The Conversation
You’ve Been Avoiding
A fictional learning experience for new managers: turn a missed-deadline conversation into a clear, shared plan.
Launch the experience ↗Why this experience is built this way.
This page explains the instructional decisions behind the conversation course. It focuses on the connection between the audience, the practice, and the evidence of learning.
The planning artifacts below were reconstructed from the completed course for this portfolio. They do not represent original research records, learner testing, or measured results.
Help managers rehearse a difficult skill.
New managers
A familiar missed-deadline situation gives communication practice a concrete purpose.
Describe, explore, agree
Describe observable facts, explore the employee’s perspective, and agree practical next steps.
Practice before judgment
Keep branching practice unscored so learners can explore consequences. Use a separate assessment to check understanding.
A deliberate sequence, not a content list.
Make the purpose clear
Provide concise guidance
Show consequences
Assess, review, take a job aid
The structure supports relevance, self-paced review, and application. Each stage has a different purpose: explain enough to act, give the learner a choice, then provide feedback that makes the choice useful.
What each part needs to accomplish.
A missed deadline, not a label
Preparation distinguishes observable facts from assumptions before the conversation begins.
Listen before solving
Voiced responses make the effect of a selected choice easier to interpret.
A shared next step
Planning choices and the debrief focus attention on a clear agreement and follow-up.
Visual choice → instructional purpose
A consistent character image anchors the voiced responses to one person. The image supports continuity; the branching dialogue carries the instructional interaction.
Packaged course artwork, annotated here to explain its design purpose.
Make the consequence useful.
- Why branching?It lets learners compare approaches in context and see how a decision affects what happens next.
- Why allow recovery?A less effective choice becomes an opportunity to reconsider instead of an immediate failure.
- Why separate practice and assessment?Exploration remains safe while the final check has a clear scoring rule.
What the current evidence can tell us.
| Performance goal | Design support | Evidence & limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Open with observable facts | Opening-choice practice | Use the three-item knowledge check as limited evidence; add a behavior rubric for application. |
| Explore before offering solutions | Voiced branching responses | Review scenario choices formatively, separately from the final score. |
| Agree a clear plan | Planning decisions and debrief | Use a later role-play to test whether the learner can agree actions and follow-up. |
The current three-item assessment requires all three correct answers. Passing demonstrates performance on these questions; it does not establish workplace transfer.
What I would test next.
Inspect first attempts
Look for recurring errors by learning goal and revise the guidance or practice that precedes them.
Observe a new situation
Use a later scenario or role-play with a behavior rubric to check application beyond repeated questions.
Listen to learners
Ask a pilot group where directions, feedback, or navigation create friction, then revise and test again.
Proposed evaluation plan. No learner study or measured performance improvement is claimed.