Branching Scenarios and AI
What are branching scenarios? They’re like those choose-your-own-adventure books you may have read as a kid. Learners are placed in a decision-making role, navigating through a series of inter-connected, multiple-choice questions that are often based on a simple story. The nature of a branching scenario is interactive, so it’s a great choice for learner engagement.
BUT!
They’re a lot of work to invent. Here’s where AI can offer Assistance that’s Impressive (forgive me, branching scenarios force my jokes out on a limb…).
You can use ChatGPT, Copilot or another AI text-based app. Consider your audience, the format for your branching scenario and any other requirements you may have. Do you have background information already on your subject or do you want AI to find that information?
When it comes time to draft your prompt, here is a rough prompt with bracketed elements to keep in mind.
“Please create a branching scenario based on the following information to meet the learning objective “[insert learning objective]”. The goal of this scenario is to help [audience] learn about [preference-based branching scenario topic like ‘which level of financial investment risk is right for you?’] OR demonstrate their skill in [acceptable conclusion(s) branching scenario topic like ‘diagnosing patients at a hospital in order of urgency’]. Each question should be a decision point that has three answer options [a best, okay and worst option for acceptable conclusion(s) branching scenarios] that lead to further questions.”
At that point, you’ll need to guide more layers, creating other questions based on previous questions. Christy Tucker presents a story-based approach where AI creates a story scenario and then she directs the decision points as the story unfolds. Explore her post at How to Use AI to Write Scenarios.
Creating a branching scenario is a challenging topic for artificial intelligence, so you will undoubtedly need to do a lot of refining of the prompt answers and the final product. However, having AI help with branching scenario content that you need to refine can take 30 minutes to several hours compared to several days or more if you’re less familiar with either the subject or the format of branching scenarios.
Want to learn more about branching scenarios? The Brightspace Learning Center has a course for that! Learning through Branching Scenarios presents you with different formats, building tools, templates and downloadable job-aids to teach you about creating this learning experience. Read the article and access the link to the course at the end: Learning through Branching Scenarios