Engaging E-learning

Dec 13, 2012

Hello Everyone,

I need some suggestions on how to make a standards of conduct and conflict of interest more engaging.  It will be completed for my employer.  It is for a banking environment.  The topics are:

  • what are standards of conduct
  • what is conflict of interest
  • importance of standards of conduct and ethical behavior, employee responsibilities, reporting, and prohibitions
  • resources

I don't want them to just sit, listen, and take a quiz at the end.

Thanks for your suggestions.

8 Replies
Daniel Brigham

Hi, Sheri:

A few suggestions:

1. I'd probably create two or three characters that you carry throughout the course. You can put them in scenarios related to your topics in which the characters face a challenge, have to make a choice, and are provided with consequences (Tom Kuhlmann's "three C" scenario concept).

2. If you create scenarios for the course, make them "real life messy," not black and white. That way your learners will really have to step into them.

Sara Reller

We are working on a data privacy one that will be similar and one of the scenarios is going to give them a desk with items that are private and then tell them what someone who walked through and picked up those items could do with them. You get a chance to clean your desk (virtually) first then someone walks by and snags a piece of paper and you'll see the consequences of that. The good news is people are doing this at their desk. We are hoping that this will make them stop and clean their space up (and with our testers it has and has kept those desks cleaner for nearly a month now!).

Something that is a realistic scenario of what could go wrong if you don't do this. 

Beverly Scruggs

Our corporate Code of Conduct meetings are always group face-to-face meetings, but they incorporate video scenarios and are always interesting. A few years ago, they created a character, a ficticious employee, whose name was Oscar Blivious (or O.Blivious). This guy was clueless about company policies and got into all kinds of scrapes involving accepting gifts from vendors, working with government agencies, etc. It was very effective.

Hope this helps spark some creative ideas!

Sheri Nelson

One more question...there is a form that is about 4 pages that all employees must fill out once a year after watching this.  I have been provided the information to say about the form.  Would it be good idea to show the form while providing the information about the form so they are not just reading bullets on the screen?

Matt Blackstock

The other option is go the extreme.  Show the extremely exagerarated outcomes of not following a particular policy.  For example if everyone ignored the code of conduct or went around bullying and harrassing, what would be the outcome? (Chaos friends, sheer chaos!)  Then dive back into the policy via what things could have been done to avoid the outcome.

A couple of years ago I put together an example around the Payment Card Industriy Digital Security Standard (PCIDSS).  The module opened with the destruction of our financial institution by not following the standards, fire, police, investigations, angry customers, fines etc etc. It then asked the question what we could have done to avoid the catastrophe.  The learner then pulls information surronding the standards to develop a plan for ensuring compliance.

Hope that sparks some ideas

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