Chapter 8: Choose Your Own Adventure

In this chapter, you will be choosing the adventure that your students will go on, as they experience your learning materials. There are five stages to the Choose Your Own Adventure Process, but your own process may require more.

Setting the Stage:

Any good adventure needs the foundation and background to motivate the protagonist (your students) to go on an adventure! The best courses need an engaging balance of the following. As you build your course, select at least three of these items to incorporate into your adventure. These things can be used more than once in an adventure!

• Podcasts
• Videos
• Ted Talks
• Open Educational Materials
• Readings
• Comics or Graphic Novels

Go on a quest:

After the foundation has been laid for your students, now they can go on a quest to learn more and begin engaging in the topic. The following ways are just some of the ways students can do that; select at least one of these to incorporate into your adventure. These things can be used more than once in an adventure!

• Collaborative Learning
• Social Media
• Blogs/Vlogs
• AI Bots
• Flipped Classroom
• Memes
• Group Projects

Problem Solving:

Students are interacting with the material, going on their own adventure, but now you need to present a problem. Not all problems are dragons with a gold hoard or evil enchantresses. Provide opportunities for students to experiment, try things, and maybe even fail. Students could also try alternative methods to solve problems. Please select at least one of these to incorporate into your learning adventure. These things can be used more than once in an adventure!

• Games
• Esports
• Outside Learning
• Discussion Forums
• Storyboarding
• Simulations

Taking Some Risks!

All of your students are progressing through their educational adventure and it’s time for the students to take some risks and try new things that maybe are out of their comfort zone (maybe yours, too?). Push them beyond their comfort zone! Students should be able to take the exposition of this adventure and apply it to the problem at this point, just like any good protagonist would do. Please select at least one of these to incorporate into your adventure. These things can be used more than once in an adventure!

• Applied learning opportunities (we know this one is complex!)
• Mobile learning
• Micro learning
• Extended Reality
• Infographics

Transformation!

Now, the cycle has come back to the beginning, where students are considered “full circle”. There should be time for students to reflect and take what they can on to their next adventure. Take a moment to reflect yourself and decide what you want the lasting impression of your course to be for students. Please select one of these items or more to incorporate into your adventure. You can definitely use all of them if you like!

• Reflection assignments
• Renewable assignments
• Student created materials, like
  • Infographics
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Graphics/comics
  • Games
  • Training opportunities
  • and more!