The British Institute of Learning and Development's (BILD) conference on engagement highlighted the growing importance of elearning.

Held at Centrepoint in London on 12 June, the conference looked at a number of topics centred on engagement in learning, focusing on the growing impact of the internet on training and development methods.

In his opening speech, chairman Jack Wills stressed the importance of a learner-centric focus and the changing nature of learning for training professionals, commenting that the broadening of platform-based solutions will be a new challenge for trainers in the near future.

Key speaker, Kirstie Donnelly, director of products and marketing at Ufi/learndirect spoke at length about the 'internet explosion' and the new initiatives being launched to get learners of all ages involved:

"We talk about forms of learning: podcasts, vodcasts, smart portal feeds, these are the ways we are now trying to work with our learners and even if they are not connecting with the internet for learning just yet, they are certainly using the technology in their day to day lives," she said.

Other speakers included Miles Templeman, director general of The Institute of Directors, who spoke about connecting education to the working world and Lesley Griffin, director of employee engagement at the City of Sunderland College who focused on understanding the New Standard.

The next BILD event will be focusing on Learning in the Workplace and will be held at the Training Foundation in Coventry on July 16th.