World-building – A fun way to approach program development!

Imagine if you had J.R.R. Tolkien or J.K. Rowling assist in developing your new training program. How might they influence your process? What skills and methodologies would they bring to the team? What are the skills that good world-builders use that Learning and Development can leverage to develop training programs? 

While my team and I were crafting a theme and narrative for a new training program, I used an example of world-building to associate the way elements and the themes interact with each other and create an experience for the learner.

This world-building concept started a chain reaction of thinking and I changed my lens on how I viewed the program we were developing. I asked myself, what world am I creating for the learner?

Also, how many of you are D&D fans?

I personally have never had the opportunity to be a dungeon master for a group, but I think that the world and experience that a good dungeon master creates for their group would be of a similar process that a good training program should go through when it is being created. Experiences, challenges, rewards and feedback are essential to a good D&D experience – are they the cornerstone to your training program? 

I mean, at the end of the day - we all want loot!

Wikipedia on World-Building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldbuilding

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