In 2024, PathWise Solutions had the opportunity to work with the Community Social Services Bargaining Association (CSSBA) to create an innovative course dedicated to helping its members build respectful relationships and manage conflict in the workplace.
It’s All in the Delivery: Moving from Face-to-Face to Asynchronous Learning
In the past, CSSBA offered the Building Respectful Relationships course as an in-person, day-long seminar. While this style of training had many advantages, one of its major drawbacks was reach. The CSSBA had over 19,000 members located across the province. Trying to gather them together for a day-long seminar was never going to work!
To solve this problem, CSSBA decided to transition to an online, asynchronous format, which would allow its members to take the course at a time and place of their choosing.
However, this created another problem: how to transform live instruction into an online format while retaining the same level of depth and interactivity? To address this dilemma, CSSBA relied on PathWise Solutions’ years of experience in delivering high-quality e-learning content for both the public and private sectors.
Lost in Translation: Transforming a Pre-existing Course into a Custom-designed E-learning Experience
Because this was a course adaptation of previous training, we confronted two issues regarding the course design that needed to be addressed:
- How could we convert the course to an online format without losing the richness of the in-person experience?
- Were there any aspects of the in-person training that could be digitally re-envisioned in a way that was worthwhile?
After carefully reviewing the existing course, we saw an opportunity present itself. Some of the seminar’s in-person activities could be replicated using Articulate Storyline to create user interactions that moved beyond standard click-and-read functionality. In addition, we could introduce custom-built activities that offered learners a chance to express themselves in ways normally confined to live experiences.
So, you may be wondering: what did this look like in practice?
Charting a New Path: Crafting an Updated Course Designed to Engage the Learner
To begin, let’s start with some examples where we adapted effective seminar exercises to the online course:
1. Reflecting on Privilege
In this seminar activity, attendees were instructed to stand in a line. They were then asked a series of questions about privilege. Based on their answers, they either took a step forward, backward or remained in place. As they continued to answer questions, each person saw other attendees moving either in front of or behind themselves; a powerful (albeit awkward) demonstration of the reality of privilege.
To translate this activity, we created a digital scene in which the learner took control of an avatar, standing amidst other non-player characters (NPCs). As the learner answered the questions, they could see their avatar moving in relation to the NPCs, conveying the same idea as the original (without feeling observed or judged by others).
2. Working Through Conflict
In this activity, attendees formed into pairs. One person raised an issue of conflict with the other, and the two attempted to resolve the conflict using resolution techniques learned in the course. Each person was asked to be respectful, but as realistic as possible throughout the exercise.
To replicate this, we created a scenario where the learner played a character being criticized by an NPC. After each critique, the learner was given options on how to respond. The NPC then responded either positively or negatively based on the learner’s choice. A gauge at the top measured the level of hostility as the scene progressed. To maintain a sense of realism, the NPC’s responses were randomized, but weighted towards the learner’s answer. For example, if the learner responded calmly, the NPC was more likely to calm down, but not necessarily. In the end, the learner received information analyzing how well they succeeded in de-escalating the conflict.
3. Your Vision of a Respectful Workplace
Another activity in the seminar required attendees to imagine their own idea of a respectful workplace. After discussing it in groups, they had to determine what it would take to make that vision a reality.
We felt that this exercise would serve as a powerful way to end the course, presenting a chance to think hopefully about creating a respectful workplace. To adapt this, we presented a number of elements that could help create a respectful workplace. Each element was associated with certain qualities. As the user chose the elements, the qualities were recorded and ranked. The top three then triggered specific videos showing them in action, allowing the user to see their vision play out before their eyes. This exercise proved difficult to execute, but we were able to utilize AI technology to help generate the javascript necessary to make it work.
Bringing Learning to Life: A Character-Driven Approach
In addition to adapting exercises from the seminar, we designed the course around several ideas to create a cohesive and rewarding experience:
– A unified story
Meet Nadya, Linh, and David; three characters working at a fictional community services office. Early on, we felt it was important to explore the content from the point of view of employees representing a broad spectrum of power, privilege and identity, making them effective embodiments of the course material. Through these characters, learners could experience the content in a more practical context, seeing how issues played out in a simulated work environment.
– Graphic and Visual Novel Design
Because the story of Nadya, Linh and David was so central to presenting the course material, we decided to adopt a visual design based around graphic and visual novels.
Sometimes, presenting content as walls of text can create a barrier to learning by separating information from context. By incorporating graphic novel design concepts, we presented information in ways that showed how it related to the real world.
Visual novels are a style of media that displays enlarged images of characters speaking in the foreground, while the overall scene is shown in the background. For the many scenarios and activities used throughout the course, we found this style presented an effective way of presenting story beats while drawing attention to what the characters were saying and feeling.
– Interactive Scenarios
Throughout each of the course’s five modules, learners had a chance to review the course material while interacting with Nadya, Linh and David. However, it was at the end of each module where users had a chance to move the overall story forward as they put what they learned into practice.
Each scenario spanned a number of scenes that paused at specific points to allow the learner to choose their response. Their choice impacted how the scene proceeded. Scenarios allowed users to test their knowledge and receive feedback not limited to right or wrong answers. The result was a more grounded quiz, hidden within the story itself.
Final Thoughts and Looking Forward
The Building Respectful Relationships course offered PathWise Solutions an opportunity to present a course packed with rich and meaningful content. We successfully replicated aspects of the in-person seminar while introducing updated content, engaging learners and helping them to more fully realize what it took to create a workplace based on respectful relationships.
Moving forward, we are excited about the opportunity to apply what we learned in creating this course to future projects, always with the goal of providing learners with the best educational experience possible, equipping them with the knowledge and skills necessary to excel in their careers.
