Forum Discussion
Inclusive/engaging scenarios without the use of characters/people
Hello,
I am developing an e-learning module and we decided not to include pictures with people on it to make it more inclusive, we want to target different age groups, different nationalities and genders, but also avoid stereotyping some ways of being and work positions to certain genders.
Saying that, I am struggling to create engaging scenarios without the use of characters. These scenarios describe actions from different people.
Any suggestions?
Please keep in mind that the overarching topic of the course is research.
Thank you so much in advance!
Karen
People/characters are what make stories/scenarios engaging.
Consider reducing the brightness of character images so they become silhouettes. Yes, some will still be recognizable as male or female. But, overall, this reduces the focus on how someone looks and increases the focus on what they say and do.
Another option I've seen is to let the user pick the character(s) at the start of the course. In other words, provides multiple options that different people might relate to. This does involve more programming, though. Obviously, you'd have to capture the user's choice using a variable. Every time a character appears, you'd have to give it different states: one for each character option. And you'd need a trigger wherever the character appears to change it to the appropriate state based on the value of the variable. (There are multiple posts about this on the Forum, as well as Articulate tutorials. So a bit of searching can provide more details if you're interested in this option.)
Thanks Judy for the advice. I like the idea of picking a character, but unfortunately I can not use it as they are short scenarios with several characters. One of them has 7 characters, so imagine having to choose a character for each of the seven characters.
I've always liked this first aid demo. It's about 20 years old and it's very basic. Just text and no characters. But I find that it's also effectively engaging.
