ATD Online Courses

The Association for Talent Development

Blue Pebble Consulting has formed a strategic partnership with an American based training provider called The Association for Talent Development (ATD).

The Association for Talent Development (ATD), is the world’s largest association dedicated to those who develop talent in organizations. These professionals take the knowledge, skills, and abilities of others and help them achieve their full potential. ATD’s members come from more than 120 countries and work in public and private organizations in every industry sector. ATD supports the work of professionals locally in more than 125 chapters, international strategic partners, and global member networks.

“Together We Create a World That Works Better” – ATD

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Course Info

Determining how your content can be effectively delivered in the virtual environment should be a proactive, intentionally planned effort. A common pitfall is assuming training from the physical classroom can be delivered online without modifications. This approach can negatively impact participant engagement, lead to technology challenges, and reduce the effectiveness of the training. This course provides grounding in everything you need to know to avoid that pitfall and successfully design virtual instructor-led training programs that establish learner engagement, incorporate collaborative activities, and enable you to create effective instructional materials. Develop the skills you need in this program, presented in partnership with InSync Training. Take this opportunity to see best practices for virtual training design modeled through 12 hours of live, online instruction; templates for a facilitator and participant guide; and an interactive planning tool.

Why Should I Attend?

  • Learn how to apply a four-step instructional design technique to determine which instructional objectives can be taught in a virtual environment, traditional classroom, or via self-directed formats.
  • Engage learners with appropriate interaction and collaboration techniques.
  • Design and develop a variety of instructional activities that utilize the whiteboard, chat, application sharing, web browsing, webcam, and breakout room activities.
  • Understand how to hold learners accountable using a variety of assessment and debriefing techniques.
  • Know how to critique a virtual training program to ensure adult learning principles are being met.
  • Be able to extend learning beyond live events by utilizing blended learning technologies and long-term assessment techniques.
  • Gain practice by developing materials for a one-hour lesson including the facilitator guide, participant guide, and slides.
  • Articulate and demonstrate the competencies of the virtual classroom instructional designer.

What You Will Learn

Week 1: The Art of Virtual Design: Moving From Webinar to True Learning

This session provides techniques for designing collaborative learning events instead of passive presentations. You will practice using a design flowcharts and a proven four-step instructional design process to differentiate between content that should be included in a virtual environment and content that should not.

Week 2: The Art of Engagement: Ensuring Participation Through Interaction

This session explores design strategies for creating activities that encourage participation and engage learners in a virtual environment. You will be introduced to how whiteboards and chat can be used in innovative ways to create participant interaction and engagement as well as design consideration for mobile devices.

Week 3: The Art of Engagement: Encouraging Learning Through Virtual Collaboration

This session introduces collaborative interaction in the virtual classroom. You will explore a variety of collaborative activities and best practices for designing them.

Week 4: The Art of Accountability: Ensuring the Success of Virtual Learning Through Assessment

This session introduces different types of assessment and evaluation methods that can be applied in the virtual classroom. You will apply these concepts by designing an assessment activity that holds your learners accountable for their skills.

Week 5: The Art of Accountability Through Reflections and Debrief

This session focuses on the importance of accountability to learning in the virtual classroom. You will explore the benefits and limitations of several debriefing methods and explain how the six adult learning principles can be supported by each.

Week 6: Designing the Experience: Virtual Lesson as Part of the Blend

This session explores the concept and components of a blended program and the materials necessary for supporting one. After designing a learning activity and assessment, you will script out your design as it would appear in a facilitator guide.

Facilitating Virtual Training Certificate - Header

Course Info

Virtual facilitation has been on the rise over the last decade—two thirds of organizations and growing regularly leverage this modality, according to ATD Research. But in today’s remote work environment, virtual facilitation is a core competency for trainers and educators. No matter how skilled you are as an in-person classroom trainer, success in the virtual environment requires unique skills in audience engagement, creating nontraditional interactivity, sensitivity in how to use your voice, and confidence to multitask in a new technical and logistical setting.

ATD, in partnership with online learning experts InSync Training, offers this virtual facilitator trainer certificate in the live online classroom so you can experience techniques being role modeled. You and peer from your cohort will also receive a piece of content to deliver virtually, using the techniques modeled. At the conclusion of this online facilitation training, you will have developed the skills and confidence to successfully facilitate synchronous learning events.

Why Should I Attend?

• Learn to apply proven techniques that maximize learner engagement, energy, and motivation via online learning.

• Use producer or assistant facilitator support to ensure seamless, stress-free sessions.

• Manage technical and participant problems that can and will occur.

What You Will Learn

Week 1: Creating Audience Engagement

Explore how the role of facilitators has changed with the introduction of learning technologies. You will learn proven techniques for keeping learners energized, focused, and motivated. Best practice tips and guidance for facilitating in the synchronous medium will be explained, modeled, and reinforced.

Week 2: Being a Broadcaster

In the virtual classroom, voice is the most essential instructional tool. Interactivity and learner engagement are driven by the facilitator’s and participants’ voices. This session uncovers how synchronous facilitators can use their voice and questioning techniques to maximize engagement in the audio environment and read participants “body language in bandwidth.”

Week 3: Synchronous Team Teaching

A producer, or assistant facilitator, can help transform synchronous programs into trouble-free, fast moving, interactive events that keep learners involved and facilitators on track. Through numerous practice exercises, this session provides insight on how facilitators can stay focused on content while the producer takes care of everything else.

Week 4: Mishap Management

In the synchronous environment Murphy’s Law applies! What do you do when things start going wrong? This session covers live techniques for effectively addressing and recovering from participant issues, audio problems, and hardware/software trouble shooting.

Week 5: Preparing and Practicing

As with physical classroom training, preparation and practice are the keys to successful learning events. In this session, you will discover the numerous off-line activities that need to be completed before and after an online learning event, including marketing and communication, participant preparation, technology considerations, logistics, rehearsals, and post-session follow up.

Week 6: Facilitation Workshop

Each participant, along with an assigned group, will be given a piece of content that they will deliver via the virtual classroom using the techniques that were modeled throughout the program. During this session, you and your teammates will work together to coach, mentor, practice, and ultimately deliver an existing piece of content.

Training Certificate

Course Info

During the course of six live online sessions, you will explore what it takes to be an exceptional facilitator using ATD’s proven model for outcome-based training. Although this course is taught in the virtual classroom, the focus is on face-to-face facilitation.

Under the guidance of an expert facilitator, you will demonstrate your technique in a skills-practice delivery video at the end of the program. You’ll receive feedback from your facilitator and your peers, and you’ll also share your feedback with others.

Program Overview

Gain a practical, how-to overview of the entire training function in this best-in-class train-the-trainer program. Through modeling of best practices and the latest techniques in training delivery, you will experience a live demonstration of exceptional facilitation skills.

You’ll be introduced to a proven model for delivering outcome-based development and training. This will cover Purpose & Assessment, Planning & Preparation, Presentation & Facilitation, and Performance & Evaluation. New trainers seeking tips and techniques and experienced trainers who want to increase learner engagement and refresh their toolkit will benefit by earning this trainer certificate. Acquire a strong foundation in proven training and facilitation techniques that is balanced in theory and practical application.

The focus of this corporate/organizational training course is on what happens before, during, and after you deliver training. This certificate aligns with the training delivery area of expertise in the ATD Competency Model, which serves as the foundation for ATD Certification Institute Master Series programs and APTD and CPLP certifications.

Why Should I Attend?

  • Fully grasp how to use adult learning theory to engage your learners.
  • Gain a foundation in conducting a needs assessment, developing learning objectives, and evaluating the impact of your training initiatives.
  • Learn and apply effective training techniques for engaging a variety of learning styles and preferences, creating an effective positive learning environment, leveraging effective questioning techniques, and managing classroom challenges.
  • Develop engaging, learner-centered training solutions.
  • Design and deliver your own 10-minute skill exercises to practice new techniques learned in the course.
  • Identify professional growth opportunities through pre- and post-course self-assessments.

Program Takeaways

Innovative technologies provide tips and tricks on how you can maximize engagement with polling technology, virtual parking lots, mobile apps, game-based applications, augmented reality, and video creation tools. An array of tools, templates, and job aids—including the ATD training cycle job aid, an instructional methods checklist, a training delivery assessment tool, and the PUNCH Model for engaging adult learners—are included with this program to support your application back on the job.