Scenario-based training in Articulate 360

A while ago I wrote a blog called “Can eLearning save your life?” where I looked at how scenario-based learning can help embed knowledge and behaviour firmly in the minds of the learner. The post talked about the structure of a scenario and how they support the move up through the levels of Blooms Taxonomy. The examples talked about using the branching capability of Articulate Storyline, or Quizmaker, to achieve the navigation required to only show the learning the consequence of their decisions. But now we have a whole load of new tools to play with in Articulate 360 -so how do they stack up in the scenario game?

Obviously, Storyline 360 and Studio 360 have all the same functionality as their standalone cousins so the branching capability in their quizzing elements stands true. And if you plan to deliver your courses on mobile devices the new responsive player makes life easier for the learning by just getting out of the way when needed.

Replay, Peek and Preso can contribute suitable content should the scenario require screencast content but they fall more into the category of contributory tools rather than for a core build. Same for Content Library – the slide templates and characters are perfect for scene-setting but don’t change the mechanics of the scenario in any way.

Rise however may give you options…

Rise comes with several pre-designed interactive choices that can help. In the “Pre-Built Lessons” the quiz element can work if you are happy with your consequences being displayed in the Feedback area.

There are also options in the Block Library in the form of Buttons and Button Stacks.

The buttons allow you to link to any other lesson in your Rise course which enables you to split out your choices and consequences and make use of the other Custom Lesson Blocks that include images, videos and other rich media content.

You may notice your Rise course menu doesn’t have the same hiding facilities as the Storyline or Studio players so learners could navigate to alternate consequences if they chose to, and you’d need to include a quiz to register course completion. But neither of those are too much of an issue – particularly in the informal mobile environment that Rise performs so well in.

And if see those extra pages might cause you a problem you have the option to build each section of your scenario as an individual course and use the button stacks to link to different courses. You can then lock your navigation, which otherwise prevents the stack from skipping to different locations within a single course.

So there you go, you have options to play with now for your scenario-based courses and you can choose the tool the suits your specific project – whatever it may be.

If you want to check out how we did this in Storyline, check out our evacuation scenario,   here. Or if you want to check a working example of a scenario in Rise, check out our complaints handling scenario,   here.