I’m regularly surprised when encountering people in learning or management unfamiliar with video drama’s incredible strengths.
The power of drama
Despite every modern development you can think of, video drama remains the best tool for teaching people skills—anything from customer service to policing.
Why don’t people know this? Because so much of what passes for video drama in learning is poorly designed and, worse, often not even actual drama.
So, let’s get to the bottom of this. What’s going wrong?
Preparing for autonomy
You can’t prepare someone for every possible human interaction – they are too various and complex. You can teach a set of principles designed to guide people as they work in an autonomous or semi-autonomous way.
But principles seem abstract and meaningless without context. So, showing the principles in action in a dramatized sequence makes sense. Look, here’s a film of someone dealing with a customer with a smile on their face, saying “thank you”, and leaving them with a warm fuzzy feeling.
But simply showing a principle in action isn’t a drama; it’s just a demonstration. A demonstration doesn’t engage emotionally, isn’t memorable, or doesn’t stimulate thought. But it is often what passes for drama in L&D.
A conflict of values
We need conflict to make a scene into a drama and bake in all these positive qualities. Suppose we design a scene where two principles (or values) conflict. A law enforcement officer encounters a situation where respecting cultural practices conflicts with standard procedures. Or, an air flight attendant might face a situation where the airline has limited window seats, and two customers want the same one for different reasons.
Portraying this kind of interaction, suddenly, there is an emotional and thoughtful engagement with this character’s dilemma. Emotional engagement makes learning more memorable. By presenting the learner with a challenging problem, you can get them talking about what they might do in that situation. Suddenly, the principles are made real, emotional, and engaging, and the learner mentally rehearses how to apply them.
Creating a story
Now, spin out a story from one of these scenarios in which the lead character faces a series of escalating challenges. We have an engaging narrative in which we root for the protagonist, try to solve their problems and think deeply about the principles and how to apply them.
Follow up this learning with spaced content which encourages people to talk about the issues raised in the film, and you’ve amplified the power of the learning even more.
Happy New Year!
I’ve been going on about this for so long that I’m surprised when I meet someone unfamiliar with how video drama can work for learning and behaviour change. It’s almost as if they haven’t read my stuff!
In this spirit, I have five copies of my book Watch & Learn – a handbook about designing and producing video drama for learning – to give away the best Christmas cracker-style jokes you write in the comments.
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