Decision Trees: Exploring the Road Not Taken

We ask learners to make decisions all the time. But how often do we give them the opportunity to see what would have happened if they'd made a different choice?

That's one of the things I like most about decision trees.

Instead of presenting a question, collecting an answer, and moving on, a decision tree allows learners to explore how one choice influences the next. They can follow a path to its conclusion, return to an earlier decision, and discover how a different choice changes the outcome.

Sometimes the most valuable learning happens when they explore the path they didn't take.

When would I use a decision tree?

Decision trees work particularly well when decisions have consequences that aren't immediately obvious.

A few examples:

• Troubleshooting: Explore how different diagnostic decisions lead to different solutions.
• Customer service: Follow the consequences of different responses to a customer situation.
• Leadership development: Examine how communication and management decisions influence team outcomes.
• Compliance and policy: Apply policies to realistic situations where context influences the appropriate response.
• Process training: Understand how an early decision affects subsequent steps, responsibilities, or outcomes.

Why does this work for learning?

What I particularly like about decision trees is that they encourage learners to examine the relationships between decisions and consequences.

They're practicing more than recall.

They're applying information, analyzing cause-and-effect relationships, comparing alternatives, and evaluating outcomes. These are the kinds of thinking we want learners to develop, particularly when the goal is sound judgment rather than memorizing information.

There's also value in being able to backtrack. When learners revisit an earlier decision and explore another branch, they can compare outcomes and reconsider their original reasoning.

And unlike real life, a poor decision doesn't require an incident report.

About this interaction

The example in the GIF explores decisions surrounding a compliance training problem. Learners follow different paths, examine the consequences, and return to explore alternatives.

I built the interaction as standalone HTML, so it can be embedded into Articulate Rise 360 using an Embed block or incorporated into Storyline 360 as a web object.

The content and visual design can be customized for different learning scenarios.

I'm curious how others are using branching activities. Do you typically guide learners toward one correct outcome, or give them the freedom to explore multiple paths and compare what happens?