You’re a US Army sergeant in Afghanistan. Can you help a young lieutenant overcome cultural differences and make a good impression on a Pashtun leader?

That’s the challenge behind “Connect with Haji Kamal,” a decision-making scenario that my cool client Kinection and I developed for the US Army. The online scenario is the homework part of a lesson plan that includes in-class discussion about how to build rapport across cultures. It’s part of a much larger effort in the Army to strengthen soldiers’ cross-cultural and peacekeeping skills.

Turn on your speakers and give it a spin, and then come back here if you’re interested in the design decisions behind the activity.

The goals

The activity is designed to be completed as homework before a culture class, and it includes a facilitator guide with debrief questions. Our goals were to model specific rapport-building behaviors and inspire class discussion.

To follow the “good” paths, you need to see things from Haji Kamal’s point of view, show respect and patience, and otherwise apply cross-cultural skills that will be discussed in class. You end up on less successful branches by making more ethnocentric choices.

Complex branching

Our original content was a short description of a real-life discussion between a soldier and Pashtun leader. We added enough twists to end up with 12 paths through the material, using a flowchart to keep track of everything.

The paths cross at several points, so usually one bad choice doesn’t doom you to a bad ending.

The debating squad leaders

The debate between two characters has its roots in classroom scenarios that we developed. During tests of those scenarios, we found that requiring participants to defend each option got them more deeply involved. The debate also simulates the kind of thinking that soldiers need to do in the field to challenge their cultural assumptions.

For this scenario, the debate also replicates real life — often a sergeant asks squad leaders for their ideas and then advises the lieutenant. To make the player think independently, we also included an undebated option.

To make sure the story and arguments were believable, we ran a classroom debate version of the scenario with a group from our target audience. We collected their arguments for each option and then wrote the script for the online version.

Minimal media

In focus groups about their training preferences, soldiers made clear that they prefer video. However, that wasn’t in our budget or timeline, so we went with the soldiers’ second best, graphic novel illustration. The images are comic-ified photos.

We used audio for the debating squad leaders because their arguments were core to the game. The lieutenant and Haji Kamal are limited to silent dialog bubbles mainly to avoid the challenge of providing audio for Haji Kamal, who in real life wouldn’t speak English. Our audience members are sticklers for authenticity, so the best solution would have been to have the Haji speak in Pashto and display his dialog bubble in English, but that would add a distracting layer of complexity.

We kept animation to a minimum for the same reason — we wanted players to focus on the ideas and story.

Experimental surprises

At two decision points, we tried different twists:

• Rogue lieutenant: At one point on a mediocre path, the LT ignores what you recommend (no matter what it is) and says his own line. Unfortunately, it’s not a good line. You have to do damage control to get back on a decent path — just like in real life.
• Defend your choice: At another point, the LT asks you why he should say what you’ve recommended. Pick a good defense, and you go down a good path. A weak defense sends you down a mediocre path. This adds a layer of complexity to the branching that could get seriously challenging for the designers and developers, but it could also be used to make players think more deeply about their choices and defend them in ways that are most persuasive to someone from the lieutenant’s background.

Learner feedback

The game and its accompanying facilitator guide were tested by soldiers in a culture class at Fort Huachuca NCOA. It looks like the activity met our goal of inspiring discussion: 70% of the players said that they were looking forward to discussing the game in class the next day, and instructors reported that the activity “prompted the majority of the discussion” and encouraged soldiers to share their own experiences.

The activity will be part of a larger toolkit for military educators. The toolkit includes more decision-making scenarios in several formats, all of them designed to help soldiers practice specific cross-cultural capabilities.

Design time required

A scenario of this length and complexity takes me about 20-40 hours to plot and write. That’s the time I need after the goals have been identified, we know what the learners need to do in the real world, we understand the mistakes they commonly make, and the SME has provided at least the germ of a realistic story. It doesn’t include project management time, audience testing, audio and graphics sourcing, Flash development, QA, etc., and it assumes that reviewers don’t make major changes.

That’s a lot more time than it would take to throw together a slideshow on “Key Concepts in Rapport Building: Afghanistan,” but we like to think the resulting activity is more memorable and more likely to change behavior.

In an ideal world, instructional designers could spend our limited time on immersive activities that have a big potential impact, and all those Flashified information dumps could instead be cheap PDFs or intranet pages.

What do you think? Have your say in the comments section.

See examples of 10 multimedia approaches in USA Today’s Interactive Bag of Tricks (from Multimedia Learning). The short presentation includes many links to examples, and you can download a PDF with the key points.

A timely example for people in the US is the Candidate Match Game. Answer questions that gauge your opinion on key issues, and the candidates that most closely match your views rise above the others.

If you like the examples from USA Today, visit the elearning examples page in this blog to see several more from other producers.

Here’s another alternative to the Next button: fast-paced interactive conversations from the makers of “You Don’t Know Jack.”

In a comment on the elearning samples page, MM pointed to these examples by Jellyvision. Wow. Quick, lively, occasionally snarky, and always richly human. As Jellyvision says, “It’s conversation rather than presentation.”

What can we learn from them?

The interactives are designed for marketing, which reminds me to make one of my favorite points: Elearning should steal ideas from marketing. Go to Jellyvision and steal right now.

Try any demo to see how the interaction works. To see explanatory sections, try the Autodesk demo and ask some questions.

Here’s what I came home with:

1. Speed up the pacing–a lot. Slow pacing doesn’t make our message clear. It makes our message bland. The Jellyvision narration and visuals are quick without feeling rushed. There are no slow dissolves–everything zips into place and snaps to attention.

2. Write a lively, conversational script. If our learners are reasonably fluent in English, let’s talk to them as if we’re actually talking to them. For global audiences…well, that’s a different story. Start saving up for localization.

3. Use professional character actors or at least someone who can use a lively, conversational tone. The “character” part makes all the difference.

4. Use humor to strengthen the bond. The Jellyvision characters use wit to show that they understand your situation, including your possible discomfort talking with a computer.

5. Consider using a conversation instead of a presentation. If we keep the branching reasonable, this shouldn’t be too horrendous. Even PowerPoint lets you set up branching. This approach might be most effective to determine how much a learner already knows (or what misconceptions they have) and to provide quick clarifications.

I’d write more, but I have to perk up a blah Flash that I created in those dark days Before Jellyvision.

What ideas did you get?

The elearning samples page lists more than 35 inspiring interactions. Why did so few corporate courses make the final list?

One reason: The people who designed the interactions knew the following 3 Secrets of Shortness.

1. Forget the intro

Typical course: “Welcome to the Widget Functionality course! Widgets are undoubtedly an important part of our lives, and understanding how they function will help you gain the most benefit from their use. In this course, you will learn how widgets work.”

Interactive: “How Widgets Work”

2. Show, don’t tell

Course: “Before supplying a transfusion, it is imperative to test each patient’s blood to determine what antibodies it reacts to. If you don’t do this, you could supply the wrong type of blood and harm or even kill the patient.”

Interactive:

3. Set your learners free

Course: “We know the one and best way to learn this material, so we will lead you by the nose through every step. Besides, we don’t trust you to read everything. Click Next to continue.”

Interactive: “Take a look around!”

Unfortunately, it takes longer to develop something that’s short. But it takes learners less time to get through the material, so the business wins in the end.

I also think that a well-designed, short, just-in-time interaction is more likely to be effective than a long, take-it-once-and-forget-it course. What do you think?

The latest addition to the elearning samples page is a collection of activities from the National Museum of Australia.

Some of the activities show a “mystery object” and have you figure out what it is. This activity has you enter your first guess and then revise it later after you’ve gotten more information.

The Flash has a leisurely start, probably to accommodate loading over dial-up. But once you’re in it, you’ll have fun with the mystery.

Looking for ideas? Check the new elearning samples page. It links to more than 35 online interactions that could give you good ideas for your own materials.

The list includes everything from interactive infographics to full-blown, movie-like simulations.

I’ve included only materials that I think have good ideas to emulate, and I’ll keep adding to the list.

Know of something good? Please add it to the comments on the samples page or send it to me using the email address in the about page.

For more examples, see the responses to the Learning Circuits Blog Big Question for June.