Not only do Branching scenarios make online learning more fun and engaging, they are also proven to be an excellent way to help participants learn at a deeper level.

If you haven't used our Branching scenario screen before, you're probably wondering what it is...

A branching or branched scenario is very much like a 'choose your own adventure' story. The learner is presented with a scenario that challenges them by requiring them to make a decision. Once the learner has made a decision, they are presented with a consequence — which in-turn provides the learner with more challenges and choices. With each decision made, the story unfolds in an unpredictable way until the learner finally reaches an outcome which could be one of many. There can be multiple "correct" outcomes, or the learner can be directed back to certain decisions to rethink their choice.

Branching scenarios can be used in a variety of different subject areas and industries to create interactive, personalized, and engaging online learning experiences. Here are just a few examples:

Step 1: To get started, add a new Lesson to your Course, or navigate to an existing one. Click the ‘Add screen’ button in the lesson on the course sidebar menu.

Step 2: Select ‘Branching scenario’ from the screen select drawer under the ‘Challenge screens’ section.

Step 3: Give your screen a title and click the ‘Add screen’ button to confirm.

Step 4: By default, your new screen will display the screen title and an empty state message nudging you to add your first scene.

In the Branching screen, the different slides that make up the scenario are called scenes. There are four scene types you can choose from when creating your scenario:

The Cover scene is a multipurpose scene that is ideal for starting or finishing the branching scenario. It's a simple scene that can be configured to display:

The Choices scene is where the learner will make the majority of their decisions. If you want, you can use this scene to start the Branching scenario.

The Choices scene can be configured to display:

The choice buttons are used to direct your learners to other scenes. To link a choice to another screen, click the button to reveal the configuration panel, and choose the scene you want to direct it to.

The Video scene is the simplest scene of all and would typically appear before a choice scene in order to pose a scenario to the learners. The video scene consists of the video, and a single navigation button to move to another scene.

Feedback panels allow you to provide feedback to the learner after they make a choice. It displays as a popup, similar to the Pop quiz feedback modals.

Feedback messages can be displayed in 3 different emotions:

The key difference between the 3 is the color and the number of the buttons. Positive feedback has a green button, indicating to the learner that their choice was correct. Neutral feedback is the only popup that allows two buttons so that learners can continue onwards, or go back and reconsider their option. Negative feedback includes a red button, indicating to the learner that the choice they selected was incorrect.

Every Branching scenario requires a start scene. By default, the first scene that you add to your scenario will become the start scene. To change your start scene, you will need to reorder your scenes so that the scene you want to start the scenario with is at the beginning of the scene list.

Every Branching scenario must have at least one end scene, but can contain as many as you like. All scene types except for Feedback popups can be set as an end scene. If you do not set an end scene, your learners will not be able to complete the scenario and therefore their course.

To set a scene as an end scene, toggle the End scene button on on the options toolbar.

We've included helpful visual aids to indicate where the start and end scenes reside in your scenes list.