A mini-scenario is short, usually just one question. It gives you a realistic challenge, you make your choice, you see the consequence, the end.

However, you need branching only if: There are multiple grey areas -- multiple decision points where people make a judgment call that can pull them on or off track. Decisions made at one point limit or expand the options available at another point. People commonly make a mistake in the process and need to recognize and recover from it later.

This is a common mistake made by people who treat action mapping as a way to organize content. They don't plan to ask, "Why aren't they doing it?" so they don't use verbs. Instead, they just list “what we should cover.” Because they plan to skip the analysis, they'll create training when it's not the right solution, and their activities a

In the example above, we could ask the sheep an additional question, like, "Is there anything you could have done to avoid getting wet?" Simple reactive answers like, "The gaskets that I'm given are defective" or "The software is hard to use" need follow-up questions.

Below are the main symptoms of a too-broad action. It’s a first draft. Most first-draft actions are too broad. You have only a few actions. You couldn’t film someone as they perform the action (it’s not observable). The action takes a long time to complete compared to other actions. You can’t imagine a useful job aid or list of steps for the action

Principles of the "stream of activities" approach 1. Activities help people practice making the decisions that they make on the job, in a realistic context. 2. Activities target common mistakes and support behaviors that will achieve the business goal. 3. Activities target specific job roles and levels of expertise. They aren't expected t

It's a branching scenario if a decision you made earlier affects what you can do later in the story. Many activities that appear at first to be branching scenarios are actually linked mini-scenarios.

First, you need to recognize whether you have a test question or a practice activity. One way to distinguish them is to ask, "Does this actually happen on the person's job?" If the answer is no, you've got a test item.

We also arrange the activities so the earlier ones build the knowledge and experience required by later activities. Our recipe will mix scaffolding (help plus a slow escalation of difficulty) with productive failure (encouraging people jump in and try it if they want).