Become an Expert AI User and Strategy LeaderArtificial intelligence (AI) and performance expert Josh Cavalier shares his in-depth knowledge and skills to help L&D professionals master learning experience design by using generative AI in their employee learning and development efforts. More than just a technical manual on generative AI or a collection of best prompt practices, this book explores how AI is reshaping jobs, skill development, and human performance. Josh provides his L&D AI Ecosystem framework as a practical road map for integrating AI into your day-to-day work and your organization.Discover how to seamlessly incorporate AI into your existing L&D processes and broader L&D ecosystem, optimizing workflows and driving measurable results. Explore how AI-enabled L&D platforms can facilitate personalized learning paths, automated performance support, and real-time skills gap analysis. Learn how to craft effective prompts for learning design and use chatbots and AI assistants for help in the moment of need. And importantly, dive deep into the ethical considerations, from maintaining data privacy and security to mitigating bias in AI-powered learning solutions.No matter how advanced artificial intelligence becomes, L&D professionals must remain focused on performance—of humans and now machines. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting your AI journey, this book is your essential resource to unleash the power of AI in L&D.

By Josh Cavalier on 18 Nov, 2025

Transform Your L&D Team Into Your Organization’s Trusted Business PartnersMost L&D pros dream of the day when stakeholders will stop viewing them as mere order takers and consider them critical, strategic partners in shaping the future of the organization. But how do you get there? In this book, veteran talent development leader Jess Almlie introduces her formula for becoming the valued strategic business partner (SBP) stakeholders need and want.Partnering effectively with stakeholders requires a new mindset and behavior, a keen understanding of the business, and targeted tools. Jess provides detailed guidance on how to succeed in each of these areas and invites you to start by taking an in-depth assessment of your strengths and gaps in working as an SBP. She shares her own wins and failures along with wisdom from three dozen other L&D pros who work in small, medium, and large organizations.This step-by-step guide will help current and aspiring L&D leaders understand business basics, create a playbook for their teams, work productively with stakeholders, and teach others to work in harmony with L&D. The final chapter offers practical advice for those who need to take small steps toward becoming SBPs because their organizations resist big changes.This book includes questionnaires, worksheets, and other tools that will help L&D leaders understand business terminology and needs, their stakeholders’ points of view, strategies for creating effective partnerships and measuring impact, and a plan for developing a support team.

By Jess Almlie on 2 Sep, 2025

Get the A to Z Resource on Training Evaluation Fully revised and updated, ATD’s Handbook for Measuring and Evaluating Training is the comprehensive go-to reference for talent development professionals in need of immediate measurement and evaluation (M&E) guidance. Edited by M&E powerhouse Patti Phillips, with contributions from 30 expert practitioners, this handbook provides an essential roadmap to developing effective processes to prove the value and impact of your learning and development programs.Training measurement and evaluation is one of the top frustrations of a talent development professional's job. At first glance, it appears to be a drain on precious time and resources, yet it is a critical function for understanding the results and proving the value of L&D programs. If not conducted properly, it can yield questionable results, lack of accountability, and stakeholder skepticism. All to say, TD professionals must have a solid foundation in measurement and evaluation to do their jobs effectively.With this handbook, you’ll feel confident each time you face an M&E challenge, from planning the evaluation and collecting and analyzing data to optimizing results and making evaluation efforts work in your organization. You will use the data to improve your training programs and meet the standards your organization strives for.The updated edition includes new chapters on how to tell the evaluation story to business leaders, visualize data in reports, and leverage artificial intelligence smartly as well as refreshed chapters on all the M&E fundamentals. Rich in real-life application, it offers practitioner tips, knowledge checks, and support resources and references. Your advisors along the way are an impressive array of experts from the field, each chosen for their knowledge, experience, and actual results in specific areas.Whether you’re a trainer, manager, professor, or student of training evaluation, this handbook has been designed to meet your needs.

By Patti Phillips, Ph.D., CPTD on 10 Jun, 2025

Use Marketing Strategies to Captivate and Persuade Your Audience At first glance, marketing and L&D may seem like an unlikely combination. But upon closer inspection, both fields share two core goals: getting people’s attention and influencing their behavior. Marketing involves captivating, persuading, and creating value—all of which are key to learning design. When done well, learning design grabs participants’ attention like a great marketing campaign and engages them emotionally and intellectually to make learning stick. In this innovative volume, marketing and L&D experts Bianca Baumann and Mike Taylor ask: How can L&D pros make learning programs more effective by thinking like expert marketers?To answer that question, Baumann and Taylor explore the potential of marketing-inspired L&D, diving into essential marketing principles, strategies, and techniques and applying them to learning experience design to improve learning transfer. With a learner-centric perspective, the authors explain the science of marketing, how to use personas, and how to craft a successful learner journey. They cover effective writing, the use of powerful graphics, how to plan and execute a winning learning campaign, how to harness technology, and the all-important activities of evaluation and learning analytics.L&D pros will learn new ways to capture their target audience’s attention and influence their behavior. Each chapter includes engaging stories from Baumann and Taylor’s work in the field, case studies, and definitions of essential marketing concepts and how they apply directly in the L&D environment, plus activities and tools instructional designers can apply immediately to transform their learning programs.

By Bianca Baumann, Mike Taylor on 27 May, 2025

Apply the ABCs for your L&D career successThere has never been a better time to invest in your own L&D career.No matter where you are in your learning and development career—whether you are just beginning, ready to advance in it, or in need of a change—expert career coach and L&D luminary Sarah Cannistra delivers tactical and industry-specific advice for how to conduct and succeed in your next job search.With the perspective that there is no “one size fits all” strategy to career success, Sarah walks you through four L&D Career Success Codes, her ABCDs, that will help you achieve Alignment and get clarity on your career goals and your L&D Niche; create your personal and professional Brand; network intentionally and build your L&D Community around your L&D niche; and, identify your interests, skills, and belief systems, all key to building a Development plan for achieving your career goals.In this volume, Sarah dissects job application, resume and cover letter writing, and interview processes. She covers the hard-felt topics of rejection and job searches after layoffs and explores the mindset shifts and self-awareness needed to be successful to land a stable and fulfilling position. Follow along with stories of how Sarah has helped clients to secure their dream role. Take the next step on your own with more than 40 activities, reflection questions, and worksheets.A cover-to-cover resource for landing your next role while choosing your own path, this is a book you will turn to again and again throughout your career.

By Sarah Cannistra on 6 May, 2025

Your All-In-One Guide to ISDKnown as “the man who wrote the book on ISD,” Chuck Hodell offers a comprehensive and practical handbook on core instructional systems design (ISD) practices and principles with a practitioner’s eye. This updated fifth edition covers all the basics and many advanced tenets of ISD, walking you through each phase, including advanced concepts such as microlearning, social media, and leveraging technology. Stand-alone chapters offer crucial support to practitioners building foundational skills, while in-depth tutorials on subjects such as collaborating with experts offer rich insights to guide the credentialed designer. This fully revised and expanded volume offers new case studies, discussion questions, and sample design and lesson plans, ISD From the Ground Up demystifies the learning design process. Whether you are just getting your feet wet or have extensive experience in ISD, this industry staple provides the essential building blocks and more for ISD mastery.

By Chuck Hodell PhD on 22 Apr, 2025

Game On! Action-Based Training Designs for Better Learning Passive learning just doesn’t cut it in today’s evolving, competitive workplace. Research demonstrates that action-first learning works because it engages the mind immediately and makes sure that knowledge and skills will stick. With a more diverse array of action-based training designs, organizations can motivate learners, provide hands-on, collaborative practice, and drive behavioral change. In Action-First Learning, educator and tech expert Karl M. Kapp covers nine distinct types of learning experiences in one volume—from card and board games, escape rooms, and branching scenarios to augmented reality and AI-powered coaching. He explains why each design works and how to choose, plan, and execute the right kind of project for your goals. Each chapter includes a detailed case study, a design checklist, and tips on how to leverage AI in the creation of action-first learning.The book includes a chapter by instructional designer Amy Pape about how to improve action-first learning through accessibility and another by L&D expert Kevin Thorn on the use of comics in action-first learning.

By Karl M. Kapp on 15 Apr, 2025

Unlock the full potential of your employees with effective feedback.Providing performance feedback is one of the most challenging tasks leaders face. Feedback often sparks frustration and fear for both leaders and their teams. Why? Because there is a disconnect between what leaders think they are communicating and what employees receive. In this essential book, leadership experts Mashihi and Nowack offer leaders their four-part Performance Feedback Coaching Model, designed to bridge this gap. After over a decade spent developing, testing, and refining their model with leaders around the world, the authors offer this powerful framework based on research in neuroscience and psychology. The book equips leaders at all levels with practical strategies and tools to deliver tailored feedback that aligns with each employee’s unique skills and interpersonal strengths. By personalizing feedback, leaders can inspire significant improvements in employee behavior, creating a workplace where leaders achieve their goals and employees thrive—a true win-win situation. The authors share powerful stories, real-life examples, and user-friendly tips, as well as questionnaires, worksheets, and other tools leaders can apply immediately in managing today's diverse and global workforce.With this book as your roadmap, you will have the guidance you need to improve your employees’ development, performance, motivation, satisfaction, and retention.

By Sandra Mashihi, Kenneth M. Nowack on 1 Apr, 2025

This edition of TD magazine features theme articles focused on career and leadership development.

Published on 1 Mar, 2025

Get the Toolbox You Need to Design for All LearnersDesign for All Learners empowers instructional designers, trainers, and other talent development professionals to create learning experiences that are accessible to and inclusive of all people. Learn from practitioners’ vulnerable lived experiences, moving stories, and practical advice. Written with accessibility, inclusion, and L&D experts and edited by Sarah Mercier, this book will help you ensure that individuals can fully participate in the talent development and training programs you offer.Adopt a progress-over-perfection approach. Start with shifting your mindset to consider that all learners are people who have unique experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, and abilities—and that learning design should be built for people, not just to meet compliance standards. Find what you need to know about designing for the modality you’re using to reach learners—from e-learning and job aids to training in the physical and virtual classroom. Gain a clearer understanding of requirements and standards, and then explore strategies and tactics to foster an inclusive mindset throughout your organization.Anyone involved with the practice of design in learning and development will benefit from the wide range of perspectives and techniques offered, whether you’re a team of one or work in an organization with a variety of resources. If your goal is to become a better designer, developer, teacher, and leader, this book presents a packed toolbox to do so. It will change everything you think you know. Use it as a guide in your journey to accessible, inclusive design for all.

By Sarah Mercier on 4 Feb, 2025