401 Leveraging Personas to Craft Authentic and Compelling Scenarios

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Wednesday, August 3

Scenario-based learning is a powerful method of learning experience design delivery, however it’s often difficult to know where to start. With a focus on ensuring we fit in all required learning content, it’s easy to find ourselves writing dry, predictable, or stilted scenarios that are noticeably unrealistic to the learners. This is where personas can help bring our narrative scenarios to life.

In this session you will learn about the various components of learner personas while dissecting several examples. You’ll learn how you can strategically use learner personas in the creation of branched narrative scenarios to create learning experiences that learners are receptive to and feel applies to them and their work. You’ll discover the elements of character personas and how you can use them to make scenarios come alive. We’ll discuss a number of character persona examples and how they play out in narrative design. You’ll come away with actionable steps for using learner and character personas to get started designing your own realistic learning scenarios.

Kristin Torrence

Head of Learning Engineering

Talespin

Kristin Torrence serves as the head of learning engineering at Talespin, where she focuses on applying learning sciences, instructional design, and data science practices to design, instrument, and validate XR learning solutions. Her background is in cognitive science, game-based learning, and instructional design and she is particularly interested in the intersection of learning science, XR, and learning analytics. She co-founded XR in LXD, a meetup, and community of practice for IDs/LXDs interested in designing XR, and she is an active member of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN), XR Women, and the IEEE Industry Consortium on Learning Engineering (ICICLE).

Rachael Mueller

Narrative Design Manager

Talespin

Rachael Mueller is the narrative design manager at Talespin. She designs interactive conversation training by drawing on her years of experience in the industry and graduate-level training in language, narrative, and human- computer interaction. Her past work in medical and therapeutic training has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institutes of Mental Health. Rachael is excited to continue creating engaging interactive training that facilitates soft skill mastery, lasting behavioral change, and remarkable real-world outcomes.

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