Why you want to use scenarios in your elearning
Imagine that you’re in a competition to overhaul an information-heavy course so it creates a real change in the world. What changes would you make? Check out this story-based presentation to see what one fictional company did.
If some type is too small, click the “full” icon in the player and you’ll get the big-screen version.
The presentation is an adaptation of a talk I’ve been giving at the Australian Flexible Learning Framework conferences. It’s designed to help people break free of the traditional information-first approach to instructional design.
One of the challenges with using the approach described in the presentation is that it usually requires more design time. Since many clients don’t actually measure the effectiveness of their materials and just want information put online quickly, it can be hard to argue for immersive scenarios. Have you successfully used scenarios? Did you have to convince stakeholders to let you use them?
on November 25th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Thanks Cathy. Nice prez.
on November 25th, 2009 at 8:32 am
Cathy, I love you….
on November 25th, 2009 at 10:24 am
I am so glad you are championing this change. It happens in live presentations and in elearning all the time: in the first few minutes, when the audience is most captive and receptive, they get background information instead of the main take-away. Oy.
In case anyone is interested, I wrote a guest post at eLearningWeekly.com on the same topic, which is an extreme makover elearning edition! http://bit.ly/2ql8Sh
on November 25th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
This. Is. Fabulous.
Thank you, Cathy.
on November 25th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
[...] Why you want to use scenarios in your elearning » Making Change [...]
on November 26th, 2009 at 12:15 am
The whole slideshow is mesmerizing, and totally gets me excited about developing online material. Thanks so much for putting this together!
on November 26th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Thanks, everyone, for your comments. I recommend you read the post that Eric linked to, where he makes (among many good points) this very important point: plunging learners directly into a decision-making scenario shows that we respect their intelligence.
on November 28th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
[...] Cathy Moore erzählt hier in einer wunderbaren Story, warum der traditionelle “information-first approach” im E-Learning (aber nicht nur hier!) wenig bringt. Stattdessen: “Immerse learners in a stream of activities that contain the necessary info.” In der Praxis scheitert dieser Ansatz häufig daran, dass Auftraggeber schnell Informationen online stellen wollen und sich über die Wirksamkeit ihrer Angebote keine Gedanken machen. Man könnte den Ansatz, den Cathy Moore hier beschreibt, natürlich weiterdenken: Wenn jetzt noch die hier beschriebenen Szenarien nicht in ein “Programm” gepackt, sondern schrittweise, über einen längeren Zeitraum ausgerollt werden; wenn jetzt noch die Lerner die Möglichkeit hätten, ihre eigenen Erfahrungen zum Beispiel in einem Blog oder Wiki festzuhalten, um das Lernangebot immer wieder zu aktualisieren … Aber halt, schon der hier beschriebene Weg ist ein wichtiger, erster Schritt! 95 interessante Slides! Cathy Moore, Making change, 24. November 2009 [...]
on November 29th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I’m waiting for the day when Cathy will gather her thoughts into a book or better still (if she can find the time) a video series. That would be a feast for the senses and the mind!
on November 30th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
[...] much of the information I’m finding with eLearning. From Cathy Moore’s site “making change“. How to save the world with elearning scenarios View more documents from Cathy [...]
on November 30th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Cathy-
As I’ve told you before, you ROCK! Your presentation will help us explain the difference between most elearning courses and the performance-learning approach that we strive for. Keep on fighting the good fight – we are with you!
-Enid
on December 1st, 2009 at 1:22 am
[...] brilliant Slideshare presentation provides a wonderful reflection of how we design our instruction. Although the focus is on e-learning, this really relates to the instructional design of all [...]
on December 1st, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Cathy,
What is the copyright situation if I want to download some of your blogs as part of an elearning course I am developing. I work for Bendigo TAFE and I am preparing an elearning course on copyright so I don’t want to make any mistakes! I assume that providing a link to your blogs is OK, but what if I wanted to print them out as handouts for students?
Please advise.
Thanks, Kerin
on December 2nd, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Kerin, you can find out about the US definition of “fair use” here. As I understand it, giving photocopies of my blog posts to your students for their education would be fair use, since it wouldn’t hurt the commercial value of my work. I’d personally prefer for them to see the blog itself rather than paper versions of posts, so they could use the Flash interactions, read and leave comments, and follow links to related content. But if your students don’t have easy internet access, I could see that photocopies could be useful.
on December 4th, 2009 at 6:03 am
Thanks, everyone, for your comments. I’d like to add my own, to clarify “show, don’t tell” on slide 51. It seems that some people assume I mean “use a picture, not text.” What I mean to say is, “Don’t blatantly tell people that what they just did is correct or incorrect. Instead, show the result and let them draw the conclusion themselves.” When we do that, we show learners that we respect their intelligence, and we keep their mind actively involved.
on December 5th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
Excellent post, Cathy.
I hope you don’t mind, I inserted your presentation in my blog: http://duboc.me/?q=en/content/save-word-scenarios-cathy-moore.
Have a nice day, and keep up the great work !
on December 8th, 2009 at 4:48 am
Hi Cathy
Great presentation! I see that creating effective scenario based elearning requires lot of SME assistance. Otherwise the learning will not be effective.
The ID must not be asked to come up with scenarios on his/her own. I am not sure if it works. In low budget courses, when you have no SME and you have to use scenarios, it gets really challenging.
on December 11th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Thank you for this presentation. Youre right when you said that our goal is first of all to help people to solve problems, not to learn !
on December 23rd, 2009 at 6:01 am
Cathy,
This is probably the best piece of Instructional Design advice I have come across on the web. Thanks for sharing!
on January 6th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
[...] Moore – her “dump the drone” is a classic and as you can see from the more recent posting, she still [...]
on January 14th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Hi Cathy –
Thanks for the post! I agree completely. How do you encourage SMEs to use this approach for technical or application-based training?
on February 8th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
[...] Why you want to use scenarios in your eLearning [...]
on February 8th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
[...] Why you want to use scenarios in your eLearning [...]
on February 22nd, 2010 at 7:37 am
Great info on the slideshow.
Thanks for that head washing! I’m staring a new project (elearning course) and I was going to do the info overload. Thanks to your slide, now I have better ideias e approach for the project.
You earned a new blog fan!
keep up the great work!
on July 12th, 2010 at 12:22 am
Thank you so much for this for two reasons:
First, it was entertaining and incredibly informative. I am a classroom teacher and always appreciate new takes on teaching/learning. Second, thank you for modeling the behavior that you’re preaching. So many presenters and conference leaders have a “Do what I say and not what I do” approach.
I’m a current student at Walden Univ., and I’m learning about Instructional Design. I’ve always considered myself a constructivist type, and I really appreciate how you have given the audience the information and allowed us to see and compare the approaches and come to the conclusion that scenarios work better than lists of facts with quizzes. I’ve subscribed to the RSS feed and cannot wait to read and watch more of this blog!
on July 16th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Daura and Hugo, thanks for your kind words. I hope the blog will be useful.
Sorry I missed Re ServeD’s question about getting SMEs to use this approach for technical training. One approach could be to ask them how they learned to do what they do. Most likely, they learned by doing. They didn’t sit and read the entire manual, never touching the computer.
Another approach is to remind them that their expertise goes beyond just the content–they also know (ideally!) what mistakes people make on the job. A great way to teach people to avoid mistakes is to let them make those mistakes in a safe place (the course), *see the results,* and then do it again the right way. SMEs can probably tell you about memorable mistakes they made and will never make again, and a scenario is really just a safe place to make mistakes or at least be tempted by them.
An easy approach to scenarios for application training is to have the SME identify the 3-5 most common tasks that the software is used for and replicate those as scenarios, such as “Josh needs to adjust the quantity for an order that’s already in the queue for shipping.” + the learner has to click on a simulated screen (or a sandbox version of the app) to help Josh out.