We’ve been doing some work recently at creating e-Learning material around company policies. Typically these documents are really dry, technically worded and full of a lot of directives, “Employees are required to inform the department of any changes in X”, “Managers are obliged to ensure such-and-such a thing happens” – awful (but necessary) stuff like that.

One way to translate these documents into e-Learning is to incorporate some interactivity, the odd quiz and some fresh looking graphics. You might end up with something like this (a very simple example):

The benefits of this approach are that you don’t have to amend the content too much, once you have a framework in place for converting the written words into visual display it can be reapplied to many learning modules without much change. The result is that you can push these out at a fair pace without placing too many demands on yourself or your client.

The only drawback to this approach is that the content remains rather dry – you’re still working with the basic text of the policy and just dressing this up in a way that’s slightly more palatable. If the goal is to really grab the attention of the learners you may want to consider building scenario-based courses or at least building a few scenarios into the standard courses.

Learning By Doing

A scenario places learners in a situation that more closely mimics the environment in which the learning would be applicable. They are asked to make choices and are provided feedback regarding that choice. Immersing the learner in the subject matter in this way can assist greatly in knowledge uptake. It’s more fun for the learner, and being more fun means the course is also more memorable. Compare the previous example to this one:

The use of scenarios requires more work since you have to be more creative in transforming the learning outcomes into a suitable “story”. Also, in the construction of the course, you may require many more graphics and other images that aren’t as easy to come by or make – especially if there is a central character of whom you need many shots at different angles and in different situations. (One way to solve this is to take the pictures yourself of course).

So, scenarios aren’t always the best choice. If you have a tight deadline or a large number of similar modules to release (such as with company policies) you may be better off sticking to something simpler that you can replicate more easily. If you happen to have a training challenge that might be effectively handled by a scenario, go with it. I believe the increase in time and effort will be worth it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 6:50 pm and is filed under Course development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.