This week’s E-Learning Heroes Challenge is Choose Your Own Adventure: E-Learning Edition.
I’ve written before about the value of treating your results slides as a short branching scenario, to complete the narrative of your course and show the ultimate consequences of your learner’s decisions. If you are new to this area of course design, starting small with your results knockoff rolex day date 228349srp rolex calibre 2836 2813 mens silver tone automatic slide is a great way to experiment with branching scenarios and build your skills and confidence. Using the same logic, you can create full-length interactive stories that engage, challenge and test your learners. A good source of inspiration is the classic Choose Your Own Adventure book series. Any child of the Eighties and Nineties will remember this incredibly popular book series that gave the reader control of the story. In exactly the same way, branching scenarios in e-learning give the learner control of the course. A well constructed scenario will highlight the consequences of poor decisions while still allowing learners to move forward and develop their understanding of the topic. But going back to the last page to change your decision and correct your mistake can also be a powerful learning experience. As with all things e-learning, the hermes 785965 1 aaa quality handbags for women more realistic and relevant your scenario is the better. The fantastical events of Tea or Coffee? are definitely just for fun!What terrible consequences await based on your choice of beverage? Check out my tongue-in-cheek branching scenario for this week's @ELHChallenge, created using #Storyline360 and @Vyond. pic.twitter.com/kQ5Kp4ExzM
— ᴊ ᴏ ɴ ᴀ ᴛ ʜ ᴀ ɴ_ʜ ɪ ʟ ʟ (@DevByPowerPoint) May 8, 2021
Mapping the outcomes
As part of this week’s challenge David Anderson asked us to include a story map alongside our project, to show how our scenarios worked. Here’s mine:
Chance events and tutorial choices
Note at the ‘Add sugar?’ stage I have added a branch that is controlled by a random number. This breaks one of the conventions of branching scenarios – that each choice has a direct consequence – but in real life the element of chance often comes into play.
Used tactically, this technique can increase the ‘realness’ or versimilitude of your scenario and add replay value to your course.
You should also consider adding branches to the early stages of your scenario that have no impact on the outcome, or which result in only a cosmetic change to your course, such as a choice of outfit or background music.
As viewers of the Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror learned, your choice of breakfast cereal had no bearing on the events of the interactive story. Tutorial choices are simply there to familiarise the player with how the controls work.
Thought the cereal choice on the beginning of Bandersnatch would affect the whole storyline... pic.twitter.com/NAN2ShzUPk
— FM (@AkoNgaSiFrancis) December 31, 2018
What will you do next?
Branching scenarios are a powerful tool that can help learners explore the consequences of their actions without penalising them for their mistakes. Adult learners respond well to this training technique if it uses ‘real life’ scenarios that draw on their existing knowledge while highlighting any gaps in their understanding.
If you want to learn How to Get Started Writing Branching Scenarios for Learning, I recommend this article by the brilliant Christy Tucker.
Lovely example, thank you for sharing! It has that great look/feel of the 70’s-80’s Choose Your Own Adventure books 🙂
Thanks David. There’s no school like the old school!
Love it! I did it over and over=engagement!