Branching Scenarios

The Quest: An Online Synchronous Discussion

Project Details

We were asked to choose either Ethnographies or Branching Scenarios to focus on for a small group project. Knowing the power of Branching Scenarios for engagement in online learning I decided to go that route. I think there’s a significant shift in mindset needed when we ask educators to let go of the reins a bit and give learners an opportunity to select direction on their own. So, in my proposal I pointed to Cathy Moore’s “Is it ever okay to be a control freak?” . I was interested in what others thought about branching scenarios, personalized learning, and this path in general when it comes to education and learner engagement. It wasn’t long before I had a couple of team mates and a date & time set up for our Zoom meeting.

Requirements for the group dialogue included:

• Partner-up with 1-2 classmates; record and share a discussion about a branching-scenario or digital-ethnography case study.
• Organizing ourselves on the Canvas forum and posting our final dialogue.
• Meet online to discuss and record your takeaways.  Answer the questions below.
• Produce a 20 – 30 minute digital dialogue – audio or video. Post a link or media file of the final dialogue in this discussion board.   
• Each Dialogue will need a host to coordinate scheduling, recording and posting of the final product.  
• Zoom, SoundCloud, or Synth are good tools for capturing dialogs. 

Questions:

1. Introduce yourself – who are you and which quest did you do?
2. Which story impressed you the most?  Why?
3. Which story platform impressed you the most? Why?
4. How do you imagine these kinds of examples might be used with a group of participants co-constructing a story together?  

I followed through with a confirmation email, sent my Zoom room to my partners, then led the discussion, and edited the raw recording to prepare a file to upload to YouTube, and finally then wrapped up by providing a link to the video in the discussion forum to wrap up the project for our team. It was a great discussion, the time flew by and I had a hard time editing our hours discussion down to fit within the parameters of the assignment. We had a great time getting to know one another and although we went down a rabbit hole or two we accomplished our task. View the final project below.

Quest Complete

Team: Daryl Boyd, Mary Heather Walker, & Shawna Stushnoff

We chose to turn in a version without the bloopers however this link is to the version with the bloopers at the end.  After all life should have a bit of fun in it, no?