Using stories to teach
Storytelling is a powerful way of organizing information, conveying emotions, and teaching people.
Stories with vivid characters and plots are used with great effect to design and create learning and design scenarios to address a range of business needs. Stories and scenarios are customized and used with web-based learning tools since like movies or a good book, they have the power to carry users into authentic settings and into the lives of interesting, believable characters.
Story-based learning delivered through the computer leverages a range of media elements and wraps them using a plot into a potent instructional form. Added elements of interactivity help learner make decisions that control the movement of the story, as it were, and gain greater immersion.
The Story-based learning methodology uses the age old but simple art of narrative to achieve the following:
- Make the instructional content interesting and immersive.
- Make the learner identify with the different characters of the story.
- Show how the different events and elements of the story are relevant to the learner’s work-life and work environment.
Here is a little video that speaks about how stories can be used to teach without appearing didactic or overly persuasive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFC-URW6wkU&feature=fvw
Broad categories of story-based learning types
Based on the complexity of narrative and use of associated instructional techniques can be divided into:
· Simple stories to initiate learning
At the simplest level stories and simple scenarios are used to initiate learners into a series of learning content chunks. A simple story or scenario is used in such cases to attract and draw the learner into the learning sequence. The plot in this case in not very evolved and often multiple unrelated or related anecdotes are used throughout the length of the learning program to keep up learner engagement. The learning sequence itself maybe simple, linear, or even complex and branched.
Parable like stories are also used in simple used of learning to drive home concepts or learning objectives. The stories used in such cases are always simple, short, and usually with a straightforward plotline.
· Involved with interwoven plot
Higher impact uses draw on stories with evolved plotlines that are specifically written around design strategies. The story is the central mechanism of continuity that carries the entire learning process for the learner. Often the learner is asked to make decisions that may seem to alter the sequence of events. Usually the plot is crafted to guide the learner through a decided path of learning and set outcomes. The learner merely gets an illusion of being in control to reinforce the sense of immersion and enforce involvement with what is being taught.
· Completely immersive with a simulated learning environment
This is the most complex form of instruction that uses engines to allow learners to craft their own learning experience using the backbone of a story. Each learner comes away after the experience with a unique experiential learning experience.
Simulations of reality immerse learners and make them part of an evolving story where the decisions they make actually changes the sequence of events. The learning interface is used to merely collect information, allow learners to react and make decisions, and to present analyses and the outcomes of decisions made. The story in the back end is complex and uses a very strongly crafted logic to trigger and alter the situations in the story to provide the experience in the world of the story where the learner is completely immersed.
When used with social learning this form allows learners to not only create their own learning experience but also react and learn from other learners. In games this learning behavior is often seen in massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG).
Qualities and Benefits of Effective Story-based Learning:
Stories address universal themes
Students can relate to the characters and the challenges they face.
Unusual
Learners do not want to hear about everyday life or learn from rigidly encoded content. Stories let them find something interesting and a little different.
Personal
Learners appreciate hearing a real, authentic story from the person who experienced it firsthand.
Stories created for the online learning experience are particularly interesting and make the learning seem more human. When used aptly, sharing a personal and appropriate story will actually increases learner involvement and empathy enormously.
Demonstrates consequences or rewards for choices made
Main characters in learning stories are often rewarded for making good choices and punished for bad choices.
Appeals to the three main representational systems
Stories can involve visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experiences. Some learners respond to images, some to sounds and some to feelings. Great learning stories, use descriptions from all three representational systems. This involves learners with a range of cognitive needs.
Greater learning gains
Studies have proven that learners exhibit learning gains can often be better than those produced by traditional instructional approaches. (Scott W. McQuiggan, Jonathan P. Rowe, Sunyoung Lee and ,James C. Lester - Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695).
The motivational benefits of narrative-centered learning with regard to self-efficacy, presence, interest, and perception of control are substantially greater than other means of instruction.
