by Tristia Hennessy
This year’s DevLearn conference and expo was my first, it wasn’t exactly the experience I was expecting being completely remote, but one I ended up being very grateful for. At Evolve we were wrapping up a big project during the two weeks of DevLearn and I knew my time would be limited — fortunately attendees are able to watch recordings of the sessions until April, 2021! My focus during DevLearn was AR/VR but I caught a couple other great sessions too. While there’s still a few more on my watch list, here are my top 5 from DevLearn 2020.
Session 236 – Cath Ellis’ Case Study on Fallout – Using Podcasts for Fraud Protection Compliance
Cath presented her podcast blended learning project on fraud protection compliance training for the Australian government. Not only was the course visually stunning, her presentation was very thorough around the design process and gave actionable insight into design, development, implementing, and marketing a podcast-based project. I love the use of drama and story to engage learners in a dry compliance topic, through a fresh and creative blended medium.
Great idea: Fresh and creative use of a podcast and video modality to engage learners on compliance topics.
Session 235 – Betty Danowitz’s AR Spectacular – How Top Companies are using AR!
Betty takes you on an AR adventure with several examples of how top companies are using AR. This info packed session keeps you engaged while you try out the examples for yourself on your own device. Be prepared to download a couple apps – if you don’t want to try them all out, I recommend Zappar – it has a decent amount of adoption and you can google to find other AR interactive experiences using Zappar to play with.
Insight: AR/VR has many uses and can be created quickly with user friendly tools.
Session 435 – Jeff Batt’s 5 Tools to Help You Get Started with Augmented Reality
Jeff gives an engaging, organized, and realistic overview of 5 popular AR dev tools including their best applications, strengths, weaknesses, platform considerations, level of difficulty, and more. He briefly covers considerations like design tools for Apple or Android platforms, plus a TON of resources for 3D assets and AR/VR tools including Google Poly, Turbo Squid, Adobe Dimension, Maya, Blender, Apple Assets, and Smart AR.
Tech Tool Tip: There are a ton of tools and tech available but the 5 shown in this session get our vote.
Session 612 – Chad Udell’s Assembling Your AR Dream Team
This is an excellent resource for any solutions-oriented business considering embarking on AR/VR projects to fully understand all the different talents and levels of experience required to complete a successful AR/VR Project at different scales. If you need to assemble a team for AR or VR projects, you don’t want to miss this one.
Insight: Planning to include AR/VR in your next blended learning initiative? Think about current skillsets of your team or whether you may need outside help!
Session 114 – Stephen Baer’s Need Training Spice? Games are the Hot Sauce to Engage Remote Learners
The first ten minutes is devoted to convincing you why games are the “hot sauce” in elearning. At about 10 minutes in we start hearing Stephen Baer discuss how gaming works through learning theory and show examples of how even simple games like word scrambles, image recognition, and trivia can help aid memory. Stephen goes a step further and shows how more involved story-based design and simulations for learning can support retention and engagement to positively influence business outcomes and behaviors. Stephen does an excellent job of demonstrating effecting scenario and game based learning through a variety of medium for a different training applications.
Great idea: We are all looking for ways to increase engagement whether your teams are back in the office or are still and always be remote. Games create healthy competition, brings a fun element to more rudimentary learning and helps to foster team work and engagement.
Tristia Hennessey