Choose your adventure

As a youngster growing up in the ‘80s, you couldn’t go to the local bookstore (when there was such a thing) and not see a whole shelf full of Choose Your Own Adventure novels. These little paperbacks told of some formidable adventures, from journeys under the sea to forbidden castles to time warp caves. But it was the unique structure of these stories that gave the reader more than just a passive role and brought the experiences to life. There were choices, and the reader could select a myriad of different paths that would then result in various twists and turns in the plot and eventual outcomes. Not only could you get a front row seat with Captain Nemo, but you could steer the submarine and see what lies beneath! You could decide whether to take the safe road, or the gnarly looking path sure to bring some action with dangers along the way.

While the better part of 30 years passed without my picking up another one of those novels, it wasn’t until well into the digital age that I found myself in front of a computer screen looking at a branching dialogue with feedback loops and multiple nodes connecting to different scenarios, marvelling that we are creating adventures that have choices and even life-sized bots with voices, gestures, and expressions. The significance of interactive, non-linear experiences that are user driven, and user controlled hit me like the Tyrannosaurus Rex from the time warp cave. Learners operating on a simulated (virtual) environment, to produce results that go beyond right or wrong answers—an exploration of contingencies! A revolution in e-learning is underway, and here we are, shaping it from the inside…