Thursday, June 20, 2013

Anti-Bullying - How to Combine Story with a Compliance Lesson - Tip #18


How do you seamlessly combine a story with technical and compliance content?

Whether you are a technical writer or one who creates stories or even  both, you can follow the same basic approaches featured here to elevate your lessons' engagement level.
 
Anti-Bullying - small sample lesson

Preview the small lesson below and observe how we combined a story with the content. Pay very close attention to the following:

1. In Slide 1, "How Allan Feels" from the 'Indirect Bullying" lesson, how did we write the introduction? Identify both the story elements and the content element?

2. In Slide 2, "Emotional Bullying" from the "Indirect Bullying" lesson, how did we weave the story when writing about the content?

3. In Slide 5, "Back to Allan's Case" from the "Indirect Bullying" lesson, how did we help learners to apply the story and content?

4. In the lesson "Follow-up Assignment", how did we organize the follow-up activity to help the learner?


Please click here to preview the small Anti-Bullying Sample Lesson

http://storypikes.com/rayjimenez/LL/goodwill/demo/story.html

Basic approaches in combining story and content in a small lesson

1. In Slide 1, "How Allan Feels" from the 'Indirect Bullying" lesson, we started with a statement about "bullying" and then we immediately introduced the case of Allan. This is the story content.

2. In Slide 2, "Emotional Bullying" from the "Indirect Bullying" lesson, we referred to Allan's case as a reference point.

3. In Slide 5, "Back to Allan's Case" from the "Indirect Bullying" lesson, we asked the learner to reflect on Allan's case.

4. In the lesson "Follow-up Assignment", we introduced more details and specific company forms and policies to help the learner apply the ideas.


Other pointers:

1. Use the story ideas to create titles and navigation labels. Instead of the generic lesson 1 learning objectives, we used "How Allan Feels".

2. Always refer to or write about the content using the context of the story.

3. See the marked difference in lesson readability when you make Allan a reference point.

When you apply the approaches mentioned above, you will begin to see the ease, comfort and usefulness of your compliance lessons.

Your learners will have more fun and learn your lessons better.  

Ray Jimenez, PhD
Vignettes Learning
"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"http://storytakes.com/output/4585/1327/index.html

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