Seven ways in which stories power learning

I�d never written a film script before. The nearest I�d got to so-called creative writing was penning the dialogue for interactive scenarios, so this was a brave move. To be honest, I was pushed hard by my colleague Asatuurs Keim, a film-maker with a passion for storytelling and someone who believes we have failed to realise the full potential of film as a vehicle for learning at work.

Now I was only ever proposing a really short film, but I was encouraged by Asatuurs to use the classic script structure:

• Setup: Establishes the main characters, their relationships and the world they live in. As the plot unfurls, the protagonist is confronted with a dramatic problem to resolve.
• Confrontation: The protagonist attempts to resolve the problem, only to find him/herself in ever worsening situations.
• Resolution: The main tensions of the story are brought to their most intense point and the dramatic question answered, leaving the protagonist and other characters with a new sense of who they really are.

I�m sure experienced writers don�t approach their task in such a formal manner, but for a beginner like me this structure proved invaluable. Although my principal goal was to provide insights into the value of end-to-end learning solutions, I also needed the storyline to be engaging in its own right and to demonstrate the power of storytelling as a tool for learning. You can come to your own conclusions as to whether I managed to achieve both of these (I�ll provide a link to the film later).

Here are seven ways in which I believe that stories power learning:

1. Stories speak to us as humans

As Jeremy Hsu writes in Scientific American, 'Storytelling is one of the few human traits that are truly universal across culture and through all of known history.� For more than 27,000 years, humans have been communicating by telling stories. I�m sure that if you were to open up our brains and tip the contents onto the floor, what would come out but piles and piles of stories. According to a 1997 study by Robin Dunbar at the University of Liverpool, personal stories and gossip make up 65% of our conversations. That seems like an underestimate to me.

2. Stories hold our attention

Stories with characters to whom we can relate will attract and hold our attention. If you don�t believe that 'people nowadays' can maintain attention on anything for longer than a few minutes then you�d be wide of the mark. It�s true that we want our information to come in the smallest possible chunks, but we�ll happily spend hours wading through a box set or turning the pages of a great novel.

3. Stories engage us emotionally

Emotion can have a powerful impact on memory. Numerous studies have shown that our most vivid memories tend to be of emotional events. And stories are highly effective at triggering emotions - they make us laugh, they make us cry, they surprise us, they scare us, they inspire us. Above all, they make us care and caring matters when it comes to learning.

4. Stories provide us with examples

Stories have another very simple value to a learning experience: they provide us with examples that help us to understand difficult concepts, principles and rules. If you�re struggling to figure out the difference between education and training, a good teacher will tell you that old joke, you know, the one about when your daughter comes home and tells you about the sex education class she attended that day. Fine, but what if she came home and told you about the sex training she�d received?

5. Stories provide us with insights

According to Wikipedia, 'an insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a particular context'. Insights are what allow us to respond to situations in which we don�t have clear-cut rules to follow, which in the developed world is true of a great deal of the work that we do. You cannot be provided with insights by simple exposition, you have to obtain them for yourself, by figuring things out. We can do this through our own experience, but also by observing the experiences of others, either directly or through stories.

Literal accounts of real or fictitious events may provide us with insights (my short film being an example). On the other hand, stories can use metaphors to position an idea in a context that may be more familiar to a learner. This is a technique we used for most of the explainer videos that accompany the More Than Blended Learning approach (see So What is Blended Learning? as an example). Learners can readily adapt the lessons embedded in these stories to analogous situations.

6. Stories help us to remember other stuff

As humans, we can struggle to learn factual information. As Ed Cooke explains in The Guardian, 'Whether you wish to learn a set of directions, a recipe, the events during an historical epoch or the members of the cabinet, imposing a story line over what you wish to learn is a wonderfully simple and powerful way of binding the ideas together in a manner that allows easy and enjoyable recollection.'

7. Stories are likely to be shared

Because that�s how we relate to other people - by telling them stories. If you want to get your message out there, don�t rely too heavily on rational argument (this post being an example); tell stories instead.

Which brings me back to my short film, a story of love and learning. It�s called No Regrets, and you�ll find it in three parts here, along with some short preview videos in which Nicole, one of the main characters, provides some background to her journey to England to start her new job. Little does she know.

The teacher as storyteller

A few days ago, I sat down to write a post explaining why I thought stories were such a powerful tool for learning. In my research, I came across a post I originally published in 2005. Once I had got over the shock of realising that this post was a full ten years old, I decided to share it again, given I probably now have a very different audience. I also believe it holds true today, although what I refer to as �the science� has probably moved on. Anyway, I�m still working on my new post on storytelling and I�ll share it soon.

Back in 2003, I devoted a great deal of energy to the design of a new CD-ROM course entitled Ten Ways to Avoid Death by PowerPoint. In blatant disregard of all the usual constraints of time and budget, I set out to design a programme that was both highly interactive and media rich, engaging as many of the senses as possible.

As the course was nearing completion, I came up with the idea of introducing the programme with a short story, adapted from a classic fairy tale. Because the moral of the tale seemed to echo the main message of the course, I added this in, even though I was concerned about starting a course in such a passive, linear manner.

Some time later, I met with a colleague who had been reviewing the course. She had showed it to several managers in her company and got some feedback. I asked if anything stood out that they found particularly enjoyable or memorable - perhaps the games, the multimedia, the illustrations? No, you guessed it, it was the story. It made the point, it stirred the imagination, it stuck in the mind.

You may not be surprised, but I was. Can stories really be more powerful than interactivity in bringing about learning? I investigated further, and consulted Google. According to storyatwork.com, "We are story-making machines. Cognitively speaking, every experience, every relationship, every object is stored in the mind as a story." OK, but any website that calls itself 'story at work' is going to be biased. What about the science?

Well, Jerome Bruner, the father of cognitive psychology, believes storytelling is hardwired into our brains. The primary reason infants are motivated to learn to speak is because they have stories inside them that they want to share with others. Simple stories like "I fell over" or "I had a bad dream and I'm scared", but stories nonetheless.

In his book Tell me a Story, psychologist and artificial intelligence expert Roger Schank argues that "knowledge is stories" and that intelligence may be more or less equated with the ability to tell the right story at the right time. Even the old timers agree. According to the old Hopi proverb, "He who tells the stories rules the world". Hollywood already knows that.

When you attend a really good workshop, the one thing you can guarantee is that the facilitator will have some good stories. Perhaps a few are just good jokes, but many will be extremely relevant to the subject in hand. They illustrate a point, they stimulate discussion. That's why it's so much more difficult to run a workshop for the first time - it can take quite a while to come up with all those anecdotes and examples that bring the event to life. It also explains why your average facilitator's guide is never quite enough of a foundation on which to run a workshop - however thoroughly it lists all the steps involved in preparing and running the event, it's inadequate if it doesn't also provide you with a repertoire of interesting and illuminating anecdotes.

There's a clue here as to why so much e-learning is dry and boring. The typical instructional designer will work with a subject expert to define the learning objectives and list the important learning points. They will structure this information and support it with visual aids and practical exercises. If they're not careful, what they will end up with is the online equivalent of the facilitator's guide, when what they should have done is spend hours in conversation with the subject expert, wheedling out their favourite stories on the topic - the successes, the horror stories, the amusing incidents.

Even if you don't fancy yourself as a budding chat show host, you are unlikely to encounter much opposition. Subject matter experts will find it much easier to tell stories than to articulate what they know in terms of neat and tidy abstractions. Funnily enough, learners won't be any different. Try as you may to come up with clever mnemonics to help them remember the five stages in this, or the seven elements in that, they're much more likely to recall the tales you have told or the experiences shared by other participants. They'll also waste no time in passing these stories on to their colleagues. After all, they're only human, and if the scientists are to be believed, simply story-telling machines.

In case you�re interested, here is the story that accompanied the Ten Ways to Avoid Death by PowerPoint course: The Emperor�s New Slide Show.