Conference Sessions and Seminars

NZATD 2025: Finding Real Learning Impact

Robert O. Brinkerhoff’s Success Case Method (SCM) offers a practical way to uncover the real impact of learning. It helps you focus on what drives success and what gets in the way.

Conference Sessions and Seminars

NZATD 2025: What to look for when testing your learning activities

Thalheimer’s model has an absolutely huge amount packed into it. I’ll be reading up on this for quite some time, I suspect. At a high level, though, it has a huge amount to offer.

Conference Sessions and Seminars

The conference of my dreams

Learning and development has some truly exciting related fields: evaluation, behavioural science, animation, videography, teaching, advertising, sales — the list goes on.

Learning

NZATD 2025: When to test e-learning

I like to run my user testing at the same time as the stakeholder review. Not just to cut down the number of iterations, but for another reason.

Learning

NZATD 2025: How to test e-learning before launch

We need both these types of evaluation during our design and development process, if we want to deliver resources that actually teach the learners what we are trying to teach.

Learning

NZATD 2025: Technology to support engagement in workshops

What I’m writing about here is the format we used for the session, which was a bit of an experiment around using AI to drive engagement in a live session.

A glowing avocado or egg shape, with a red sprout growing from it; behind are multicoloured paths leading up to a glowing sun that radiates yellow light

Conference Sessions and Seminars

NZATD 2025: Miranda Verswijvelen

My key takeaways: Let learners feel something. Let them make decisions that matter. Let go of the idea that there’s always one right path. And look up Miranda’s Story Avocado and tools for writing dialogue and choices in more detail.

A majestic maunga with light rays flowing across it, with a rising sun behind and a glowing red heart enclosing the black of the mountain’s slope and the white of the empty sky.

Conference Sessions and Seminars

NZATD 2025: Natalia Wi

One thing that really impressed me about Natalia’s session was how she provided not only a clear explanation but also a demonstration of how good practice looks in action.

Colourful links in a chain surround spiraling bubbles of light, centering on a glowing white light

Conference Sessions and Seminars

NZATD 2025: Geoff Ngataierua and Angela Page

A reminder that if we want to include te ao Māori concepts in our work meaningfully, without just using them as window dressing, we need to take the time to think hard about what we are trying to achieve, and what the concepts mean in Māori, rather than what the translations mean in English.

Abstract image with many layers, with veins of gold and lapis

Conference Sessions and Seminars

NZATD 2025: Jane Bozarth’s keynote

We are not training nurses so that nurses will have more success in the abstract; we are trying to help patients. We are not training long-distance drivers so that they alone will be safer; we are helping to protect everyone on the road.

Dancing figures in flames, with glowing eggs, heavy rain or tears, and a small plant shooting upwards, producing glowing seeds that float above it like pearls

Learning

NZATD 2025: Dan Te Whenua Walker and John Faisandier

Dan’s story highlighted for me the degree to which the learners we are trying to connect with are human beings with much richer stories and their own personal motivations. John Faisandier’s session was about how to help and empathise with people when we don’t know what is going on for them.

Learning

Using empathy mapping to improve learner engagement

Once I have created an empathy map, I take the learning objectives that have been agreed for the project, and I use the pains and gains as a lens to improve the activities I'm planning.

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