Designing Effective eLearning Scenarios
Creating effective eLearning scenarios can be tough work. It Is hard to make sure that they cover all of the important details without being overwhelming to learners, and it is even harder to make sure that they are engaging enough to keep learners actively engaged in the eLearning course material.
Here are things you need to know about scenario learning and tips for designing effective eLearning scenarios that will help you create great eLearning courses are engaging, exciting, and informative.
What is an eLearning Scenario?
A scenario is an instructional design technique that enables you to create realistic simulated situations. Scenarios help learners apply what they have learned to real-world scenarios.
eLearning scenarios usually focus on job-related tasks or workplace situations. They guide learners through a set of steps and present different options, each with its own outcome.
What are the benefits of an eLearning Scenario?
When you are about to design an eLearning scenario, you might be wondering what the benefits of creating them are eLearning scenarios when designed correctly, can really improve the effectiveness of your eLearning course.
Some of the top benefits of eLearning scenarios include the following:
· Make learning more realistic
· Get learners involved
· Create active learners
· Engage & empower learners
· Facilitate real learning
· Motivate learners
· Reinforce learning
· Keep learners interested
· Increase retention
· Provide feedback
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12 Tips for Designing Effective eLearning Scenarios
Know your audience’s needs.
The first step to creating effective eLearning scenarios is knowing your audience’s needs.
Each scenario should focus on teaching a specific skill or skill set. To create those scenarios, start by identifying exactly what your audience needs to learn and make sure you address that need completely in your scenario.
For example, if an audience member wants to learn how to manage phone calls more effectively, then you should provide them with an opportunity to do just that.
There’s no point in throwing in some advanced phone etiquette as an afterthought; it will only serve as a distraction.
When you identify what each scenario needs to accomplish, you can design it accordingly by only including topics that are relevant.
Have a learning objectives and goals for your eLearning Scenarios
Before you even get to writing your eLearning scenario, make sure you know what you are trying to teach your users and why. If it is not clear, chances are good that you won’t be able to create a scenario that effectively teaches them.
Your learning objectives need to clearly identify what learners should know or be able to do by taking an eLearning course and how these learning outcomes will impact performance within their job roles or personal lives.
Create a storyboard for your eLearning Scenario
Storyboarding is a great way to get your eLearning scenario down on paper (or digital medium of choice). When creating a storyboard, you are telling a story through pictures, visuals and written text.
A storyboard doesn’t need to be complicated or fancy; it just needs to be clear and easily understood by others. A simple diagram with pictures and labels can do wonders for helping people understand how your eLearning scenario works.
Keep your eLearning Scenarios real
ELearning scenarios are made of real life simulations or examples that help learners understand a particular concept by making it easily applicable to their lives. That is why they are called scenarios.
From time to time, however, many companies or individuals fall short when designing scenarios because they lose sight of reality during conceptualization or run out of ideas during implementation. This often results in misleading lessons that leave no lasting impression on learners.
Create the right characters for your eLearning scenarios
In eLearning scenarios, you should use compelling, high-quality actors to play your characters because how they look and how they act are essential components of their credibility and believability.
Include interactive elements in your eLearning Scenarios
Including some interactivity within your eLearning scenarios can increase learner engagement and facilitate learning. The more active you can make your scenarios, the better.
For example, consider using quizzes to test knowledge as learners work through a course; there’s no better way to see how well your employees know their subject matter than by asking them to apply that knowledge in an exam-like situation.
Maintain Momentum Throughout the eLearning Scenario
Scenario-based eLearning is effective when the scenarios are designed to keep learners' attention throughout each section. Don't allow your scenarios to get bogged down in details that do not promote learning.
Doing so will slow down the pacing of the scenarios and cause learners to disengage with the course material.
Encourage Realistic Behavior in your eLearning Scenarios
Your scenarios should be based on real-world tasks and problems. In other words, you should use your scenarios to encourage realistic behavior in your eLearning content.
If your scenarios are unrealistic, they’ll set users up for failure before they even begin training. Instead of trying to predict every single potential issue a user could run into during their training or experience, focus on one key problem or objective to solve or address with each scenario.
Incorporate Feedback Prompts in your eLearning Scenarios
Feedback is important in any instructional setting, but it is particularly important in eLearning. Since eLearning scenarios are designed to be self-paced, many learners will be using them alone and therefore won’t have a teacher or facilitator to give feedback.
Some of them will simply feel uncomfortable giving themselves feedback and may not know how to go about doing so effectively.
Providing different types of feedback prompts can help get your learners in a more reflective frame of mind, which ultimately helps them learn from their experience.
Test Your eLearning Scenarios with Learners in Real-Time
No matter how diligently you plan, test, and refine your scenarios before putting them into production, there is no substitute for testing them with learners to get their feedback and make any final refinements.
It may seem extreme, but watching what happens during live training sessions is often an eye-opening experience that will point out big problems you might have missed in your planning stage.
Identify Potential Challenges in your eLearning scenarios
It is easy to get excited about developing your eLearning content and dive in head first. But before you begin, take a step back and do some research on the topic to identify potential challenges that may come up.
For example, if you are designing eLearning scenarios that cover international law, it is important to think about how different cultures in countries around the world will interpret your eLearning scenarios.
Are there common pitfalls or issues that commonly arise in these scenarios? You need to understand your audience on a global scale so make sure you are prepared when problems arise during development.
Having an idea of what to expect can help mitigate any potential obstacles during development.
Provide Ongoing Support for Learners
Once you have built an eLearning scenario, make sure you provide support to learners—even if that means just linking them to additional resources.
By putting time and effort into your scenarios, learners will have a more positive experience with your content, and more open-mindedness toward learning from it in future projects.
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Use TheLearning LAB LMS to create high quality eLearning scenarios
TheLearning LAB LMS is one of the most comprehensive eLearning content creation and delivery platforms. Its powerful features provide a seamless, intuitive user experience to create high quality eLearning scenarios, engaging simulations, and real-time score assessment with compelling interactivity.
Your organization can now quickly create interactive learning scenarios with rich media elements that increase engagement. Get in touch with our team today.