This concept project is a scenario-based learning experience designed and developed to help new and experienced educators engage 21st-century learners in the classroom setting.

• Audience: New and experienced educators who are responsible for teaching middle and high school students.

• Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development, Visual Design

• Tools Used: Articulate Storyline 360, Adobe XD, Mindmeister

Overview

Engaging students in today's world is a difficult task for any educator. But there are several strategies that can help teachers reach their students more effectively in the classroom. Whether teachers are in their first year of teaching or have been doing it for years, sometimes just knowing how to engage students is the most helpful tool in the classroom. As a result, I created this experience to support teachers.

By conducting a needs analysis, I confirmed that we could solve this performance issue with a scenario-based learning experience. This learning solution would put the educator in a realistic scenario of a secondary classroom.

Process

I designed and developed this project with the following steps:

• Creating the Action Map

• Writing the Text-based Storyboard

• Designing the Visual Mockups

• Developing the Interactive Prototype

• Finalizing and Publishing the Project

Each section played an important part in developing the fully-functioning learning experience.

Action Map

In this case, I was a Subject Matter Expert (SME) and was also able to talk to other SMEs in my field to develop an action map for the purposes of defining the overall goal for the learning experience. By creating what is essentially a blueprint, we identified the specific tasks and/or actions educators would have to enact to ensure engagement was successful.

Since the project is centered on obtaining the skills necessary to effectively engage 21st-century students, some of the observable actions that we laid out were specific to achieving that goal. Once we prioritized the six key individual actions, those actions would then serve as the six questions that I would use to develop each interaction in the scenario.

After we reviewed and approved the action map, I moved on to the text-based storyboard.

Text-Based Story Board

After the action map was created, I then began working on outlining the learning experience from beginning to end through a text-based storyboard. I used Google Docs since it is a simple cloud-based service that can save my work as needed and keep it organized. My process was pretty straightforward, in that I included every title screen, prompt screen, tip screen, programming notes, and added the verbiage and interaction(s) that would be included on that specific slide.

One of the many benefits of creating the text-based storyboard was that I was able to go through multiple revisions before developing the functioning prototype. After it was fully developed and reviewed, the next step was to jump into Adobe XD and begin designing the look and feel of the learning experience.

Visual Mockup

I used Adobe XD and Adobe Illustrator to design my characters as well as some of my background pieces. I was able to design a learning experience that was not only aesthetically pleasing but also functional for the user in providing a solid user experience. After multiple iterations, I came up with the design as shown below.

Interactive Prototype

The interactive prototype serves as the “first look” at how a project looks and functions. It is not meant to be fully ironed out, but rather, a peek as to what the final product will look like. With everything that I had done up to this point, jumping into Articulate Storyline 360 and developing the interactive prototype based on the mock-ups was a smooth ride. I developed a simple prototype that showed the slide layouts, and button functionality, to collect feedback and iterate as I went. From there, I submitted the prototype for feedback and made revisions as needed. It became a straightforward process of feedback and revision that ultimately led to the fully functioning learning experience.

One of the key features is a feedback report provided at the end of the experience that lets the learner know how well they did with the scenarios. Because I wanted to record each option they chose and provide feedback on whether it was the correct or incorrect answer, the programming needed to function correctly. So, getting feedback during this time was absolutely important. There is also a review feature so users can review what they did well and what they can change for next time.

Full Development

Developing the full–fledged learning experience took a few weeks after completing the prototype. Some notable features in the learning experience included a variable-powered report that provided feedback to the user on how well they did at the conclusion as well as a review of each question for users based on the variables whether they got questions right or wrong.

With the feedback report, it all came down to wanting to provide the user with real-time feedback based on their choices. From there, they would be able to review their choices and the effects of those choices. Whenever the user selected their choice within each scenario, the programming would record their choice and let them know in the report whether it was the correct or incorrect choice. All in all, the report would function as a real-time look at the effects of the users choices.

Results and Takeaways

The fully developed product was well received by my peers and connections made through LinkedIn. Many noted how visually pleasing the design was, how engaging the interactions were, and how useful the feedback report was at the end.

Ultimately, I learned a great deal throughout the design and development of this learning experience. It was my first opportunity to develop a scenario-based learning experience and I owe much of its success to the use of variables and triggers to record the user’s choices to reflect on the feedback report.

Given the next chance, I would like to add the following modification:

• Vyond: Perhaps for a future revision or separate project, I would like to implement Vyond as a tool to make the scenario-based learning experience even more interactive. I think users would find the learning experience even more engaging that way.