AuthoringTips

Authoring can be an exciting experience. Bringing an idea to reality is thrilling.

In this article, we'll share some of the best practices we have accumulated, and we'll be regularly updating it, empowering you, the author, the best chances to write a series worth spreading.

Learning objective

For something to be a success, it needs to have a clear objective. The same goes for a learning experience. What do you want your players to learn? What do you want them to take away from the experience?

Once you have a clear objective, it will be easier to write the content and make sure you are on track.

Here are some examples for inspiration:

• Leadership Development: By the end of this leadership program, participants will enhance their leadership competencies, including emotional intelligence, decision-making, and team-building, enabling them to effectively lead and inspire others.
• Digital Marketing Strategies: After this course, participants will understand digital marketing channels, such as social media, content marketing, and email campaigns, and be able to create data-driven marketing strategies to reach and engage target audiences.
• Cybersecurity Awareness: Through this cybersecurity awareness program, participants will develop a strong understanding of potential cyber threats, best practices for data security, and how to safeguard personal and organizational information.
• Project Management Fundamentals: After this training, learners will understand the core principles of project management, including project planning, scheduling, budgeting, and risk management, preparing them to effectively lead and contribute to successful projects.
• Effective Communication Skills: After completing this training, learners will demonstrate improved verbal and written communication skills, enabling them to articulate ideas clearly, engage with diverse audiences, and present information persuasively.
• Conflict Resolution and Negotiation: By the end of this workshop, attendees will be equipped with conflict resolution strategies and negotiation tactics, enabling them to handle conflicts constructively and achieve win-win outcomes in various professional settings.

Episodes structure

In crafting an engaging and impactful learning experience, we find ourselves guided by the time-tested golden rule of presentations:

• Tell them what you are going to tell them
• Tell them
• Tell them what you told them

This simple yet powerful principle serves as a compass, steering educators, content creators, and storytellers towards a structure that captivates and enlightens the audience. To ensure a seamless and enriching journey, we wholeheartedly recommend that the overarching structure of your episodes embraces this wisdom.

Episode content

We've come to notice through experience that there are 3 main episode structures that work well:

• Welcome & Intro & Immerse
• Classic episode
• Conclusion or Debrief

Intro

In the opening segment, it is essential to welcome participants and set the stage for an engaging experience. Clearly explain the learning objectives and the significance of the topic at hand. Immerse learners in a captivating narrative, allowing them to step into a role or scenario that sparks their curiosity and interest.

• Welcome the student
• Introduce the topic
• Tell them what they will learn
• Immerse them into the story (e.g., You are the CEO of a company, the company is a bleeding-edge tech company, etc.)

Classic

The classic episode structure is akin to a scene in a movie, a company meeting, or even a role-play. For a memorable learning experience, you can draw inspiration from Joseph's Campbell Hero journey or the McKinsey SCQA framework.

• Situation: Explore the current setting, identify the problem, and establish the context. Are the participants in a meeting? Who is present?
• Complication: Delve into the complications and challenges that arise in the given situation, paving the way for critical thinking and problem-solving.
• Question: Frame the central question or challenge that learners must tackle throughout the episode, stimulating their curiosity and encouraging active engagement.
• Answer: Provide a satisfying answer to the question, allowing learners to grasp key insights and valuable takeaways.

Conclusion

The concluding segment is a crucial moment where learners consolidate their understanding and prepare for the next steps in their learning journey. Summarize the key learnings to reinforce knowledge retention and offer a clear call to action, motivating participants to apply their newfound knowledge in practical scenarios.

• Summarize what they learned
• Give them a call to action (What should they do next? What should they learn next? What should they think about next?)

This structured approach ensures that your episodes are well-rounded, captivating, and impactful, leaving a lasting impression on learners as they embark on a transformative learning adventure.

Example of a classic episode

Episode title: Rescuing the Failing Startup

In this classic episode, you will step into the shoes of a seasoned entrepreneur, Alex, as they embark on a journey to rescue a struggling tech startup. Your task is to apply your business acumen and problem-solving skills to turn the company's fortunes around.

Situation: The current situation is dire. The tech startup, "InnovateTech," which once held great promise, is now on the verge of collapse. The company is bleeding cash, losing customers, and facing fierce competition in the market. Alex, the newly appointed CEO, gathers the core team in the conference room for an emergency meeting.

Complication: As the team analyzes the situation, they identify several complications. The previous management lacked a clear vision and made misguided decisions. The product offerings are outdated, failing to meet customer needs. Moreover, the company's morale is at an all-time low, affecting productivity and creativity.

Question: The pressing question the team needs to answer is, "How can we turn InnovateTech into a thriving and competitive tech player once again?"

Answer: To address the challenges, Alex and the team devise a comprehensive strategy. The team identifies the company's strengths and weaknesses, assesses the market, and develops a clear vision for the future. They also create a roadmap to achieve their goals and execute the plan.

Notes: Throughout the episode, the players interact with Alex and the team, making crucial decisions at various junctures. Their choices impact the outcome of the rescue mission, adding an element of excitement and engagement to the learning experience.

By following the classic episode structure and drawing inspiration from Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey and the McKinsey SCQA framework, players not only learn valuable business principles but also experience the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship in a dynamic business context.

General tips

Chats

We offer various chat types to effectively convey your learnings. To ensure engagement and effectiveness, consider the following rules of thumb for almost all chat formats:

• Keep them relatively short: It's generally best to keep the chats concise, aiming for a length that could fit inside a Tweet. While there can be exceptions to this guideline, brevity helps maintain player interest.
• Alternate: To prevent monotony and keep players engaged, incorporate different chat formats. While text is essential, intersperse questions, images, gifs, or videos approximately every ~4-8 chats. This interactive element encourages player participation. Additionally, you can enhance the chats by interjecting images, files, or other multimedia content to diversify the learning experience.
• Sprinkle some questions: Questions are a great way to keep the player engaged and make sure they are following along. We recommend that you sprinkle some questions throughout the episode. You can also use them to make sure the player is following along and understands the material. If they answer incorrectly, you can give them a badge to go over the subject and explain it in further detail.

Duration

Whether you choose an "Episode" or a "Series", we don't recommend that an Episode last much longer than 10-15mins. Breaking it up allows the player to take a breath and make it clear what the learning is for each section. We have an algorithm on the bottom of the "Edit chat" content that creates a time estimate for you and gives you a rough idea.

Characters

Characters are great to build immersion and context. From our experience though, you usually don't want to use more than 3-4 characters per episode. Especially early on in the series.

It is worth introducing the main characters through chat content type "Context" so that the user is not lost trying to figure out who is who. We've seen some authors include a tagline or position in the display name to make the process of remembering the characters easier.

Badges

Badges are an incredibly powerful tool, and like all powerful tools, they should be used with some caution, or at least a proper understanding for a smooth experience, both for you, the author, and the player.

You can use badges for:

• Personalized learning journey: The best way to make sure every player completely understands your teachings. If a player answers a question incorrectly, you can give them a badge to go over the subject and explain it in further detail. Keeping everyone engaged and on the same level.
• Different storylines: Make the players' decisions have an impact on the series and feel like their choice matters.
• Different roles: Do you want your players to have different roles in the series? No problem, assign them different badges. This allows your players to organize into teams and have different information and requiring them to talk to each other to get the full picture.
• Different industries/subject: You can ask the player to choose different industries or subjects at the start and tailor the content for that.

We go into further details in another article, but here is the gist, Authoring with badges can become extremely complex. The easiest way to use it is to imagine a highway (which represents your main story thread), and have some exits from time to time to dive deeper into the subject if required (personalized learning journey) and have them join back the main highway afterward.

Conclusion

Following these rules of thumb should get you started on your journey to build a great learning experience for your players.