Effective E-Learning 1- Scenario Design

Scenario Design

In “Effective E-Learning” series of articles, I will give you my thoughts on the most important steps you can take to make e-learning (or any type of learning activity, really) into an effective force that drives results and positively impacts your organization’s performance.

This first article will focus on the key to my success as an instructional designer: scenarios and simulations. I will give you a methodology that should help you design them, whether you want to simulate a patient-doctor interactions, interpretations of commercial law or car maintenance. I will illustrate how to use this methodology to teach customer service interactions at each step.

Step 1- Find the specific behaviours that need to change

Regardless of the subject matter, if training is required, it means that some people are performing some tasks less than optimally. Before you determine which scenario you want to run, you need to ask the subject matter experts the following three questions, at the same time:

  • What are employees doing wrong?
  • What are employees doing that they should not be doing?
  • What are employees not doing while they should be doing it?

Make sure that you get answers that are specific enough for your needs, and not excessively general comments. To help you determine how useful a statement is, you can refer to the following examples:

  • “They don’t know how to talk to customers.” is too generalized to be any help to you.
  • “They don’t know how to handle customer complaints.” is more interesting.
  • “When they receive a complaint about the job done, they tend to go on the defensive immediately, without even checking the validity of the claim, which irritates the customers even more” is a great example of an issue you can help with using training.

Even in the last example, it is worth it to be even more specific. Ask the subject matter expert for a concrete example of this happening, what was said, in what tone, etc.

Step 2- Determine the appropriate actions the learner should take in those situations

This step is usually easy. Simply ask the subject matter experts what the learners should do in the situation described in step 1. There might be multiple good answers to that question: write down all of them.

Step 3- Create the prototype simulation

Now that you know what the targeted learners do wrong and what they should do instead, you are ready to build your first prototype of the activity. I recommend against storyboarding at this stage, as building a rapid prototype that will show the client and the subject matter expert an example of the activity (without advanced graphic design and interactivity built in at this stage) will be easier and faster than trying to explain said activity with words using a storyboard.

Sometimes, the learners struggle only with one specific action, and the simulation will end up being either a multiple choice, a HotSpot, or a drag-and drop question, and those question types are already programmed into any respectable e-learning authoring tool, such as Articulate Storyline or Adobe Captivate. Creating a fast prototype for such an activity should be very easy.

In other situations, however, events cascade one into the next, and you need to create branching scenarios. These are more complex scenarios

Articulate Rise has a limited support for branching scenarios, but if the situation is the least bit complex, you will run out of options, or go beyond the number of character this tool supports. You can also create branching scenarios in PowerPoint by programming actions or in Articulate Storyline using triggers, but you need to be somewhat savvy with those programs to pull it off (I might make a demo some day).

The best tool to create branching scenarios, however, is Twine: https://twinery.org/. This is free software that allows you to create branching scenarios similar to the “Choose your own adventure” books of the 1980’s and 1990’s. In this software, you present a situation inside a webpage created by the software, and in this webpage, and you give a choice to the learner between multiple options.

When learners click on one of the options, they are led to a webpage that continues the story or the simulation by following up on that choice. Another learner, who makes a different choice, will be led to a different follow-up, and that learner’s story will continue in this branching path.

What this allows you to do, even without adding any bells and whistles (no image, no graphic design, etc.), is to show the subject matter expert how the scenario or the simulation would unfold according to the choices made by the learner. You have complete control over what happens. Maybe a learner who makes a choice that is too much on the wrong side must start the exercise again, a learner who made acceptable choices is offered the choice to restart the activity or not, and the learner who made all the best possible choices is strongly encouraged to complete the activity. You can create a number of branching paths that converge back into a single new situation. If you are an advanced user, you can even remember learner choices to create a conclusion that is adapted to that specific learner’s actions.

At the end of the story, at the last step of every branching scenario, create a feedback for the activity that is adapted to what the learner did and the choices they made.

The complete set of tutorials for Twine can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKFZhIHD7Xk&list=PLklITFhXtPCCKadv-0Gcbqoj3OCev695D&index1

Step 4- Showcase the prototype to the SME and client

Once you created the first prototype, without having spent a large amount of time on it (unless it is your first time using Twine and you needed to learn the tool), you should show the prototype to the subject matter experts and get their opinions. Make sure that they understand that this is just a prototype, and not at all the finished product. Did you understand the problem well? Is the feedback appropriate? Is this activity efficient in showing the learners how to apply what they learned in their job?

What needs correcting?

Make the appropriate corrections, and then show the prototype to the client. Once again, make sure that they understand that this is just a prototype to showcase what you want to do. See if they are on board with your ideas. Make the necessary corrections afterwards.

Step 5- Create the final version of the first activity

If there are multimedia production artists or technicians working with you, this step belongs entirely to them. The purpose here is to create the final version of the learning activity you created when building the prototype. At this stage, you want the final product to look professional, to be easy to use (as much as is reasonable considering what you are simulating), and to be fully functional, with no bugs whatsoever affecting the experience.

Step 6- Validate the finished product

This step usually succeeds with little challenge from the SME and the client, because their concerns have likely been addressed in step 4.

However, this step is the last validation of this type of learning activity you are designing for the whole project, and this is their last opportunity to object to parts of it without unduly slowing down the project. This also serves as a selling point, since you will be showing a finished product, something that is a lot more impressive than any prototype you’Ve built thus far.

Step 7- Use the finalized learning activity as a template

Once you have created and perfected a learning activity that has a high quality, it is often useful to use it as a template for similar learning activities, instead of building everything from scratch every time.

For example, if you built a simulation of a customer service interaction to handle objections about price, you can use the same basic design choices for other customer interactions, such as handling objections based on the product or validating the customer’s satisfaction at the end of the interaction. The text and the list of choices will differ from one activity to the next, obviously, but the graphic design, the general strategy, the code that handles interactivity and feedback personalization, etc., are all decided upon.

Also, when designing new simulations, the SME will know exactly what you are working towards, so their job is now significantly easier than it was before, increasing your team’s efficiency.

Photo by Compare Fibre on Unsplash

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From teacher to instructional designer

An opinion on what can help you

I have heard of many teachers who want to transition to into instructional design. Teaching during the pandemic has become more difficult, and this has exacerbated an attrition problem that preceded our current situation.

The following advice applies only to teachers who want to make that transition, as I did many years ago. If you come from a different background, much of the advice here might be counterproductive to your needs.

I have heard about a lot of “coaches” who will sell you instructional design classes, usually to master ID software such as Articulate Storyline and Articulate Rise, often for thousands of dollars.

Here is the problem I have with most of those courses: they are teaching you the wrong skills. Those courses can be great for people who come from the industry and know nothing of training of teaching, but those software solutions are easy to learn. Articulate Storyline used to be a PowerPoint add-on, and if you are proficient at PowerPoint (which most teachers should be, I surmise), learning Articulate Storyline using free online tutorials should take you less than a full day of work. Articulate Rise is even easier to learn.

Those courses can help you build a portfolio that looks good, but that’s about it. And, honestly, I believe that you can do that on your own if you are willing to spend a little bit of money on a visual website builder.

Having made the transition from teaching to instructional design a long time ago, I can tell you that the skills I needed to learn to make it in my current profession were the following:

  • Practical training
  • Organizational Development
  • Industry

Practical training

Unless you work for some kind of vocational school, as a teacher, your current job is largely to give your students a depth and breadth of knowledge and skills that will help them learn whatever specific job they will end up in, and possibly to make them better, more informed citizens.

This should remain an important part of your profession once you become an instructional designer. However, as an instructional designer, most of the training that will be requested of you will be to improve employee performance on a specific task.

I strongly suggest you learn how to do that. You have all the prerequisite skills to do so, but it is a change in perspective that can be a little daunting if you do not prepare for it. To learn this skill, I suggest you take one or both of the following paths:

While I will state that Cathy Moore’s stance on never giving theoretical explanations before scenarios is excessive, the techniques she teaches are very useful to someone making the transition you are seeking.

You might also want to join Tim Slade’s eLearning Academy & Community to help you build your portfolio and skills.

Organizational Development

Broadly speaking, organizational development is the management skill meant to help you assess the needs of your organization, find the solutions that will improve performance, and evaluate the results. Coming into the ID field from a teaching background, this is likely to be your main weakness. Schools, generally speaking, are managed differently than other organizations. Seeing your principal or rector in action will give you little insight on how companies work.

Personally, I fixed this problem by joining the telecommunications industry at the bottom of the ladder, taking management courses, and attending communities of practice on organizational development, and holding interim ID or management positions for years before finally getting my first permanent “Training specialist” position.

You might not have the patience, or the financial situation necessary to go through that as I did.

A lot of instructional designers will argue that their job is only to fulfill whatever training requests are put on their desk, assuming that everything else has been handled perfectly, and that the request fits exactly the organization’s needs. If you want your job to matter, that is the wrong approach.

My advice is this: before you get your first ID job, read “Map It”, Cathy Moore’s book on Action Mapping. You can buy it here.

You may also review the basics of action mapping here.

Learn nothing else on organizational development before you start. You would squander any further training that you take, simply because it would be too much to take in at this moment.

Once you get your first job as an instructional designer, you will have the opportunity to apply action mapping in your work. At multiple points, you will find areas where you struggle to deal with how your employer operates. Either you don’t understand the power dynamics at play, or you will feel as if some things seem to run inefficiently for no reason anyone can remember.

At this point, apply my second advice for learning organizational development: connect with people. Talk with everybody. If a director asks you to create training to improve how they complete a specific task, talk to the director, the subject experts, the learners, the managers of the learners, the people affected by the issues caused by the mistakes that the director wants to stop, and also talk to your own manager. In every company I have worked at, there were people who had figured out what the organization’s problems were and had some ideas on how to fix them (those ideas on how to fix things were not always good, however). Being aware of what everybody thinks about an issue will greatly help you in designing efficient training.

As you start to grow into your new role (maybe within a few months of being hired), start looking for new learning opportunities. Personally, I love communities of practice, but university management courses might be more to your liking. Either way, as you learn organizational design and management while working within a company, you will be able to link your theoretical learning to actual workplace situations, making the learning opportunities that much more worthwhile. This will take you from junior to senior roles a lot more quickly than just another set of Articulate courses ever will.

If you speak French and want to learn organizational design (which the author calls by another name), I strongly suggest the communities of practice by Aliter Concept’s François Lavallée. If you speak English only, I don’t know which communities of practice on organizational development are good, sorry about that.

Learn an industry

Finally, as an instructional designer, you will create courses or training modules on something. Try to improve your knowledge of that subject matter, and on the industry that depends on it. If you teach at a university or a vocational school, you probably have some industry knowledge already, be it about law firms, chemistry, or welding.

If you teach general education high school, getting into any industry might prove a touch more difficult, however. This is the main reason why I chose to join an industry at the bottom and climb the ladder, personally.

If you do not have an industry that you believe would be specifically favorable to your set of skills, I suggest applying to any employer that you don’t specifically object to. Once you start working in an industry, if you connect with people and create training for them as I suggested earlier, you will eventually get a good grasp of that field.

The great thing about that is that, as you start mastering the jargon, the technical skills, and also the culture of an industry, you will more easily understand your subject matter experts, greatly reducing the time spent with them just to get a grasp on things. Also, you will gather an arsenal of learning activities that you will be able to use to teach some aspect of this business. For example, if you are in the pool maintenance business, you might develop a few styles of short training videos that teach specific maintenance operations, meaning that you only have to plug in the contents of a specific maintenance task into one of those to create your training. These techniques would be pretty much useless for other industries, such as call centers, but are key training solutions where you work.

By this, I don’t mean that you should necessarily stick to one industry. There are multiple reasons to change fields, market conditions being chief among them. But getting solid experience in a few industries can really help your potential as a hire, and your efficiency as an instructional designer.

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