I am trying to develop a training that will have a massive impact on my institution and I want to frame the course in an interesting story... but I am all out of ideas! I have been researching for the last 3 hours and still nothing.
I don't want to make the learner a new hire, I think that's not interesting enough. It is a purchasing system that I am developing the course for if that helps anyone get their creative juices flowing! Thanks in advance for your insights!
For procedural content (where it's mostly "click here, click here" and there's a single correct way to do things), focus on providing realistic examples of when people would use these procedures. It doesn't have to be a super exciting story, just one about how people would actually use the software. Michael's idea of a "day in the life of a purchase order" is an example of that (and a good idea!). Use the scenarios to provide context for examples and practice.
Do you also have content that requires some judgement and critical thinking? Are there ways to use the purchasing system where people have to balance multiple factors and make trade offs between benefits? Those are some of the best places for stories and scenarios. Think about ways you can show a protagonist (someone in a similar role to your learners) solving messy problems and being the hero by using the purchasing system.
This is great! Fortunately, this is a fundamentals course, so the advanced course will have more of the critical thinking aspect with approvals. Thank you so much for your help, I love this community!
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How about something like "A day in the life of a Purchase Order" from Initial Requisition, to Approval, to Closing.
For procedural content (where it's mostly "click here, click here" and there's a single correct way to do things), focus on providing realistic examples of when people would use these procedures. It doesn't have to be a super exciting story, just one about how people would actually use the software. Michael's idea of a "day in the life of a purchase order" is an example of that (and a good idea!). Use the scenarios to provide context for examples and practice.
You could show how using the wrong procedure (or the wrong feature for a particular task) creates consequences. See an example of this on when to use layer masks in Photoshop. https://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/layers/layer-masks/
Do you also have content that requires some judgement and critical thinking? Are there ways to use the purchasing system where people have to balance multiple factors and make trade offs between benefits? Those are some of the best places for stories and scenarios. Think about ways you can show a protagonist (someone in a similar role to your learners) solving messy problems and being the hero by using the purchasing system.
I have some additional ideas for using stories with software training here: https://christytucker.wordpress.com/2017/06/06/can-stories-improve-software-training/
Great idea! I love it! It made me think of the school house rock "I'm just a bill". This will be fun!
This is great! Fortunately, this is a fundamentals course, so the advanced course will have more of the critical thinking aspect with approvals. Thank you so much for your help, I love this community!
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