Is the topic of story telling in learning experience design of any interest to you now, or had in been in the past? Have you used it before in any manner? Maybe it is something to revisit or consider adding to your LXD skillsets for your future learning design experiences.
“Storytelling captivates audiences and leaves a lingering impression. No matter what, the content of a good, interactive course must be woven together by these basic storytelling elements.”
When we are being told a story, things change dramatically. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too.
If someone tells us about how delicious certain foods were, our sensory cortex lights up. If it’s about motion, our motor cortex gets active:
“Metaphors like “The singer had a velvet voice” and “He had leathery hands” roused the sensory cortex. […] Then, the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like “John grasped the object” and “Pablo kicked the ball.” The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body’s movements.”
When you can help the person align content within their context the chunking and organization of the information is easier. I use the analysis of the audience to create “characters” and build stories from the error reports, when you read a case study the mistakes are the most fun so use data readily available and in a setting most participants will connect with.
Way back when, in the days of videodiscs, I used to continue the story being used in the video segments by having the characters audio play on the 2nd audio track with the text and graphic/animation elements that were being generated by the computer. In-house test showed higher test scores with the 2nd track audio than without! And if you don’t know what a videodisc is… well I have pictures! - bill
- bill