Setting a quest is like planning for a good road trip. You need a crew, you need someone with a map and you need to know where the pit stops are going to be along the way. You need a destination , you need a compass and you need ‘a mission’ so that you can co-design how to get there.
I’ve been experimenting with quests in my learning design in 2023. I’ve helped to design vast landscapes with rabbitholes for online learning modules and created icon summaries of journeys to give learners clear ‘where are we going’ and ‘when are we stopping’ briefs. As a way to design a week’s worth of self-directed learning, I’ve also played with road maps and quests so that learners can track their path and mark off their pit stops in a ‘pick a path’ version of pull learning using Google Classroom as the supporting LMS.
Setting quests can revolutionise a learning experience. Under the guise of a story, learners can ‘choose their own adventure’ and consequently have more buy in - which leads to more engagement. Pairing a learning quest with clear learning outcomes and checklists (or progress bars), also means that learners can track their own progress as well as easily share it with you. As a result, you can identify learners who might be stuck, off track or on a different personal mission entirely.
The benefits of setting quests are:
increased motivation and participation
a sense of collaborative and shared purpose
a way to self-direct and monitor achievement
a fun way to pitch a learning mission
a way to use metaphor as a gamification strategy
an easy way to differentiate and jigsaw activities
visible learning pathways
In a school classroom context you can set a learning quest by figuring out what the learning outcomes are for the week and then aligning the outcomes to a landscape or iconographic journey metaphor. You can then hyperlink activities (like a choices board) or give clear titles that correlate to another supporting resource or LMS. Within the map design, you can signal ‘treachery’ and ‘skill level’ so that learners can choose to enter into a ‘hard learning zone’ as they progress throughout the week. As a part of the design, you can also offer rest stops (brain breaks), teacher check-ins, whole class or individual work sprints and even ‘rabbit hole’ deliberate detours. From a student perspective, they receive a mission and a timeframe and they then can explore the map and embark on their own learning journey to achieve at their own pace - even potentially reordering activities to suit themselves.
In a workshop (as well as in a classroom) context, learning quests can be a fun way to differentiate by skill level. If you are tired or your brain is at capacity, we recommend you rest here at this resting spot - but if you are an expert adventurer ready for something more challenging, then let’s keep going to explore this peak and see what’s on the other side…
From a facilitation standpoint, the quest makes differentiation and agentic (choice, pace and voice in learning) learning easier to implement. Tied to journeying metaphors, setting quests can give you a framework to leave people at different spots along the way - and it can provide a way to consciously go back to pick them all up later. Even when traveling on different paths, learners can all still arrive at the final destination to debrief.
In a recent workshop, I provided a metaphorical road with pictures as a map or quest for the day. Each icon on the side of the road was a reminder for me to ‘cover’ a key element - and like a tour guide pointing at things as we pass them by, it served extremely well as a visual checklist. Participants liked how they could ‘see’ where their learning was going, as well as where breaks etc were going to be. (Every person ever wants to know when morning tea and lunch times will be…).
Another case study from 2023 was experimenting with a Social Studies class (year 10) and gently scaffolding them into doing week-long quests. In the beginning a single lesson quest felt new and was a different style of learning than what they were used to (they were used to more teacher-directed and synchronous learning). It was so rewarding when I eventually could provide the class with a mission on a Monday and then see them working on different tasks throughout the week to complete the quest. The ‘whole class quiz’ was clearly marked on the map so that they knew we would join together for one session - but the rest of the time they worked independently while I tracked their progress in real time (hanging out and working with them around the room) as well utilising on an online tracking system where the students coloured in a cell of a spreadsheet when each task was completed. Students knew what they had to do for the week and just arrived and continued where they had left off.
New technologies are only going to make it easier to create meaningful learning quests. Some tools that I’ve had a lot of fun playing with this year are: Padlet (I love the gifs personally and the ‘shelf’ layout with clear headings makes it easy for learners to navigate), Canva (for map design and journey metaphor making), Miro (or any other expansive whiteboard tool), and Jamboard (for scratch off interactivity and asynchronous brainstorming). But the process of delivering a learning quest doesn’t have to be digital - I’ve just enjoyed playing with how different tools can be used together to enhance engagement and self-directed learning.
Quest setting isn’t new - here is a useful article with some other tool recommendations as well as a reiteration of the usefulness of the ‘side quest’ for fast finishers or more able learners. Quests can also be leveled up by adding an edularp element and here are some more ideas.
This is an example of one of the first quests I set. This image was supported with hyperlinked resources that ended in a game design formative assessment. Note the ‘time out to read the news’ pit stop - feeding into awareness of current affairs for the weekly quiz.
Quests don’t need to be fancy infographics. Successful workshop quests can easily be run with a handy whiteboard marker and a drawing of a learning pit or road map on the board. Add some symbols for key learning and places to ‘check off’ before coming out the other side and ‘hey presto!’ you have a simple learning quest to play with.
Quest setting is an invitation to reimagine education as an adventure. Workshops and learning experiences can be so much more than passive sessions and when teacher-centric facilitation is omitted, learners end up with more one-on-one support. A quest-setting approach gives participants an opportunity to become active protagonists in their own learning odyssey. Why not let learners choose their own adventure?
P.S. If you're looking for support to design a quest, someone to deliver an immersive story-based learning experience, or to help you to reimagine your existing content as a captivating quest, I’m just an email away.