Designing with our learners front-and-centre, acknowledging their challenges and the client’s aims for their eLearning, Emily was led down a games-based learning design route. 

“The more I considered the topics that we were going to be teaching and the audiences we were trying to reach, the more a games-based approach made sense,” says Emily. 

“The first three modules in the microlearning series were centred around supporting students to think about their communication skills, the power of networking, and the importance of market awareness. The MEC team were incredibly helpful in providing us with a raft of information on each topic, and it felt initially like they may have been expecting a sort of generic microcourse for each of them – almost like an interactive workbook on “What is communication?”. But we work with an activity-first approach, and this allowed me to review the content and really consider how we could make it more impactful and relevant to our learners. 

“It sounds simple when you say it, but we communicate every day – face to face and online – so I really questioned the benefit of going down the traditional route and teaching students about what communication is. They already know what it is; what would keep them interested is learning about the opportunities it opens up, and how to do it well in different contexts. 

“Not only this, but I couldn’t help but feel like a traditional, textbook-based piece of eLearning would negatively impact the client’s KPIs as well, given the fact that this would not be a compulsory module, and we’d be competing for our students’ attention against social media and other distractions. 

“It needed to be visually impactful, but it also needed to include a compulsive, gamified storytelling element to give learners something emotive to connect with and see themselves as players in each story. It needed to give them autonomy to make decisions and learn from them, having the space to fail and interacting with different characters along the way. 

“I really felt like this approach would help the department to hit their KPIs much more effectively than a standard microcourse approach. Not only that — it would be much more enjoyable for their learners as well. But I was also aware that this solution was potentially very different to what they’d initially had in mind. 

“So I pitched three different options to them; still taking on board everything they had supplied, but treating their content slightly differently with each option. The first option took the shape of a traditional learning module that they’d sort of expected, and then I gave them a completely immersive storytelling experience, which was almost the opposite of the first. It took the content that the client had supplied and reframed it, speaking to each of the key points but encouraging learners to put their understanding of those key points into practice, and doing so in a way that wouldn’t feel like they were being spoon-fed. 

“Then I supplied a third option, which leaned largely towards the immersive side, but incorporated some of the educational framing and context from the traditional approach to really hammer home the key learning points. It was a bit of a halfway house – some traditional content interspersed with episodes of interactive story —  and I think it was the perfect mix because if we’d had gone completely down the traditional route, there was a real risk that students would switch off, and if we’d have gone down the completely experimental gameplay route, it could have left some students saying, “Well, that was fun, but what am I supposed to have gained from it?”. With the approach we took, they got the best of both worlds.”