Monday, March 13
2:30 PM-5:00 PM
CDT
Astor Ballroom 2

W9: Crafting engaging and impactful interactive stories

Workshop (F2F) ID: 61797
  1. aaa
    Caroline Moore
    University of New England
  2. aaa
    Amy Wright
    University of New England

Abstract: An Instructional Designer and a Game Designer walk into a room and are presented with a quest. Their goal: create a simulation to practice Emergency Management skills. The outcome: a multi-week branching scenario that remembers and builds on the choices of the students over a seven-week course. In the first week, students assume the role of an Emergency Manager and make crucial decisions with consequences they see in future weeks. Deciding on that scenario was the easiest part for the designers; but then they had to figure out how to build it. Interactive stories have been a part of education for decades and can be a powerful method of building gamification and substantial practice into a curriculum. Using adult learning theory, courses, or parts of courses, incorporate authentic stories that give students a safe place to explore new concepts. Not every course will be a good fit for interactive storytelling, but we have been able to successfully deploy it across multiple academic disciplines and want to share what we have learned. In this workshop, we will create outlines for compelling choice-based narratives. With accessibility in mind, we will examine the elements of a good scenario and explore options for its delivery. In small groups, attendees will reimagine a well-known story, construct a series of choices, and create an outline to use as a template for future interactive story-building.

Objectives

We have identified the following learning objectives that attendees should take out of our workshop: • Recognize opportunities for using interactive stories in learning environments • Reimagine a well-known story to include opportunities for choices • Outline the major plot points of a branching scenario • Plan the next steps for bringing the story to life Our aim is to have attendees leave with the ability to recognize when and how to incorporate interactive choices into stories for their own educational purposes. There are many platforms to host these scenarios, but the most important part is creating the story to have both the ability to incorporate choices and a well-structured narrative.

Topical Outline

Introductions • What is an interactive story? • Quick demo of a finished story • When and why interactive stories could be used to enhance learning experiences Part 1: Select a story • We will provide a few options for attendees to adapt • Break down story into scenes and identify potential endings (small groups) Part 2: Building in choices • Presentation on different structures of interactive stories (bottleneck vs many different paths) • Flowchart examples and best practices w/ digital examples from multiple programs • How to think of choices and how to build branches • Create an analog flowchart (small groups) Part 3: Construct the story • Demonstrate flat file and linking within a document • Fill in the exposition and choices • Create the outline of the major plot points and branches of your story in a template (time-dependent) Conclusion: • Spectrum of next steps depending on time, resources, and interest

Prerequisites

N/A

Experience Level

Beginner

Qualifications

Both Caroline and Amy work as Instructional Designers at the University of New England’s Online college. They create interactive learning experiences for a variety of course types, including working together on the semester-long interactive scenario that inspired this workshop. Caroline has degrees in Film Studies from Barnard College and Design and Development of Digital Games from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has a passion for games-based learning and creating interactive digital experiences and has worked as an Instructional Designer for over 2 years, acted as a Subject Matter Expert on a course centered around developing multimodal learning experiences. She currently acts as the point person for building scenarios on the instructional design team. Amy Wright is an Instructional Designer with the University of New England’s College of Graduate and Professional Studies. She transitioned to instructional design after nearly 20 years in public K-12 education, where she worked both in special education and as a high school social studies teacher. She has extensive experience in curriculum design, differentiated instruction, and interdisciplinary collaboration, and she has presented on developing classroom-community connections and integrating educational technology in K-12 social studies education.

Topics

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