Chicago eLearning & Technology Showcase 2026

Many learning and development professionals are carrying silent questions into every room: Do my skills still matter? Is this field leaving me behind? Where do I even start?

In this keynote session, Dr. Myra Roldan will create space for those questions and answer them with truth, clarity, and practical direction. Instead of offering recycled advice or abstract encouragement, Myra will give you a way to think about this moment differently. AI may be changing parts of the work, but that does not erase the need for people who know how to guide learning, support performance, and design with real humans in mind.

With the feel of group coaching and the energy of a keynote, this session will help you stop spiraling and start moving. You will leave with language for your value, practical ideas for upskilling, and a 30-60-90 day action plan for what comes next.

You are not obsolete. You are in transition.

Learning and development teams have more data than ever before, from completion rates and satisfaction scores to engagement dashboards and learning analytics. Yet many organizations still struggle to answer one critical question: Did learning actually improve performance?

In this interactive session, Vanessa Milara Alzate explores how to move beyond vanity metrics such as attendance, satisfaction, and course completion toward meaningful performance intelligence. Using the modernized Kirkpatrick Four Levels®, you will learn how to design elearning programs with evaluation built into the process from the start.

Through real-world examples, the session demonstrates how LMS analytics, digital learning platforms, and data dashboards can be used to measure behavior change and business outcomes rather than simple activity tracking. Participants will also explore how instructional design decisions, learning technology data, and organizational goals can work together within a unified evaluation strategy.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to

• Differentiate between vanity learning metrics and performance-based evaluation indicators.
• Design elearning programs that integrate the Kirkpatrick Four Levels® evaluation framework from the start.
• Apply learning technology data (LMS analytics, digital learning tools, and performance metrics) to demonstrate measurable business impact.

Most L&D teams still respond to stakeholder requests by building courses. The real problem is never “we need training”—it’s an undiagnosed performance gap hiding in workflow breakdowns, missing tools, or management blind spots. This session introduces the Human-Machine Performance Analyst framework—a practical model for shifting from content order-taker to AI-augmented diagnostician.

Through live demonstrations with real workforce data, you’ll watch AI separate genuine training needs from systemic issues, map tasks across a 7-level human-AI collaboration scale, and generate executive-ready attribution narratives in real time. You will leave understanding how a small L&D team can diagnose at enterprise scale.

By the end of this session, you will be able to

• Distinguish between genuine training needs and systemic performance issues using an AI-augmented diagnostic process.
• Map current L&D tasks to the 7-Level Human-AI Task Scale to identify where AI should lead, support, or stay out of the way.
• Structure a 90-second executive data narrative that uses attribution modeling to connect learning interventions to business outcomes.

Is your elearning course due for a refresh? This session explores how to transform outdated, text-heavy content into visually engaging and interactive learning experiences using Articulate Storyline 360. You will learn modern design principles that improve layout, typography, color use, and white space to create cleaner, more effective courses.

The session also focuses on building meaningful interactivity that encourages learner engagement and exploration. Learn how to use layers, states, triggers, and variables to create user-driven navigation, scenario-based learning, and responsive feedback.

Through real-world makeover examples, you will discover how small design changes can significantly improve the learner experience. The session includes practical tips, creative techniques, and reusable templates that can be applied immediately to current projects.

Ideal for instructional designers, elearning developers, and training professionals, this session provides tools and inspiration for creating modern Storyline 360 courses that look better, engage learners more effectively, and improve overall learning performance.

By the end of this session, you will be able to

• Redesign an elearning course by applying modern visual design principles.
• Develop interactive course elements to support learner-driven navigation.
• Transform text-heavy content into visually engaging slides by incorporating appropriate multimedia and interactive components.
• Evaluate real-world examples of a course makeover.

Most AI training programs are built the wrong way. They teach people about AI through static elearning and then expect them to use AI effectively in dynamic workflows. The result is low adoption, surface-level usage, and learning investments that fail to improve performance.

Using Golin’s global AI transformation as a live case study, this session explores how a 1,700-person communications agency increased AI adoption from 15% to more than 90% in 18 months by rethinking its instructional design approach. You will examine the learning architecture behind those results, including role-specific pathways, expert-led microlearning, a globally scaled AI mentoring program, and adoption metrics tied to business outcomes.

Drawing on additional lessons from AI upskilling efforts across 115,000 employees at Publicis Groupe, Joe Leslie will share the strategic frameworks and instructional models that supported these initiatives, including a problem-first methodology centered on real workplace challenges.

By the end of this session, you will be able to

• Apply a problem-first framework to AI training design.
• Build role-specific AI learning pathways.
• Evaluate AI training using adoption and performance metrics.

You’ve taken the course a million times...maybe even developed it: Title slide. Click next. Stock photo with text. Click next. AI-generated video. Click next. Tabs. Click next. Drag and drop. Click next. The clicking and dragging and dropping quickly become rote. The course feels like a content dump chunked into clever, but mindless, activities. Your brain turns off. You pass the test with flying colors because the answers are obvious even without viewing the previous few dozen slides.

But what if the activities in the course weren’t technology-driven? What if they were carefully designed to give you practice?

Join this hands-on session to design activities that give learners opportunities to discover, critically think, solve problems, and practice. To fuel these activities, you will use an instructional story in ways you may not expect.

You will also see some great story-based courses produced by instructional designers from around the globe, and some mind-blowing elearning activities.

By the end of this session, you will be able to

• Construct a list of observable actions.

• Flex the power of an instructional story to self-discover and solve problems.

• Design activities that give learners opportunities to practice, using the Instructional Story Design framework.

AI isn’t a one-and-done transformation. It’s a series of evolving projects layered across teams, systems, and strategies. In this session, you will explore the AI Implementation Canvas: a practical tool for navigating the complexity of AI adoption with clarity, care, and confidence.

The Canvas helps you ask the right questions, include the right people, and plan for both business value and ethical impact across a variety of AI initiative types. Megan Torrance will lead you in discussion of the role that L&D can play in leading the initiative. Then, you will walk away with a clear model to bring back to your organization and use immediately.

By the end of this session, you will be able to

• Lead AI implementation conversations across 14 planning dimensions.

• Apply L&D’s unique skillset to support the organization’s collaboration around AI implementations.

• Support your organization with the AI literacy and business change frameworks needed for success.

AI can generate content in seconds. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that organizations are drowning in auto-generated articles, chat responses, SOP summaries, and micro-courses that are technically correct but unusable at the moment of need. Frontline workers need the right answer instantly, in context, and without friction.

The challenge is building performance support systems that are searchable, trustworthy, AI-enhanced, and structured without creating duplication, hallucinations, or compliance risk.

In this session, Chad Udell will show you how performance support must evolve in the age of AI. You will explore how to

• Design a performance support strategy before using AI.

• Structure source materials so AI can safely augment them.

• Improve search, retrieval, and categorization.

• Blend learning with real-time AI retrieval.

• Create governance guardrails that protect data integrity.

This session offers a practical, experience-driven approach to making AI useful while maintaining control of your content ecosystem.

By the end of this session, you will be able to

• Design a structured performance support content architecture that enables safe and effective AI augmentation.
• Apply practical criteria to determine when to use AI for content creation versus when to use human-led curation.
• Develop governance and retrieval strategies that improve search accuracy, reduce hallucinations, and increase frontline usability.