eLearning scenarios work best when learners recognise the pressure, uncertainty and small frustrations of their actual job. A good scenario does more than present the right answer. It reflects the real decisions people make at work, including the messy details that never quite fit into a policy document.
The “tile manager in Tamworth” problem
A few years back I sat in a review session for a customer service module we’d built for a large retail client. The scenario opened with a customer returning a faulty product. Polite enough setup. The SME watched it through, paused, and said, “Yeah, but no one returns things like that. They come in two days before Christmas with no receipt, the kid’s already opened the box, and they’re filming us on their phone.”
That sentence rewrote the whole module. And it taught me something that’s shaped every piece of custom eLearning development I’ve worked on since: the scenario you write from a job description is not the scenario your learners live in. It’s a sketch. The real version has weather, mess, time pressure, and someone’s manager hovering nearby.
Why generic scenarios quietly fail
Most underperforming scenario-based modules aren’t bad because the instructional design is wrong. They’re bad because they’re set in a workplace that doesn’t exist. The customer is reasonable. The colleague is available. The system works. The learner clicks through, picks the obviously correct answer, and learns nothing they didn’t already know.
Learners detect this instantly. I’ve watched frontline staff in usability sessions roll their eyes within fifteen seconds of a scenario opening. Not because the information is inaccurate, but because it feels too polished. Real work isn’t smooth. The moment a scenario sands off the friction, your audience knows you don’t understand their job, and they switch off for the rest of the module.
Recognition is the engine of scenario-based learning. If a learner doesn’t see themselves in the situation in the first ten seconds, the rest of the interaction is theatre.
Getting the right detail out of SMEs
Most SMEs, when you ask them to describe a typical scenario, will give you the policy version. The clean one. The one that matches the procedure document. That’s not their fault. They’ve been trained to describe work that way, especially in government and regulated industries where saying the messy thing out loud feels risky.
Your job in stakeholder interviews is to get past the policy answer. A few approaches that actually work:
Ask about the most recent example, not the standard process. “Can you talk me through a recent complaint that was difficult to handle?” will usually reveal the real-world mess. “How do you normally handle complaints?” is more likely to give you the official process. The first question gets you the angry customer who’d been on hold for forty minutes. The second gets you nothing useful.
NDAsk what new starters get wrong. SMEs are often more comfortable talking about the mistakes others make than explaining how they make decisions themselves. The answers are gold. “New people always assume the supplier will call back the same day” tells you exactly what assumption your scenario needs to challenge.
Ask what they wish the procedure said but doesn’t. This question surfaces the unwritten rules that experienced staff use to navigate edge cases. That’s the content your scenarios should be built around, because that’s where behaviour change actually happens.
Talk to people two levels below your sponsor. The L&D manager commissioning the project usually isn’t the person doing the work. Speak directly with the team leader and a few people doing the frontline work. Even thirty minutes each will change your storyboard.
The detail that makes a scenario feel real
Once you’ve got the raw material, the craft is in choosing which details to keep. Not all specifics help. Some make the scenario feel local without making it feel true.
Useful detail tends to be situational and emotional. The customer who’s been transferred three times already. The colleague who’s on leave when the question comes in. The form that won’t submit because someone hasn’t ticked a box on a different page. The supervisor who said “use your judgement” last week and now wants to know why you used your judgement.
Less useful detail is cosmetic. Changing the character’s name from Sarah to Aroha or setting the scene in Geelong instead of “a regional office” doesn’t create recognition by itself. It just localises a generic scenario. Recognition comes from the dynamic, not the demographics.
For a recent public sector induction we built, the strongest scenario wasn’t about a policy breach or a difficult stakeholder. The scenario followed a new starter who was suddenly copied into an email thread packed with acronyms they didn’t recognise, unsure whether to admit they were confused or quietly look everything up themselves. Every learner in the pilot group recognised that moment. Every one of them.
Why the discomfort is the point
Here’s where I’ll push back on a piece of received wisdom: scenarios shouldn’t always be solvable in a satisfying way. A lot of compliance and WHS training falls flat because every option leads to a tidy outcome with a green tick or a polite correction. That’s not how the work feels.
The scenarios that change behaviour are the ones where the learner picks an option, sees a plausible consequence two screens later, and thinks “oh, I’ve done that.” A small wince. That wince is the learning. It’s the gap between what they thought they’d do and what they actually do under pressure, and you can’t manufacture it with friendly feedback bubbles.
This makes some stakeholders nervous. Stakeholders may worry that learners will feel judged or that the scenario comes across as too negative. In practice, adults are usually fine with challenging situations, as long as they’re handled respectfully and the learning purpose is clear. What they can’t handle, or at least won’t engage with, is being talked down to with a sanitised version of their own job.
Practical takeaways for your next module
If you’re scoping a scenario-driven build right now, a few things to bring into your next SME session and storyboard review:
- Interview at least one person who actually does the job, not just the people who manage it. Budget for it in the project plan.
- Collect three real incidents from the last six months before you write a single scenario branch.
- Write the scenario, then ask an SME: “What’s missing? What would make this harder?” Add the missing thing.
- Test the draft with two or three frontline staff before you spend money on voiceover and animation. The fix is cheap at storyboard, expensive at production.
- Resist the urge to make every wrong choice obviously wrong. The interesting wrong choices are the ones that look reasonable until they don’t.
If you’ve got a scenario-based module on your roadmap and you’re not sure whether it’ll land with your audience, it’s worth pressure-testing the brief before development starts. Happy to talk through what that looks like for your project.
Ready to create eLearning scenarios your learners actually recognise?
Generic scenarios are easy to write, but realistic ones are what make learning stick. If you’re planning a new eLearning module and want it to feel relevant, practical, and grounded in your learners’ real work, Poncho eLearning can help.
Let’s build scenario-based training that feels real from the first click. Book a call with Poncho eLearning today.
