Choose Your Own Adventure

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Hey everybody, it's Tara Bryan, and you are listening the course building secrets podcast.

Alright, guys, I have a fun one for you today, I want to talk about creating your own adventure in your courses. So do you remember when you were younger, or if you don't remember this, Google it and you'll figure it out, there were these books called choose your own adventure. And what you would happen is that you would read the first part of the book. And then it would say, if you want to continue with this solution, go to page 10. If you want to continue with this solution, go to page 20. If you want to continue with this solution, go to page 30. And so it allows you to read the book and determine the next step that you wanted to take in the book. And so it could be you know, you're going on a camping trip, do you want to go in the woods? Do you want to go to the beach, or do you want to go to the mountains, right, so then the book would continue and then you would make another choice as you went and then there would be a solution?

And so these a choose your own adventure books were so much fun, because you actually got to, to, you know, have a little bit of say, in how you are reading and the experience that you wanted to have. My other favorite example is the movie sliding doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. And I don't know if you have watched this movie, but so good, you have to find it. But it's the same concept is that, you know, if she would have gone this way, then this is how the movie was, if she went this way, then it would go down another path, throughout the movie, and so you would see both paths. And you know, what happens when you go this way or, or what happens when you make this decision. And when I think about that, and you think about people who are trying to learn something, and people who are trying to go down a path that has a particular result, one of the most impactful ways that you can help serve the people that are taking your course or your program, or whatever it is, is to put them in a situation where they're actually actively making a choice or making a decision, they're going through some type of scenario where they have to engage. And really think about the consequences or the results of the decisions that they're making. Because let's be honest, right? So when you're going through a training program, most training programs, which we know are not very good, but most training programs just say, here's the information, here's the path. Now I'm going to teach you what you need to know, take this information and go apply it when you need it, you know, back when you're doing whatever you're doing. And the problem with that is that it's we're making the assumption that they can take the information, put it in the right buckets in their head, and then recall it like, like get it back when they need it when they're making a decision. And that, that doesn't happen, right? Very rarely does that happen, where you can take something that you learned, remember it, and then apply it to a situation in the future, that that wasn't contextually given to them at the time of learning it? Right? So let me just break that down. Make it more simple because I know sometimes when I talk about this stuff, I get geeky and I lose people. So here's the thing. So I want to learn how to let's just use a simple example. I want to learn how to lose weight, right? So if somebody says, Okay, I'm going to teach you how to lose 10 pounds in 30 days, and they get on video and they say, okay, here are the ways that you need to lose weight, you know, all the things that you need to do to lose weight in 30 days, you need to eat better, and you need to exercise and you do this and you do that. And then you know, here's this technique for when you're lifting weights that, you know, you need to grab a 10-pound weight and a 30-pound weight and a 12-pound weight and a six-pound weight and then you need to go and you need to do you know 52 steps around this. And this is what is going to be the thing. That's the most important thing as you're going and losing weight. All right, so you learn all these techniques, all these methods, all these things, you learn this fancy thing that they're talking about. And, and then you go off and you do something else. And you come back, I don't know say three or six months later, and you're like great. I really want to start this program. I really want to lose weight. I really want to do this about Okay, so now, let me try and remember what I need to do I need to eat better, I need to do this nutrition, there's a recipe, and I need to do this weight thing, and I need to do you know, cardio 14 times a day, okay? Like you have got it, okay? And then you go, I don't remember any of that. And you have to go back to the training, well, nine out of 10 times people don't go back to the training. So instead, if you said, Alright, I'm, you know, this is gonna be personalized for you, we're gonna do, you know, your personal call to adventure. And you, you have them actually doing, what you're teaching them at the time that they're doing that even either, you know, okay, take this, do it, and then don't move forward until you've done it. Or maybe you put them in a simulated situation, where they're helping somebody else do that, right, where they are making some decisions on. Well, you know, Joe is getting up in the morning, should Joe, you know, go for a walk, should Joe go eat? You know, Lucky Charms cereal? Or should Joe, you know, go and write in his journal. Right? So okay, now I'm learning what maybe I should be doing in the morning compared to what another decision would be in the morning, right? So then at that point, you can say, Okay, well, yep, going for a walk is a great idea. This is the best idea out of the three because it gets your body moving, it gets you energy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the things, then the option with the Lucky Charms is well, no, that's probably not the best option, because here's how many calories are in lucky terms, and there's no protein and blah, blah, blah, you can teach them why that's not the best choice. Or the third option is journaling, well, that's a great option. And that would, you know, that's the second-best option. But first, if you were to go for a walk, you would have some additional energy, your brain would be more fired up. So you may come up with some ideas while you're walking, that would be great to put in your journal. So that maybe is the second thing that you do. So instead of saying, here's what you can do, you're giving them choices. And then, and then showing them the results of the choices that they're making. In the training itself. Let me take this one step further, is if you call them to adventure, you actually could find out ahead of time, what the right path would be for them, and then help them you know, guide them through that particular path, right? That could be an assessment or a survey at the beginning to say, Well, where are you coming into this path? Are you new? Do you have a little bit of experience and you just want to do better? Or are you advanced and you need like the ninja tricks, right. So if you bring them in, you can call them to the right adventure that will be for them in the right place where they are. So I love the concept of choosing your own adventure. Because of that, because it really helps not only you think about how you can give people decision-making options, so they're engaged differently in the sense of how they're going through your programs. So think about like, if you're just putting out a video, like here are the five things that you need to do. Okay, that's great, like, people are going to get a lot of a lot out of that. But instead, what if you said, hey, you know, out of these five things, which ones would you apply? Or which ones do you want to learn more about? Or, you know, which, which one would you choose first, or which would you choose second, or whatever, right? Like it puts their brain in a place of actively participating in what you're teaching, versus just passively watching it, which we know in the industry in the eLearning industry means that they're able to retain that information more, right, the more active you are, the more you're applying it, the more that they're going to retain, and actually take action on what you're teaching. So there you go, there are just a couple of course building tips for you today on choosing your own path, choosing your own adventure, and really being intentional about how you create that for your learners as you are creating your course. And so hopefully this serves you today I want to keep it just a couple of different tips and tricks. Maybe I'll go deeper into this in terms of some examples, or some tools that you can use and different things like that. As I build that out further because it's such a great strategy and such a great tool in the meantime, go find one of those choose your own adventure books. I think it's like fifth-grade reading level. Go find that or watch sliding doors from amazon. I don't know what year it was. I will find it and put it in the show notes but go and watch those because it just gives you a different lens to look about.

Look at how you can help your people how can you teach them in a way that gets them thinking gets them moving and gets them able to apply it to what they're doing. All right, there you go. Have a great rest of your day. I appreciate you being here. If you love this episode, if it's super helpful for you, forward it to other people for it to your friends would love to have more listeners on the podcast and give us a rating wherever you're listening to this podcast. The more you give feedback, the more other people are involved, the better off we're able to serve people and have them find us and get awesome course building secrets. All right, there you go. Have a good day.