Wait… it’s May already? If you’re trying to keep up with everything moving right now, start here. Here’s what’s new and worth your time this month from OpenSesame.
Let’s kick off ATD in style!
ATD is gonna get busy. This is your chance to step away and have some fun!
Join OpenSesame and our partners at the GRAMMY Museum Terrace (now that's cool!) on 18 May for a night of music, connection, and a few surprises along the way.
Create your own vinyl art, explore the museum, sip on signature cocktails or mocktails, and even leave with an airbrush tattoo. Last year’s party filled up fast and this one will, too.
New integration: EduMe
Supporting frontline teams often means juggling mobile access, limited time, and training that actually fits into the workday. EduMe is one of the best platforms for frontline users, allowing them to access training that actually fits their unique needs.
With the new OpenSesame + EduMe integration, you can add courses directly into your EduMe platform – no downloading, uploading, or extra steps. You get faster access to high-quality training, and your learners get a seamless experience right where they already work.
It’s a simpler way to reach your frontline teams with the learning they need, when they need it, now available at no cost to OpenSesame customers using EduMe.
New in OpenSesame Plus: SkillStack and MIT Sloan Management Review
We’re expanding the OpenSesame Plus catalog with new publishers designed to help organizations build stronger, more confident leaders through story-driven learning and research-backed insight.
SkillStack: Story-driven learning that sticks
SkillStack delivers leadership and business skills through cinematic storytelling, designed to engage busy professionals and drive real behavior change. First piloted with NASA and led by world-class experts, these courses combine emotional storytelling with practical application so learning shows up when it matters most.
With short, focused lessons (averaging just 13 minutes), SkillStack helps teams build skills quickly without sacrificing depth or impact.
Explore SkillStack on OpenSesame
MIT Sloan Management Review: Research-backed insight for modern leaders
For over 60 years, MIT Sloan Management Review has been a trusted voice in management thinking. Now, those insights are available as structured, video-based courses designed to help leaders navigate complexity and make better decisions.
Focused on topics like AI, strategy, and organizational change, each course translates rigorous research into practical frameworks leaders can apply immediately.
Explore MIT Sloan Management Review on OpenSesame
Research spotlight: Companies are buying AI. They need L&D to make it work.
If your inbox looks anything like ours, you’re seeing AI takes from every angle.
Here’s the one that matters: AI adoption is surging, but results aren’t keeping up.
Across major 2026 workforce reports, the same pattern shows up. Tools are in place. Employees are experimenting. But most organizations still aren’t seeing meaningful productivity gains. It’s an activation gap: AI is present, but it’s not changing how work gets done.
McKinsey reports AI use at work jumped from 30% in 2023 to 76% in 2025. Yet while nearly 90% of companies are investing, fewer than 40% see real business impact. Deloitte finds a similar gap: 74% expect AI to drive growth, but only 20% say it has.
This is where L&D comes in. Employees have access to AI, but not the capability to use it well. Most are learning through trial and error, like prompting, experimenting, and getting partial results without building real judgment.
At the same time, demand for AI fluency has grown rapidly across every function.
The opportunity is clear: organizations that close this gap won’t just invest in tools. They’ll help people apply AI in their day-to-day work.
The research points to three immediate actions:
- Train for judgment, not just prompting: Help employees evaluate, refine, and apply AI outputs in real scenarios.
- Connect training to real work: Integrate AI into workflows so it becomes part of how work gets done, not an extra step.
- Make the gap visible: Show where adoption is outpacing capability, and what it’s costing the business.
Where to start?
Before you can close the gap, you need to see it clearly.
Our interactive AI Readiness Assessment gives you a quick way to benchmark where your organization stands across seven key areas (from workforce capability to culture & change) and what to do next.
It takes about three minutes to complete.
Take the AI Readiness Assessment
Build a stronger L&D strategy this summer
Join us this summer for Camp Reinvent, a free, four-week guided program for manufacturing learning leaders. From June to August 2026, diagnose your L&D strategy, learn from peer fireside chats, and complete a hands-on course to earn a badge that proves your impact and moves your team forward.
Upcoming events
Build Skills That Stick: Acorn and OpenSesame
Acorn PLMS and OpenSesame are coming together for a live session focused on a common challenge: moving beyond content consumption to actually building capability.
In this 30-minute session, Jenny Tran (Acorn) and Les Abercrombie IV (OpenSesame) will explore how teams can better align learning to roles, create development plans that drive meaningful progress, and track growth in a way that reflects real outcomes—not just course completions.It’s a practical look at how the right combination of platform and content can support more intentional, measurable development.
Choose from two sessions
- North America: May 13, 2:00 PM PDT / 5:00 PM EDT
- Asia Pacific: May 14, 6:00 AM AEST
The New Rules of Work: What’s Changing Across Industries
Cut through the AI noise with L&D expert Lori Niles-Hofmann and explore what leading teams are actually doing to build capability today. You’ll leave with practical strategies and a free AI Readiness Assessment to plan your next steps.
This is soon! Register now
Human Potential in the Age of AI: How to Lead and Thrive in the Future of Work
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Join behavioral scientists from Humin to explore how to lead with purpose while AI reshapes the workplace. Discover practical ways to strengthen the human skills like judgment, connection, and wellbeing that matter most.
New resource: Data governance cheat sheet
Before you scale AI, get the foundations right. This cheat sheet breaks down how to make informed decisions around tools, data, and policies so you can reduce risk and move forward with confidence.
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