Branching scenarios and CYOA for education

1. Choose Your Own
(Learning) Adventure
Tamara Meredith
Laramie, WY
tamarameredith77@gmail.com

2. One of the first
educational
CYOAs in
digital form!
Oregon Trail
(1985)

3. What do we call them?
• Interactive narratives
• Branching scenarios
• “Choose-your-own-adventure”
Characteristics
• Participants have to make choices
• Multiple endings
• Non-linear
• Some endings/choices can result in better or
more valuable (i.e. scores/grades) results
• Often created as case-based scenarios to test
participant knowledge and possible actions

4. Educational Benefits
• Engagement/Emotional investment
• Gamification OR Game-based Learning
• Repetition
• Situated in real-life scenarios/experiences

5. Top 7 Benefits of Scenario-Based Training
1. Scenarios Enable “Failing Forward”:
Providing a safe place to fail helps build the capacity to fix
mistakes as you would in real-life.
2. Scenarios Accelerate Time:
Allowing us to make a decision, implement it and experience its
consequences all within the same exercise.
3.Scenarios Trigger Our Memories:
Creating powerful linkages in the brain
4. Scenarios are a Form of Storytelling:
Making the story relatable improves our retention
5. Scenarios Promote Critical Thinking:
Providing a context to implement our best judgment
6. Scenarios Engage Our Emotions:
Triggering our long and short term memory.
7. Scenarios Provide Shared Context:
Accelerating community building or bonding between people and
improving morale
http://elearninginfographics.com/top-7-benefits-scenario-based-training-infographic/

6. Tips for creating effective CYOAs
• Emotional investment – but
not complex backstory
• Not too many options (KISS)
• Give reasons for
failures/missed questions
• Text – Short? Long? But
create feeling of time passing
http://playwithlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/constrained-branching.png

7. Tools and examples to help you
build your own CYOAs
• Simplest can be built in
PowerPoint with hyperlinks
• Free web tools include:
twinery.org,
writer.inklestudios.com
• Paid/pro tools include:
Articulate Storyline,
Lectora, Adobe Captivate
SmartBuilder
Haji Kamal
(Army)
Twine
Articulate
Storyline

8. References
Aldrich, C. (2012). Simple but effective branching story techniques. Inside Learning Technologies & Skills, (2012), 13-14, 17.
Green, M. C., & Jenkins, K. M. (2014). Interactive narratives: processes and outcomes in user‐directed Stories. Journal of Communication, 64(3), 479-500.
Interactive Narratives. [website]. Retrieved from http://www.interactivenarratives.org/
Kuhlmann, Tom. (2015). The rapid e-learning blog. Retrieved from http://blogs.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/
McAllister, M., Levett-Jones, T., Downer, T., Harrison, P., Harvey, T., Reid-Searl, K., ... & Calleja, P. (2013). Snapshots of simulation: Creative strategies used by Australian
educators to enhance simulation learning experiences for nursing students. Nurse Education in Practice, 13(6), 567-572.
Mundy, D. P., & Consoli, R. (2013). Here be dragons: experiments with the concept of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’in the lecture room. Innovations in Education and
Teaching International, 50(2), 214-223.
Peinado, F., & Gervás, P. (2004). Transferring game mastering laws to interactive digital storytelling. In Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and
Entertainment (pp. 48-54). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Riedl, M. O., & Bulitko, V. (2013). Interactive narrative: an intelligent systems approach. AI Magazine, 34(1), 67-77.
Skov, M. B., & Andersen, P. B. (2001). Designing Interactive Narratives. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Computational Semiotics in Games and
New Media (pp. 59-66).
Vega, K., Fuks, H., & Carvalho, G. (2009). Training in Requirements by Collaboration: Branching Stories in Second Life. In Sistemas Colaborativos (SBSC), 2009 Simposio
Brasileiro de (pp. 116-122). IEEE.