Handling Miscommunication In The Workplace (Articulate Storyline)
Handling Miscommunication In The Workplace (Articulate Storyline)
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Description: Included as part of the RISE course, this scenario-based assessment places learners directly inside a realistic workplace project, where miscommunication naturally arises from three different relationships: conversations with upper management, a negotiation with a stakeholder, and collaboration with a coworker. As learners navigate each interaction, immediate feedback reinforces their understanding while their choices shape a final score across different competency areas - creating an authentic, consequence-driven learning experience.
The Problem
The Problem
Traditional knowledge checks — multiple choice questions, true/false quizzes — can confirm whether a learner remembers information, but they rarely confirm whether a learner can actually apply that information under real workplace pressure. After completing the Rise course, learners needed a way to practice applying communication repair strategies in the kind of complex, high-stakes situations they'd actually encounter — not just recall the concepts in isolation.
The Solution
The Solution
This Storyline-based assessment immerses learners in an authentic workplace scenario, requiring them to navigate communication challenges across three distinct relationships — upper management, an external stakeholder, and a coworker — each demanding a different communication approach. Every decision receives immediate feedback and contributes to a final score broken down by competency area, reinforcing correct application in the moment while giving learners a clear picture of their strengths and growth areas across the specific skills the course was designed to build.
The Process
The Process
Action Mapping
Action Mapping
This project began not with content, but with a clear, measurable business goal: reduce project delays caused by 20% by the end of the fiscal year by having employees decrease instances of miscommunication. From there, action mapping was used to identify the specific, observable behaviors employees would need to demonstrate to reach that goal — recognizing communication breakdowns early, checking personal bias, repairing misunderstandings directly, and proactively preventing future ones. Rather than jumping straight into content, this process ensured every scenario, decision point, and piece of feedback in the final assessment was built around real, on-the-job actions rather than assumptions about what learners simply needed to "know." The result was an authentic scenario purposefully designed to give learners practice performing the exact behaviors most likely to move the needle on the original business goal.
Text-Based Storyboard
Text-Based Storyboard
With the core actions identified, the next step was writing a text-based storyboard — detailing the dialogue, decision options, and feedback for each stakeholder interaction. This document captured the full content of the scenario in text form: what each character would say, the choices a learner could make in response, and the immediate feedback tied to each option — ensuring every piece of dialogue was intentional and tied back to the behaviors identified in the action map.
Decision Flowchart
Decision Flowchart
Once the content was written, a flowchart built in Canva was used to visually map how each decision would lead into the next, tracing the flow of the scenario from start to finish. This step made it possible to see the full structure of the experience at a glance — confirming that each of the three stakeholder interactions connected logically and gave learners a coherent, authentic project to navigate — before moving into development in Storyline. This flowchart also helped clarify which answer choices would need to be coded with score change values for the final results page.
Style Guide
Style Guide
With the content and structure in place, a style guide was developed to establish a consistent visual identity for the scenario — including color palette, typography, character design, and UI elements for buttons and feedback states. This ensured the interactive experience felt polished and professional throughout, reinforcing the authenticity of the workplace scenario rather than distracting from it. The style guide also served as a practical reference during development in Storyline, keeping visual choices consistent across all three stakeholder interactions and reducing rework later in the build process.
During this stage, background templates for each type of slide (scenario introduction, decision point, response, and feedback) were all created and to further establish consistency.
Interactive Prototype
Interactive Prototype
With the storyboard, decision flow, and style guide finalized, the scenario was built out in Articulate Storyline as a fully interactive prototype. Each stakeholder interaction was developed with functioning decision points, immediate feedback triggers, and the underlying scoring logic connecting learner choices to their corresponding competency area. This stage transformed the static planning documents into a clickable, testable experience — allowing the scenario to be experienced exactly as a learner would, from the first decision point through to the final competency-based results.
Full Development
Full Development
Once the initial prototype confirmed the core interactions, feedback, and scoring logic worked as intended, development moved into building out the full scenario in Storyline. This included finalizing all dialogue, feedback, and decision points across all three stakeholder interactions, refining visual polish according to the style guide, and ensuring smooth navigation and consistent functionality from start to finish. The result was a complete, fully functioning interactive assessment ready for testing as a whole learner experience rather than isolated pieces.
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