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My new eLearning course is an interactive fiction

Nader K. Rad, 2021-09-23

Isn't it fun to learn a topic using an interactive fiction?

Interactive fictions are those stories where you play the role of the first character, make decisions, choose your path, and experience a new world. I think it's a good way of learning.

I was hesitant initially because I don't know anyone else who has done something like this before (in our domain and other domains that I know), but that has never stopped me. So, I decided to use interactive fiction for the eLearning course that I wanted to prepare for P3.express! (in case you don't know, P3.express is a minimalist project management system / Creative Commons.)

Soon I realized why people don't create courses like this: IT'S REALLY DIFFICULT!

It took me a long time to build the course, and there were times I thought I could never finish it. I had to think about all branches in the story and make sure they were compatible with each other, made sense, and, of course, that they could teach the topics.

Anyway... The course is ready now, and you can take a look if you want. Although, it's not copy-edited yet. It's relatively long -- the file that I sent to the copy editor is more than 200 pages.

You would play the role of Didi, a project manager in a company called Artophile, in an imaginary land called Artopolis:

https://p3.express/training/artophile-center/

All 26 characters in the story have unisex names (each from a different country), and I've not used 'he' or 'she'... I may have used the singular 'they' only two or three times. It wasn't easy to do, but worth it. While writing, I couldn't stop thinking about how easier it would have been in my mother tongue, with genderless pronouns. Similar to the P3.express manual, volunteers will translate the course into multiple languages, and unfortunately, I've been told that characters cannot remain genderless in some languages, which is a pity.

In case you're curious, I've used Twine to build the story. I'll publish the source after copy editing is done.