Recently someone shared how they use avatars or characters in an elearning course. Some of the uses were:
- Teaching complex content through character interactions
- To demonstrate challenges new leaders face
- As a mentor where one can click on them to receive situational tips
- To use dialog to walk someone through a process
Yes, these are creative and scalable but my first thought was how… as in how did we get here??? and Is this really better than say:
- Creating space where people can have real, nuanced interactions to solve complex issues?
- Encouraging experienced and novice leaders to connect and share insights?
- A sustainable mentor model/system embedded into the organization to relationships for learning
- Making processes open and transparent so they are continually discussed
We’d really choose to have our employees create and others complete courses with artificial characters that have to be updated as information changes rapidly rather than host real time dialog with real people? Couldn’t the issues have been resolved and continuously so, especially if systems were created to support these common and repeatable issues?
And maybe the answer is yes, you would create the course but a pause to discuss another possibility is warranted, no?
It’s been said that talk is cheap but in this context, it’s probably more accurate to say that talk inexpensive, efficient, fast, memorable, continuous and well, better.
