“What does this have to do with me?” is the question learners often ask when taking Elearning. Many instructional designers struggle when faced with dry or dense content. Often, the training feels disconnected from learners’ day-to-day work. Because learners view it as irrelevant, they’re less likely to remember their training and less motivated to change their behavior. What you need is a way to help learners recognize the relevance of the elearning you create—and, you hope, to improve performance.

In this session, you’ll learn how to create relevant and authentic scenarios to enhance your elearning and improve performance. First, you’ll learn tips for creating characters who learners can identify with and recognize from their workplace. Next, you’ll see different techniques to “set the scene” and create an authentic context for the scenario through both language and media. You’ll learn how crafting realistic challenges and conflicts helps engage learners and drive the scenario forward. Finally, you’ll see how giving learners opportunities to make decisions with consequences in authentic scenarios helps elearning feel immediately relevant. You’ll leave this session with an approach to weaving different aspects of scenarios together to bring your elearning to life.

Christy Tucker is a learning experience design consultant with over 20 years of experience helping people learn. She specializes in using scenario-based learning to engage audiences and promote skill transfer to real-world environments. She has created training for a wide range of clients, including Fortune 500 companies, nonprofit associations, state and local government agencies, universities, and more. Christy has been blogging about instructional design and elearning for over 15 years and is a regular speaker at industry conferences and events.