Designing the Learning Journey — Build the Méridian Flagship

A four-round, intermediate learning-experience-design simulation set inside Méridian Learning Studio, the in-house course-design unit of a private French grande école on the Riviera. The Dean has personally sold the board a new flagship — 'Leading Transformation', a 10-week executive certificate at €6,900 a seat for a 120-strong cohort — and made it the showcase for the October 2026 EQUIS re-audit. You have a fixed €540,000 design-and-production budget, 14 weeks, and 47 seats already sold. The brief contradicts itself: the board wants completion above 85% (existing certificates median just 61%, with a brutal week 3–5 drop-off cliff), three internal factions each 'know' the answer (faculty want live residentials, the digital producer wants fully self-paced async that historically completes at 48%, finance wants the cheapest blend), and the Vice-Dean ties every designer's bonus to learning-outcome attainment, not completion volume — so a course people finish but do not learn from is a more expensive failure than one they quit. Playing the Studio's design team you (1) diagnose the learner and the failure curve, distinguishing engagement drivers — relevance, momentum, social accountability — from engagement theatre; (2) choose the blended format mix and the in-person/online, synchronous/asynchronous split under the €540,000 cap; (3) sequence formative and summative assessment across the 10 weeks, concentrating intervention density at the diagnosed week 3–5 cliff rather than spreading it evenly; and (4) read the pilot telemetry, diagnose the design misses, and reallocate for a 120-seat v2 under the same envelope. The math rewards genuine learner-centred design that maximises engagement and outcomes JOINTLY and punishes the five classic errors — wish-list design that blows the budget, the cheapest-blend async fallacy, terminal-only assessment, uniform investment ignoring the curve, and completion tunnel vision that lets outcome scores slide. Final KPIs track Projected Completion %, Outcome Attainment (0–5), Engagement Quality (0–100), and Budget committed against the €540,000 cap.