A crucial decision an instructional designer must make is determining the amount and type of guidance to provide in SBeL design.
What is Guidance in Scenario-based ELearning Design?
Guidance refers to the overt sources of help IDs provide for learners.
Learners need some form of guidance in SBeL courses to prevent the flounder factor. The flounder factor coined by Ruth Clark refers to unproductive explorations in LOs that result in inefficient learning.
Personally, I’ve completed taken some branching scenario modules and concluded the resolutions don’t make sense to me. I’ve had this experience more frequently with courses designed to teach interpersonal skills.
Learners don’t want to spend time engaging with an LO that results in unproductive explorations and inefficient learning. Consequently, IDs must influence the learning environment by encouraging guided discovery in their design. Guidance provides scaffolding that prevents the flounder factor.
This week at school, we reviewed instructional designs. In my search for LOs, I found this branching scenario.
The intended audience is Instructional Designers. The course focuses on interpersonal skills, and I especially like how the ID minimized the flounder factor by creating an optimal path to arrive at the right solution.
The Challenge with Teaching Interpersonal Skills
Interpersonal skills can be challenging to teach because there isn’t one way to relate or communicate effectively. People may respond in different ways yet arrive at the same outcome. Again, they may respond in similar ways but get different outcomes. Nevertheless, SBeL must be designed so learners can make decisions that reflect intended learning outcomes. Sometimes, this means constraining the real-world response options.
Some of the responses in this scenario have a degree of ambiguity. In this sense, it is no different from other courses I’ve taken in the interpersonal skills domain. What stands out to me is that the ID created an optimal path to the right outcome.
This makes a great deal of sense for two reasons.
- It is possible to be excellent at designing instruction without being able to achieve operational goals because you can’t communicate effectively.
- It is possible to communicate effectively and not reach operational goals because you did not follow an optimal path.
Thus, it is vital to offer optimal paths even if it means constraining real-world responses.
How an Optimal Path Can Help
I am biased towards designs that include wrong or correct answers in addition to an optimal path for arriving at the best possible outcome. I think it minimizes the flounder factor by tying performance outcomes to a prescribed path.
To resolve this scenario, the learner must make decisions in a particular manner:
- Ask open-ended questions
- Analyze the situation
- Build rapport while demonstrating value, and most importantly for this LO, and most importantly;
- Create a roadmap.
What I Like
Aesthetically, I liked the blurred backgrounds. They helped keep me focused on the instruction. Overall, I learned a lot from this course. As an instructional designer, it informs my practice in significant ways:
- First, as an ID, it provides a framework for screening clients.
- Secondly, it reinforces the concept that one pitfall of SBeL is that open-ended environments fail to provide the structure and guidance learners need and
- Thirdly, it gives me a framework to use for eliciting responses when working with SMEs.
Closing Thoughts
Client Screening is an excellent example of an LO in the Interpersonal Domain of ID. The instruction utilizes a lot of purposeful open-ended questions and situation analysis to identify the clients’ requirements. It also accelerates learning for a target audience that already has basic job familiarity. The guidance in this course isn’t overt, but it is enough to minimize the flounder factor.