Case study: scenario-based safety compliance eLearning

Workplace Violence Prevention

Turning a required safety plan into decisions staff can make in seconds, often with children in the room.

Try The Course

Instructional Designer

My role

A statewide early childhood provider

Organization

Teachers, assistant teachers, center directors

Audience

Safety team, Human Resources

Partners

Rise, Claude, Veo 3.1, CypherWorx

Tools

Same parent. Same classroom. One line crossed.

Two women are standing and talking in a colorful kindergarten classroom filled with children playing with building blocks and toys. The room has educational decorations and storage bins.

Warning sign

Verbal frustration. The teacher stays calm, moves near the exit, suggests stepping aside, and documents it.

A classroom filled with children and two women, with a woman in the foreground holding papers. Children are playing with toys on the floor, and educational decorations and shelves are visible around the room.

Workplace Violence

The parent throws objects. Now the teacher sets a limit, moves toward the exit, and has a colleague contact authorities.

The project at a glance

1. Context

California's SB 553 required a Workplace Violence Prevention Plan and staff training on it.

2. Gap

Staff needed to act on the plan in the moment, not just know it existed.

3. Intervention

A 25-minute scenario-based course built around one call: warning sign or workplace violence?

4. Measure

Correct calls across 15 practice decisions in the course.

The challenge

California's SB 553 requires most employers to keep a written Workplace Violence Prevention Plan and to train employees on it. The provider had its plan. Staff across its centers needed to know what to do with it.

The job makes this hard. Teachers face frustrated parents at drop-off and pick-up, sometimes work alone or in isolated areas, and stay responsible for children while a situation unfolds. Most warning signs are quiet: a coworker who withdraws, a new assistant who's being belittled.

Staff had to decide quickly whether something was a warning sign to document or an incident to report now, and which channel to use.

A policy on file doesn't protect anyone. A practiced decision does.

Five lessons in the order staff meet a real situation: understand it, notice it early, report it, respond to it, then keep the system working. Each type of practice is built for a different part of that decision.

The course

A chart outlining five key safety procedures: 1. Spot and prevent violence, 2. Recognize warning signs, 3. Report and respond, 4. De-escalate safely, 5. Sustain a culture of safety.

Paired videos and sorting

A sign with two sections: one titled 'Warning sign' and the other 'Workplace violence'. The warning sign section lists two points: 1) Parent raises their voice during pick-up, 2) Coworker repeatedly comments on someone's hairstyle. The workplace violence section lists three points: 1) Stranger in the parking lot yells profanities, 2) Parent throws candy at a teacher during pick-up, 3) Coworker threatens another coworker.

Learners watch the same parent in two short videos, name what they saw, and get feedback that models the response. Two sorting activities follow: warning sign or violence, then document or report now.

Two voice-narrated scenarios from a normal day. In one, a lead teacher named Marta keeps hearing a coworker belittle the new assistant during diapering.

Choosing "do nothing" or "praise her in public" shows why those fall short. The strongest choice is to document the pattern and escalate to the Center Director.

Branching scenarios

A girl in a blue shirt with her arms crossed, looking down, standing in front of a playground with children playing in the background.

Procedures built for looking up

Reporting steps, the investigation timeline, and emergency response are step-by-step process interactions. Reporting channels are flashcards that pair each situation with the right contact, so the course works as a reference after the first pass.

Screenshot of a course outline or checklist for reporting steps, including items such as reporting immediately, choosing the right channel, providing key information, knowing next steps, and a warning to call 911 first in case of immediate danger.

The design decision: one skill, one question

Compliance courses usually walk through the policy section by section. But the hardest moment for staff isn't knowing what to do in an emergency. It's deciding whether they're in one.

I built the whole course around that call, "warning sign or workplace violence?", because every step after it depends on getting it right.

How the approach shifted

Slide titled 'Typical compliance course' listing four bullet points: 'Starts with the policy text,' 'Defines violence in the abstract,' 'Generic office examples,' and 'One quiz at the end.'

Screenshot of a course description with bulleted points detailing course content, including call staff, parent crossing, playground, diapering, knowledge checks, sorts, and branching scenarios.

The course sits where two departments meet. Every procedure, channel, and promise in it had to match what each team would actually do when a report came in.

Built with Safety and HR

Safety team

The WVPP, its definitions, and the four types of workplace violence
Emergency procedures: alerts, lockdown, evacuation, drills
The Safety Committee and the Violent Incident Log

Human Resources

Reporting channels and confidentiality
The investigation process, from acknowledgment to close
No retaliation and support after an incident

A course can't keep a workplace safe on its own. This one sends staff into the rest of the system: the people, logs, and drills they'll rely on afterward.

Training is one part of the plan

Screenshot of a webpage with various training modules listed, including 'Written WWPP,' 'Reporting channels,' 'Safety Committee,' 'Monthly drills,' 'This course,' 'Violent Incident Log,' 'Post-incident support,' 'Annual review,' and 'Supervisors.'

“Overall, it was an excellent, necessary, and highly relevant training. I particularly appreciated the customized aspects and the practical applicability of the content. This is the best safety training I have attended to date.”

Elizabeth, Regional Director

Results: 2× completion rate; 40% less time to complete.

Real scenes, no cameras in classrooms

I produced the video scenes with Google Veo and the scenario art with ChatGPT. Filming in real centers would have put children on camera and asked staff to act out conflict.

Every video has captions, and scenario narration is paired with on-screen text.

A woman in a green shirt and a girl in a blue shirt talking at a playground, with children playing and slides in the background.