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