Course Content - Information Technology

Hi Melissa,

Yu can create interactions that show the consequences of what happens when policies and procedures are not followed... If I think of anything else, I will post it here for you.

-Eric

As above there's generally nothing wrong with Googling for news stories that "shock" to use as an attention grabber - kind of "look what happened when this bank didn't follow a good enough IT Policy". Not to copy the news stories obviously, but anonymize and reword them something like "A bank lost a computer disc with the personal data of X thousand customers and are now being investigated by the regulator, losing their reputation, etc". Then follow up by demonstrating how your bank's IT policy could have stopped this from happening using the story as a context Alternatively fictional stories can be easier than real life, just use real life for inspiration... 

Well, there's always JP Morgan that can be used as a case study or example:

http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/11/markets/jpmorgan-faq/index.htm?iid=HP_LN

Melissa, 

That is SO awesome that your owners and staff are passionate about learning - it makes it so much easier when they're on board! I second Eric and Sasha's comments. Stories or scenarios that show what happens when a procedure is not followed are both interesting and memorable.

During the ASTD conference, I attended the Advanced eLearning design certification program and one of the courses we evaluated was a series of choices and at the end, depending on what the learner selected, the feedback was a newspaper article with headlines inspired by true events. So, if you did the wrong thing, a location might be bombed (this was a course for police force) and if you did the right thing, the terrorists intentions were thwarted and you were celebrated.

Keepin' the joy,

Patti

Thank you for the great ideas and input everyone! I am feeling the inspiration!

What a fun project and great ideas! Something to consider when designing a scenario-based course is that they are (imho) the most effective when all of the options to choose from are realistic. So many of the choices we are faced with actually fall more into the gray area versus black and white. I've seen a lot of scenarios that were designed with great intentions, but the learner could correctly choose the answers by using basic logic and never even watch/read the course.

Hi Melissa,

I'm excerpting something  I said on another thread where a community member discusses creating a course on best practices to organize a workspace. Thread is here if you're interested

(http://community.articulate.com/forums/p/12142/72789.aspx#72789)

In it, I mention Tom's 3 C's, which are a good read (if you haven't already read them), esp. considering other members here have recommended a choice/consequences scenario.

The 3 C's

My facilitating practice has always been (and Tom talks a lot about this) to pull the Learners in and have them make decisions and choices. Tom calls it the 3 C's: challenge, choice, consequences.

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/build-branched-e-learning-scenarios-in-three-simple-steps/

Greetings:

Great ideas. Real life scenarios are always impactful. I echo what Natalia says. Make sure all the options are realistic. Work with your SME's to help develop that portion of the content. It needs to be challenging, not obvious.

Cheers,

Travis

Explain what happens when people do NOT follow the rules, and how easy it is to get things wrong.

Have a "look inside" this book - (Steps 1 and 2 towards the very back", to get an idea of what I mean:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Utter-Failure-Life-Everything/dp/0273706071/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

Often, adopting the persona of "The Fool" (from the 5 Faces of Genius) allows people to see what they do, (or do not do) in a completely different light.

It often quickly ends up in the decision to change being a "no Brainer", and the learning being memorable.

Best of luck.

Bruce