Choose Your Own Adventure: E-Learning Edition #235

Branching Scenarios and Story Maps #325: Challenge | Recap

Can You Make Learners Feel More Invested in Their Training?

One of the best ways to engage your learners is to give them control of the action. It’s only natural that learners will feel more invested in their training to direct their own learning experiences.

Using branching scenarios, course designers can design learning interactions that encourage learners to make choices in situations that mimic the real world.

In most cases, the course duration is the same whether learners make good or bad choices. The critical path always moves the learner forward without penalizing them for making poor decisions.

Real-World Jobs Reward Quick Thinking and Acting

I like the idea of rewarding learners for making good choices. By “reward,” I’m not talking about a “thumbs up” or “good job” pop-up alert. A more meaningful reward for learners would be to finish the course early so they can get back to doing their jobs.

Here are just a few professions that demand speed and accuracy:

  • Air Traffic Controllers: At any given time, about 5,000 commercial airplanes fly over the United States. It’s no wonder air traffic controllers have one of the most stressful jobs.
  • Automotive Technicians: In most cases, a service technician’s rate is billed hourly. The quicker they can diagnose and resolve an issue the sooner they can move on to the next client. Servicing more clients means billing more hours.
  • EMTs and Paramedics: Emergency medical technicians are another excellent example of professionals who must quickly identify issues with injured people.

The Cave of Time: Branching Maps

I think it’s remarkable how CYOA readers have mapped the stories to show all the possible paths and outcomes.

Noteworthy: More story paths lead to death or unfavorable endings. Be safe out there, readers!

The Cave of Time: Branching Maps

The Cave of Time - Story Map

One Book, Many Readings

Here’s a geeky (and fascinating) analysis of the paths and outcomes of the CYOA books. One of the most exciting patterns revealed in the study is how the books became more linear and had fewer endings as the books evolved.

One Book, Many Readings

Multiple Data Views | Animated versions (Super cool!)

Challenge of the Week

This week, your challenge is to share a branching example designed around the popular Choose Your Own Adventure stories. Please include a story map of your project so we can see your branching paths.

You don’t need to build a massive, story-based scenario. Just build out enough content to show how such a model could be used in e-learning.

Prototypes and placeholder content are your friends this week. Use them to build out scenario templates.

Last Week’s Challenge:

Before you branch into this week’s challenge, check out the community's top e-learning and instructional design tips:

20+ E-Learning and Instructional Design Quick Tips #324

E-Learning & Instructional Design Tips RECAP #324: Challenge | Recap

New to the E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.

89 Comments
Jodi M. Sansone
Jodi M. Sansone
Nele Segers
Teo Karageorgakis
Nele Segers
Namitha Mani
Dan Strizak
Nele Segers

My first day of was not spend very usefull :-) Love the pictures you use. Clear flowchart that works well. For the text: I guess you colored the textboxes for the text to be readable. For me it creates a break with the picture behind it. Have you ever considered putting a colored layer over part of the picture (top, bottom or one of the sides), so that you can put your text over those colored sides? I think it might improve the visuals. (If you don't understand what I mean, because I find it hard to explain, you can have a look at the project I posted in this challenge. Just know that I'm certainly not the best person to show you a good example, but at least you'll get the idea) For the color use: I've been told to keep it to a very limited amount of colors (2) and to use the color... Expand

Namitha Mani
Namitha Mani
Namitha Mani
Katie Gibbs
Melissa Santoso
Kimberly Eng

For this week's challenge, I decided to go back to a story I crafted back in ELHC 293 (character finds treasure map in a book, pursues treasure, gets captured by pirates -- there's a brief recap at the beginning!). I had quite a few ideas I wanted to explore but for time's sake, I just jumped straight into the conclusion. Be sure to check out my flowchart in the comments panel for some of those ideas. :) I love video games where you have to make decisions that influences the outcome of the story (think "Life is Strange" or any games by Telltale Games). I designed the interactive part of my demo based on the controls for those games. I rarely use the keyboard command triggers so it was a good opportunity to try it out. There is also a time limit to force the player to make a quick decisi... Expand

Eric Chamberlin
Angela Walsh
Jenna Petroskey
Jenna Petroskey
Jessie Bernal
Jenna Petroskey
Jessie Bernal