In 2019 we were tasked with building an online graduate-level survey design course. We wanted students to make decisions about survey design and experience the consequences of those decisions in a low-stakes, self-paced environment. The solution was Twine, a free, open-source game-development platform that allows the technically unsophisticated to create stories with choices and branching scenarios. Using Twine, we created a set of choose-your-own-adventure–style modules in which the student is inserted into the story as the protagonist, moving through a set of realistic scenarios involving a thesis advisor, a roommate, and a dissertation committee.
