Examples of dramatic structure in e-Learning simulations
These two simulation designs include most of the key elements of dramatic structure as well as structured content, instructional design, and game play. The design diagram that follows each example summarizes ways to build dramatic structure into simple, cost-effective simulations for building communications and analytic skills.
Communication skills in selling
The first simulation, designed for CD-ROM, focuses on interpersonal and communications skills used in conversations (in this case sales, but customizable for management and customer service discussions and negotiations).
To keep this article to a practical length, I have not summarized one of my favorite simulation structures — a four-day on-site leadership development simulation for executives of a major medical center. In that simulation, the only media used was an actress with a cell phone. But that simulation also included the same elements of dramatic structure as in these examples.
The navigation map in Figure 4 shows the events in the CD-ROM simulation outlined in Table 1. The simulation can be used for sales, management, or customer service conversations, particularly when your budget is low and development time must be fast. Although the simulation would be more interesting if you can put the customer comments in digital audio or video, we found that just showing the customer’s face and comment in a cartoon speech balloon held attention. The only development resources used, besides my work as e-Learning designer and writer, were a programmer who knew Macromedia Director and a computer artist working with Photoshop and Illustrator.
Figure 4 Navigation map for e-Learning CD-ROM with simulated conversations
Simulation of strategy analysis and decision making (Intranet)
This next simulation focuses on analytic skills and strategic decision making. (See Table 2.) Sales reps often must analyze the market in their territory, group the customers and prospects in their territory into market segments, plan ways to develop accounts, evaluate expected value, schedule visits, and make strategy decisions. Managers (including Customer Service and Call Center managers) perform many analytic and strategic planning tasks including the design of job descriptions and assignment of responsibility areas, planning recruitment and orientation/training efforts, developing job descriptions and responsibility areas, project planning and monitoring, budgeting and forecasting, and so on.
| The Storyline and Gameplay | First Activity Dramatic Structure |
| The participant, a newly promoted manager, receives emailed congratulations for the promotion to management and a link to the simulation where there is a description of several pending challenges and crises that the manager may have to deal with, suggestions to check out the Resource section, and instructions to meet with the new manager’s administrative assistant. We presented the conversation with the Admin as a text transcript of her chatty conversation, but, with more budget and fewer security walls, it could be audio or video. | Opening Set Up
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| The Admin talks about the staff, briefs the manager on the different personalities, and, in the course of what seems just chatty, maybe even a time waster, mentions an old lady who isn’t even a client, but who wants free advice about investments and has admitted that she has no money to invest. Just after the Admin warns the new manager to avoid the woman because she’s a major time-waster, the manager is given a more interesting assignment than meeting with the old lady — to read over staff files to get to know who’s who. | Obstacles/conflicts |
| If the manager follows the guidelines in the Resources section that recommend meeting everyone who comes to the branch regularly whenever possible, and clicks on the old lady in order to meet everyone stopping by the branch, the manager will discover the woman is the volunteer leader of a local association of retired people. If the manager does not click on the old lady, a major opportunity to expand market share is lost. The woman has no money to invest herself, but is looking for speakers because many of her members have retirement savings they want to invest as profitably as possible. | Main event: crisis/climax Resolution |
With guidance from interactive designer and e-Learning consultant Hal Christensen of Christensen/Roberts Solutions, I wrote this simulation for the Intranet of a client that had a relatively low budget and strong desire for highest possible quality. Security firewalls added to the challenge: No software to develop or run the simulation, only HTML; no plug-ins or add-ons; and no audio or video. But don’t forget the high quality.
The action in this simulation was a series of management challenges. Dr. Timothy Garrand points out in Writing for Multimedia and the Web that digital story telling and games often are structured into levels of increasing complexity. Within any one level, there may be many non-linear activities so that participants have the opportunity to navigate their own paths through those activities (or even to skip some) and basically, play. But movement from one level to the next is actually a linear progression to more and more difficult challenges, or to similar challenges with gradually fading prompts and support. Garrand calls this the “string of pearls architecture.”
We structured the simulation that follows as a series of assignments that increase in difficulty, each with its own version of dramatic structure. While in the assignment, participants can click on any people and icons they think might help them, in any sequence. And they can skip some. They have completed the assignment and can move on to the next level when they make a key decision and submit their analysis on a worksheet ... or when time runs out (the assignments took about an hour to complete but were posted on the Intranet for a week.)
Examples of Other Weekly Assignments in the Simulation
In one assignment, the participant/manager is instructed to go to a file to review financial reports and figure out how to resolve a problem that borders on ethics — back-dating orders. If the manager invests money in an expensive training program to explain regulations, that backfires because it turns out all financial people know the law ... they are afraid of losing their clients if they don’t backdate. If the manager first clicks on some of the culprits to interview — not accuse — it becomes clear that the backdating will stop if the manager makes it very clear that there will be consequences for backdating, but not for losing a client just for obeying the law.
In another assignment, the manager finds out that the staff is complaining that a high producing staff member gets too many special privileges. Although this is the firm’s policy, the manager must figure out a way to retain the privileges but resolve the concerns of staff members without lowering their morale or causing them to leave for a competitor’s firm that has been trying to raid them.
In a third assignment, the manager receives a complaint from a major client about a serious mistake made by the financial advisor who blames the operations clerk who blames the customer who actually did cause the problem. The manager has no information at the start and must try to figure out what’s going on, and then resolve it without losing client or staff.
We developed each assignment from interviews with actual managers about the most challenging situations that typically confront branch managers. See Figure 5 for the content shown on the home page of the firm’s Intranet.
Figure 5 Home page for e-Learning simulation — Strategy Analysis and Decision-Making
Summary
When you’ve finished plotting your simulation’s storyline, game play, instructional units and content, you review it for continuity, pacing, logic and an arc of increasingly difficult or interesting challenges. In Making a Good Script Great, Linda Seger gives questions to help storytellers make sure the story drives towards the main goal. For e-Learning, we can adapt her questions to ones such as, “How does the opening activity preview the goal and support both the storyline in the simulation as well as the learning objectives?” or, “Who in the company can help us develop content for this case situation and assignment that reflects on-the-job realities?” (See Figure 6 for some criteria for assessing your design for an e-Learning simulation.)
Figure 6 Criteria for effective e-Learning simulation designs
Because you know your storyline, the odds are you will need to fill in some gaps and tweak the logic. Before you go into full development mode, try it out with others who can help strengthen the simulation by letting you know where they are confused. Don’t get discouraged. Assume you will have to write at least three drafts, each of them a little closer to the final version. Be sure to ask the hard questions outlined in Figure 6 — and be sure that you have confidence in the answers.
As Michael Shrage points out when discussing much more technical simulations: “While it may seem excessive for every prototype or simulation to have its own mission statement, it is the essence of good management to explain how the benefits of the proposed model will unambiguously outweigh the costs of building and using it. You know you have a successful prototype when people who see it make useful suggestions about how it can be improved.” (Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate)
By now you may be wondering, “Why bother developing a simulation rather than just put together a quick PowerPoint presentation that tells employees or new hires what they need to know or do, and add a few case exercises to make sure they got it?” That will help you check off the “Training Program Needed” item on your To Do list and give you a visual aid for your next Performance Appraisal meeting with your own manager.
And you’ll lose an opportunity to change the lives as well as the performance of sales reps, managers or customer service specialists, most of whom want to meet or exceed performance standards for their jobs. They’ll absorb as much as they possibly can from lectures, read anything that looks even remotely helpful, and try like mad to figure out how to apply what they learned as they struggle to keep up with increasing workloads and competitive pressures. But as soon as today’s corporate warriors leave an online or onsite training session, many are immediately under fire and revert quickly to familiar reactions and work patterns. Forget figuring out how to transfer what they learned into the recommended conversations or strategic analysis models — few employees have time to think about what they learned before they must make decisions, negotiate alternatives, resolve crises and conflicts. “Review that slide deck and skill model? Who has the time?! Besides, nothing anticipated this situation!”
This article has examined one way to prepare employees for the ambiguity, unpredictability, and sometimes mind-numbing pressures too often found in today’s workplace. Think about the impact on employees’ performance after they have plunged into a simulation of on-the-job challenges with a strong dramatic structure. Instead of just listening and responding to school-like exercises with a few unconnected role-play cases, they have learned their jobs by doing their jobs in a safe, supportive, but challenging environment where they could make continuous improvements. They have practiced dealing with the unexpected, empathized with the motivations of the people embroiled in difficult encounters, and strategized ways to handle obstacles and conflicts. They have analyzed job crises through the eyes of people on conflicting sides. Instead of blaming or antagonizing, participants have a better understanding of what others involved need, want, and fear. Because of your simulation, employees will have improved their performance on-the-job, not just in the classroom — sales reps can overcome prospects’ objections to offers, managers can produce better results, customer customer service specialists can serve and retain even the toughest customers. These types of performance improvements can translate into ROI for the organization ... and into a better quality of work life for the human beings working in that organization.
