Chapter 2: Designing Branching Scenarios
2.3 Tips for Writing Effective Prompts and Options
Interactive fiction is a genre where the reader makes choices that lead to different story outcomes. This “Choose Your Own Adventure” style puts the reader in the role of decision-maker, inviting them to step into a character’s shoes and make decisions that shape the outcome. In educational contexts, branching scenarios use this format to create immersive learning experiences. To make these scenarios effective, especially when aligned with professional or scholarly learning outcomes, careful attention must be paid to how prompts and options are written.
In this section, we will outline a few tips for effecting prompt writing.
1. Ground Learners in a Clear Role and Goal
Effective branching scenarios begin by establishing who the learner is in the story and what they’re trying to accomplish. This role and goal should reflect the learning outcomes and be rooted in a realistic, discipline-specific context. For example:
“In this branching scenario, you take on the role of a veterinary student working in a clinic during the summer. Your goal is to help incoming patients by making decisions that affect their care.”
Going further, consider fleshing out the character’s persona with relevant details such as age, gender, ethnicity, accessibility needs, professional background, or lived experience. These characteristics give learners cues to the kinds of decisions their character might realistically make and help them better empathize with the role they’re inhabiting.
2. Write Prompts that Reflect Real-World Decisions (Rather than Test-Taking)
Move away from quiz-like questions (“What is the correct answer here?”) and instead ask learners to decide what action they will take next, given the information and context. This shift from test-taking to decision-making questioning aligns with experiential learning principles, where learners apply knowledge in context rather than recall facts in isolation. It requires a purposeful change from asking the learners questions regarding “what do you know?” to instead focus on “what are you going to do with that knowledge?”
See some examples of this shift in the following table:
| Test-Taking Prompt | Decision-Making Prompt |
| What is the best way to manage this patient’s care? | You notice the patient appears anxious and is reluctant to speak. What do you do next? |
| Which communication strategy is most effective in a conflict? | A colleague dismisses your input during a team meeting. How do you respond? |
| What’s the best way to give feedback to a student? | A student in your class submits work that is far below their usual quality. How do you address it in your feedback? |
| What are the signs of digital burnout? | You notice you’re struggling to focus after a day of back-to-back online meetings. What do you do next? |
| What are the 5 Ds of bystander intervention? | During a group conversation, someone makes a disrespectful comment to a colleague. The colleague looks uncomfortable. How do you respond? |
| What is the first step in the chain of survival for cardiac arrest? | You see someone collapse in a public park and they’re not responsive. What do you do next? |
This reframing invites the learner to think through the implications of their choices, much like they would in real professional situations, and offers a much more authentic and context-grounded means of assessing not only student understanding, but their skills in applying that understanding.
This approach of framing questions around decisions, rather than right or wrong answers, also ensures each decision moves the story forward. This mirrors the structure of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel, where the hero’s choices determine the outcome.
3. Design Meaningful and Distinct Options at each Decision Point
Every decision point should present plausible, but different, choices — ideally, with more than just one obviously “correct” answer. Well-crafted options help the learner practice critical thinking by weighing trade-offs or anticipating the consequences of each choice.
To write strong options:
- Keep each option short and action-oriented.
- Avoid leading language that gives away the “right” answer.
- Use variations in tone, confidence, or ethical stance to reflect realistic diversity in decision-making.
For instance:
You are running behind schedule. The next patient is already waiting. What do you do?
- Take five minutes to review the patient’s chart thoroughly before calling them in.
- Call the patient in immediately and begin asking questions on the fly.
- Ask a colleague to begin the intake while you wrap up notes from the last appointment.
Each of these options is viable, but carries different risks or consequences. This encourages the learner to reflect and choose with purpose, rather than guess.
4. Balance Complexity with Clarity
Balancing complexity and clarity is essential. Scenarios should be rich enough to reflect the complexity of real-life decisions, but not so dense that learners get lost in unnecessary detail. Write prompts clearly and concisely. Use familiar terminology, and scaffold any technical or unfamiliar terms through the scenario’s setup with “as-needed” or “just-in-time” information (for example, by providing additional context as it becomes relevant, or by allowing students to review additional content by request).
At the same time, ensure consistency in tone, setting, and character behavior across all paths. This enhances realism and helps learners stay immersed in the scenario.
