What Happens in Vegas, Won't Stay in Vegas.

Recognition and respect for all of your hard work sometimes requires that you attract a little attention. Bring the resources you learn from Experience Learning Live! back to your credit union.

Experience Learning Live! is not your traditional training program. This program is designed to give you long-lasting experiences and peer interaction while you explore hard-hitting topics and cutting-edge training techniques. Experience Learning Live! will be unlike any training event you've ever attended. We'll fill three days to the brim with ways to maximize your ability to boost the energy of staff, energize the dedication of volunteers and increase the knowledge level of your members.


Want to bring your entire training team? Receive a discount when 3 or more persons register for CUNA's Experience Learning Live! Your discount will automatically be applied.

• 10 % off each person with 3 registrations
• 15% off each person with 4 registrations
• 20% off each person with 5+ registrations

CUNA Experience Learning Live!: October 16–19, 2011

CUNA CML User's Workshop:  October 16, 2011

CUNA CPDOnline Member's Summit:  October 16, 2011

Preview the schedule

101 Movie Clips That Teach & Train

Sometimes showing is much more effective than telling. Learn how an experienced training professional has utilized a number of movie clips to spice up training programs. You’ll see how effective movie scenes can help grab classroom interest immediately. Discover how to follow the clips with questions that garner solid discussion and teach topics in a memorable way. The only thing missing from this great session is the popcorn!

Becoming a Strategic Player - Getting a Seat at the Table

Want to increase your credit union’s success through learning? Explore what the “top of mind” strategic issues are for CEOs and executive teams - and how to convey a message that speaks to that audience. During this session, we will focus on how to take your training efforts from a “training program” to “strategic learning”. You will walk away with a plan to re-shape executive expectations, and you will have the opportunity to build a customized training assessment worksheet.

Change the Conversation: A New Model of Employee Engagement

Tina Hall was hired by her credit union to establish a strategic training department. During her tenure, she facilitated the development of over 100 training programs, won more than 30 local and national awards honoring excellence in training and culture and created a corporate university that has been modeled by credit unions all over the nation. Come to this session to find out what Tina did and experience for yourself a different way to approach engagement.

Dealing With the Difficult Participant

If you deal with difficult participants in your training sessions, you know the destructive effect they can have on their own learning, as well as on the group's learning process. In this session, Becky Pike Pluth will share strategies to avoid, eliminate and minimize difficult behaviors. Explore what to do before, during and after to minimize difficult behavior and maximize results. You’ll also examine the impact of room setup in group dynamics and the preparation that will minimize the likelihood of disruptive behavior.

Design Good Courses With the Resources at Hand

Whether you’re new to building rapid e-learning courses or an “old pro,” you will leave this hands-on lab with new ideas, techniques, tactics and strategies you can use right away to build better courses. Tom receives hundreds of questions from blog readers who are on a limited budget. They want to know about free tools that they can use to build their e-learning courses. In this economy, the question probably means more than it did a couple of years ago. As a self-proclaimed “junky” for all of the free stuff online, he’ll walk you through his best finds and allow you to get interactive with them. It’s a fast paced session so come prepared to dive in and get creative. The lab space is limited, but the session is repeated so everyone will get a chance to participate.

ELLy Award Showcase

Join us as we celebrate last year’s ELLy Award winners. Hear first-hand how they won and what experience they created to be recognized by their peers. Speakers include: Michele Trekas and Ken Kelly of Red Canoe Credit Union, Minh McKenzie of Community First Credit Union and The Training & Development Department of Apple Federal Credit Union. Also, learn about the other awards in the award program (Training Champion and Chi Pi Delta). It’s an opportunity to celebrate the winners and learn from their submissions.

Engage Your Back Office Employees

From Catchphrase to Culture

In this lively session, Matt Monge, of Fort Campbell Federal Credit Union, will explore how executive teams and organizational development practitioners get things from being simply catchphrases to actually being defining elements of organizational culture. He’ll walk you through some key steps a credit union can take to work toward a unified cultural vision and then some ideas around what we within the training and development world can do to help drive that change.

How Can Training Revolutionize Your Organization?

You’ve heard of the Zappos phenomenon, they have a corporate culture that rocks! Join Robert Richmann from Zappos Insights, their corporate learning center, and find out the secrets to their success. Learn what they are doing right and how you can bring a little Zappos back home to your credit union!

"I'm Not a Vegas Showgirl": Trainer Skills

There's a real difference between effective training delivery and entertaining. This session will explore basic and mid-level training skills and techniques that will enhance the learning experience for you and your learners. Come prepared to learn and share best practices.

It's About Attitude & Accountability

We’ve all been there, frustrated at the volume of change and the speed at which things are happening. We can feel overwhelmed, negative and maybe even angry. Truth is these thoughts don’t help anything and they show a lack of personal accountability. If we were to turn these questions around and ask more personally accountable questions, we can have a profound impact on our credit unions and lives. In this session, Shelly Spallato, of CUNA Mutual, will share secrets from business leaders and management gurus. Learn the impact of attitude on work and personal life and the simple guidelines for creating accountability in your personal life, with your teams and with yourself.

Mind Meld: Micro Collaboration - Collaboration Between Designers & Subject Matter Experts

Does working with subject matter experts give you a headache? Yet, the subject matter expert is critical to the development of your training course materials. Focus on ways to engage subject matter experts in your training project through techniques to “mindmeld” and share expertise. We will outline the five major factors that influence eLearning development teams: power relationships, project management, communication, evaluation and momentum.

Minute to Win It!

Start building personal learning networks at the conference right away. Meet your peers and join forces in this test of agility, strategy and communication. Experience the excitement of beating the clock like never before. Learn how you can take this exciting game back to your credit union to help build networks and teams in a matter of minutes.

Morning Buzz Sessions

Offered each morning, these sessions are an opportunity for you to meet up informally with your peers to share ideas and best practices. The session will be facilitated by a member of the advisory committee, and you’re guaranteed takeaways to bring back to your credit and implement immediately.

Not a Roll of the Dice - But a Sure Thing: Living as a Mentor

Are you an effective training coach looking for the next best thing? Are you just learning about becoming a training coach and need help? Doesn’t matter - this workshop will focus on the skills, mindset and abilities it takes to bring out the best in the people around you. We will set our sights on seeing people perform at their best. We will also learn how to recover from coaching mistakes and how

Oh Craps! Keeping Your Participant Engaged

Whether you are new to training and an experienced trainer, there are times when we encounter concerns and challenges from our participants. Don't let these derail your classroom. We'll learn and practice two techniques designed to enable you to work through the majority of these situations and keep learners engaged.

Promotions are not Given at the Deli Counter

Recent graduates entering the business world fall into the trap of believing promotions are handed out like meats and cheeses at the deli counter. Unfortunately, many young employees don't fully realize what they truly need to do in order to succeed in today's workforce. In this session, Michael Patterson, of TruMark Financial Credit Union, will share his advice how to better position yourself to achieve your goals at work. He will look at common mistakes employees make, examine the pitfalls in which they tend to get trapped into and help find the proverbial ladder needed to climb out.

Pushing the Limits on What You Know & Do

When was the last time you did something that really scared you? To be successful in today’s job market, you have to be willing to push yourself and your training department to the limit. Hear how leadership lessons gained during training with Navy SEALS in expedition-length endurance races can apply to your training department and your credit union as a whole. Learn how you can push your credit union to increase sales, improve service and boost performance while still keeping your motivation and commitment levels high above the competition.

Teaching Your SME’s to Train -Train the Trainer

Wise organizations realize that a trainer needs to excel in two separate skill sets: knowledge of the topic they are teaching and be well-versed in delivering that information to the learner. When instructors are brought in to teach adults, they need to have both types of skills. Unfortunately, too many credit unions assume that if someone is knowledgeable in their field they will also be good at teaching others. Join Shelly Spallato, of CUNA Mutual, as she shares the concepts of adult learning, shows how to create exercises for greater impact on adult learners, discusses how to teach your SME to write effective learning objectives and discusses strategies to involve participants in the learning.

The New "Blended" Learning

As an experienced training professional, Lance Dublin will walk you through the interviews he did with 25 learning leaders and organizations he recently conducted for the Chief Learning Officer Magazine. Find out how they define what blended learning was and what it is now. He will walk you through specific examples that are working as well as the lessons learned. Evaluate how you can determine what blended learning design is and what will work best for your credit union.

Webinars With Wow Factor

Death by webinar is rapidly replacing death by PowerPoint! Do you know how to make your webinars effective and engaging? Join Becky Pike Pluth who will share how to deliver interactive webinars, explore involvement techniques, dissect what makes a webinar interactive, show interactive training strategies in action and help you create an action plan to implement during your next webinar.

What You Need to Know to Move From Classroom to Online Learning

The internet continues to shape our lives: from work to play, from shopping to traveling, from socializing to learning, and more. As a result, online learning is becoming more and more popular. Online learning can be a cost-effective and time-saving alternative to traditional classroom settings. It offers organizations the ability to deliver high-quality learning experiences right to the desktop of learners, more efficiently and potentially even more effectively. We will review the basic components of online learning, look at online learning benefits and effectiveness, compare the key elements of classroom and online learning and identify five critical success factors.

Affiliation with CUNA/League is required for attendance.

CPE Credits

"This was the best of three ELL conferences that I’ve attended. The diversity of the presenters was excellent. The take away ideas were numerous. I was sorry to see the reduced attendance; however, understandable. Thanks for a GREAT experience!" (2009)

”This was my first time at ELL, and I did enjoy it, and will definitely plan on attending again in the future. It was all very well organized.” (2009)

"This was my first time attending ELL! I feel so energized now and have already implemented some of the things I learned. I have to present what I learned to my Senior VP's and am so excited to share the $15K in free consulting advice I received. Andy was wonderful! It was nice to hear from someone who knows exactly the challenges you face as a trainer. The ELLy awards were great! I felt like I was at the Oscars for trainers. It was nice to see other trainers get recognized for their hard work and efforts to make their CU better. I hope I get to go to Nashville!" (2008)

"I was a first time attendee and the conference exceeded my expectations. I am very critical too, I think you all did a great job & I look forward to returning next year!" (2008)

"I praised the conference to the powers that be at my CU. I hope they can find it in their hearts and budgets to let me attend next year! I'll show results!" (2008)

"This was my first year and I thought it was fantastic! I've been to other seminars, but this was by far the best! I am already scheming to attend in 2009!" (2008)

Becky Pike Pluth

Jon Aleckson

Juli Lynch

Lance Dublin

Robert Richman

Tom Kuhlmann

Elly Awards

Ell Advisory Application