In 4 steps, you can create fantastic scenarios for your e-learning

Often, e-learnings still mainly “send” information. The transmitter transmits information to the receiver. But that's often the case.

The recipient does not (yet) have the opportunity to actually link what he or she has learned online to practice or even put it into practice.

Scenarios can change that!

In this blog, we explain why we love implementing scenarios, how to take the first steps to create your own scenarios, and what to look out for.

Why choose scenarios in your e-learning?

Scenarios bring teaching material to life. Imagine reading an article and watching a video about customer friendliness. In the video, you are also confronted with a situation that is less pleasant: a customer is very aggressive and unfriendly. If you then turn off the video, you may have a bad feeling, but this is gone and that's where the learning experience ends.

What if you can then test the skills you acquired in the customer friendliness training yourself? If you can respond to this customer yourself? But in a safe environment: in the simulation of a scenario.

In theory, a scenario looks something like this:

source: https://elearningindustry.com/why-you-should-be-using-scenarios-in-e-learning‍

The student is thus able to test a number of responses in a safe way, until the response leads to the correct result. An accessible yet very effective way to put theoretical knowledge into practice.

Translating a scenario into daily work practice is a lot easier to make than, for example, translating information in a book into daily work practice.

How do you create scenarios and what should you pay attention to?

Note these four steps:

1. Make it relevant

Before you create scenarios, review your learning objectives again. What goals do students who participate in your training ultimately want to achieve? And how can scenarios contribute to this?

These questions will help you get started:

• What challenges do students face in their current situation?
• What skills need to be developed to meet or solve these challenges?
• Are there certain steps in the student's thinking process that are currently being missed?

Once you have the answers to these questions clear, you can think about which scenario fits this.

Sometimes a scenario can simply be choosing the right solution, but sometimes it can also be more complex, as in the image above - not all people and personalities are the same, and not every option the student chooses, or every choice the student makes, is automatically right or wrong.

2. Make it realistic

• Keep the student's work environment in mind
• Start from the average student; demographic profile, functions and responsibilities, professional ambitions and challenges they face at work
• Develop realistic protagonists that match the people the student is actually dealing with in daily work practice‍‍‍

3. Make the scenario visually appealing

Provide attractive (but realistic) visuals. Visuals appeal and ensure a higher level of student engagement. You can make the visuals realistic by, for example, using the company's logo or a real checkout environment.

You can also use photos, videos, illustrations and Virtual Reality. The better the visuals match daily work practice, the greater the chance that what you've learned will be associated with daily work practice.

4. Act on emotions

An experience where we feel a strong emotion is stored longer and more clearly in our brain than experiences that lacked emotion.

Use this when developing scenarios.

Don't just convey dry knowledge, but relate an emotion to it. Do you feel the difference between these two?

• “this is the right thing to say to a customer in this situation” or
• “if you say this to a customer in this situation, you feel much more confident and you're less likely to have your mouth full of teeth”

Your student will certainly recognise the last emotions and of course wants to get rid of them: that's where the motivation comes from to pay attention: this is what you want to learn!

You can use different types of media to engage the different senses: video, audio (music, voice), images.

You can also use real actors to get the message across with more emotion. Role playing games are ideal for this.

When the actors respond with emotion to an action taken by the student in the screenplay, the outcome of this action sticks much better with the student.

Just imagine: you click on the next step, choose a follow-up action, and a screen comes up that says “incorrect” OR an actor comes into the picture who starts crying, swearing, or suddenly becoming much friendlier: what would you better remember?

In short: adding scenarios to e-learning is an ideal and creative way to bring teaching material to life.

In Pluvo, you can easily create scenarios. Create a free account and discover the benefits.