Scenarios
A scenario is one practice conversation in a course: who the learner is talking to, what the situation is, and what they are trying to achieve. The Scenarios section is where you create new scenarios for your courses, check them, have them tested, and put them live for your learners.
New scenarios are authored rather than typed in by hand. You fill in a scenario builder sheet, upload it, and Menta writes the scenarios from your answers. A guided wizard then takes each scenario through four stages before learners ever see it.
This chapter covers:
- Managing scenarios - Finding scenarios, reading their status, and archiving or activating them.
- Preparing the scenario builder sheet - What the sheet has to look like before you upload it.
- Creating scenarios - Stage 1: uploading the sheet and generating the scenarios.
- Reviewing and editing - Stage 2: checking each scenario and changing it with Robbie.
- Testing - Stage 3: running the scenario yourself and inviting testers.
- Publishing - Stage 4: putting the scenario live and following how learners use it.
Where to find scenarios
Open the Scenarios entry in the sidebar under the Resources group. You'll land on the scenario list, which is the starting point for everything in this chapter. If you don't see the entry, scenario authoring hasn't been enabled for your company yet - your Menta contact can help.
The four stages
Every authored scenario goes through the same stages, shown as a stage bar across the top of the wizard:
- Upload & assign - Choose the course and upload the filled-in sheet. Menta checks the sheet and generates one scenario per scenario column.
- Review & edit - Read each scenario section by section and ask Robbie, the authoring assistant, for any change.
- Testing - Run the scenario yourself and give it to colleagues to test before it goes live.
- Overview & publish - Check that the scenario is ready and publish it to the course.
Until it's published, a scenario is a draft: it's saved as you work, you can leave and come back to it at any time, and learners can't see it.
What a company admin can do
As a company admin, you work with the scenarios of your own company:
- You can create new scenarios from a sheet and take them through all four stages.
- You can edit a scenario while it is still a draft.
- You can test drafts, and give the drafts you created to testers.
- You can publish a draft, and archive or activate published scenarios.
- Once a scenario is published, you can open it to follow its figures, but you can no longer change it. To change a live scenario, create a new one, or contact Menta support.
A note on working together
Several admins of the same company can work on the same run of scenarios. Only one person can edit a scenario at a time: while a colleague has it open, you can still read it, and the scenario is marked as locked by them everywhere it appears. If an admin leaves a scenario open without using it for ten minutes, it's closed for them automatically and becomes free for others to edit.