Assignment #1: Scenario planning

[Christy Tucker]

Post your learning objective and scenario topic here.

[Alicia Viera]

Hello everyone! I posted this in Slack last night but I thought I’d share it here as well.

Better late than never. Here is the summary and learning objective for my possible branching scenario. @Christy Tucker – I’m going with the topic I chose for the last cohort. However, I’m not sure if it’s too broad right now and I should make it more specific by concentrating on just one part of the process of creating branching scenarios. My audience is instructional designers who are new to designing branching scenarios.

Summary
Designing effective branching scenarios to solve organizational problems can be an overwhelming task, especially for instructional designers who are either new to the profession or accustomed to taking more traditional approaches to elearning design. Although most IDs have, in one way or another, experimented with scenario-based approaches, they still may not feel comfortable creating branching scenarios as those tend to be more complex. This learning solution aims to address that problem.

Learning Objective
After completing this learning experience, instructional designers will be able to design effective branching scenarios to solve organizational problems.

This is an elearning I’m creating for my portfolio so I’m just planning on incorporating what I’m learning in this course (and through other sources) to create a branching scenario about creating branching scenarios – I know. Very meta 😉

[Christy Tucker]

Copying my feedback from Slack over here:

I think meta can work very well! As a portfolio sample, if other IDs or former IDs are reviewing it, they’ll appreciate it. I actually have thought it would be interesting to create a similar type of meta-scenario to help teach some of the tasks within this course. Maybe when you finish yours, I’ll just link to that instead. :slightly_smiling_face:

I think your topic is probably specific enough to be workable. As you get into writing, I suspect you’ll discover you need to create some specific details for the context that will naturally limit the topic (like the ID is creating soft skills training, rather than software training or medical diagnosis training).

[Alicia Viera]

Thanks so much! It’d be such as honor if you were to consider my final product good enough to share as part of your course 😉

[Alicia Viera]

[I’ll continue pasting my comments from Slack]

More planning for my branching scenario:

Desired Behaviors
IDs will be able to:
Successfully interview SMEs by asking the types of questions that can help them create their branching scenarios
Organize and plan their branching scenarios by drafting learning objectives, creating outlines, identify desired behaviors, and listing mistakes and consequences
Create a design document to be approved by SMEs and stakeholders
Select and use an appropriate tool for the layout of the story, decision points, etc.
Develop a final product using the tool of choice

Ideal Path
Interview SMEs
Creating the appropriate documents to organize and plan their branching scenarios (learning objectives, outline, desired behaviors, ideal path, as well as mistakes and consequences)
Preparing a design document for approval
Using Twine for the layout of the story, decision points, etc.
Developing the final product

@Christy Tucker I realized “desired behaviors” and “ideal path” ended up being very similar

[Christy Tucker]

I think it’s OK that your desired behaviors and ideal path are fairly similar. You listed the desired behaviors in a logical order for the process, so it’s the same.

My one question would be whether you feel like the scope of this is doable. For example, that second bullet point with the desired behaviors is actually multiple steps. (objectives, outline, behaviors, mistakes and consequences). You might be able to do those steps in a way that doesn’t make the scenario expand out of control (maybe one question for each). Maybe you could even say something like But, that bullet point, or maybe points 1-2, might be enough for a full scenario on its own.

If you do want to do a full scenario from start to finish, think about how you might compress those decisions in the second bullet point into something smaller, maybe not creating all of the documents but just hitting 2-3 key points.

[Alicia Viera]

And here are my mistakes and consequences so far…

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Christy Tucker]

Great start with the mistakes and consequences! The trick will be getting the level of depth right for the complexity of scenario you want, especially as you start building out the structure.

If you use more of a limited branching/looping structure, you’re more likely to be able to show more steps in the process. Alternatively, if you want to go more complex, something of a branch and bottleneck process, potentially with variables tracking earlier decisions, might work too.

[Christy Tucker]

BTW I also added a plugin with some limited reactions to forum posts. It’s not as good as the Slack reactions, but it at least gives us some options.

[Alicia Viera]

Hi Christy,
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. I realized that this could get very complex but I’m thinking on using the branch and bottleneck approach to keep it contained. Regarding my mention of the different items to be included in the design document, I’m only concentrating on the learning objectives as a decision point, as I think that’s the piece that people will need the most help with. The rest will be just listed and I’ll share what my character decided and her rationale. Thanks again!

[Author]

Posts