instructing learners to sign on to a platform to ask and answer work-related questions? Do employees truly learn this way?

At Accenture, talent development uses cutting edge technology to support human interaction.Accenture now has six regional learning centersin North America, Ireland, Spain, England, India, and Malaysiadozens of high-tech connected classrooms, and mobile learning in the pocket of every Accenture employee. At every level, and in every location, the latest advances in telecommunications and electronics are embraced, but always to serve human interaction, not to strangle it.Tech and touch are the yin and yang of the companys learning and talent development strategy.

University Health System (UHS), a nonprofit based in San Antonio, Texas, operates a nationally recognized acute care teaching hospital and a network of outpatient care centers. Hernndezs philosophy is simple: Employees are the organizations greatest resource and learning is critical if UHS is to achieve its mission of delivering quality care, efficiency, and a great patient experience.

Leveraging learning technologies is not an L&D strength, two independent studies conclude.

Without highly skilled leaders, organizations cannot build and execute sound business strategies, create and maintain competitive advantages, attract and retain qualified talent, or achieve and sustain peak market performance. Providing those leaders with relevant content and data they can readily apply in their daily work is driving talent developments exploration and deployment of learning through direct, hands-on experiences that are likely to produce immediate, high-performance results.Experiential learning is an umbrella term encompassing learning that...

The argument: M-learning needs to be part of your current learning strategy. It's worth the time and effort. Sure, your workforce is probably already mobile. Many employees are using mobile resources to get information they need to do their jobs. Does it make sense for you to provide a more specific solution for them via mobile? Will it justify the resource allocation required? Will you see both short- and long-term improvement in performance? Going mobile is top of mind for many learning organizations today. Is now the time to go full throttle?

Investments made to learning technology companies in 2015 were the highest in the history of the ed tech industry by an extraordinary margin, according to new research. The whitepaper reveals that global investments exceeded...