eLearning Guild Research: Karl Kapp on Using Stories

Research shows that stories are extremely powerful tools forlearning. That’s because our brain has a natural ability to remember facts toldin a story.

A research study by Rashmi Adaval and Robert S. Wyer, Jr. atthe University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign examined differences ininformation use and recall betweenbulleted lists of information and narrative information about a vacationdestination. Participants in the study were given two travel brochures. Onedescribed a vacation in India and the other described a vacation in Thailand.The descriptions in one brochure were presented in narrative (descriptive) formand in the other brochure the descriptions were listed in bullets.

Participants were assigned randomly to read the brochuresand then asked to recall and list as many of the places or situations describedin the brochure as they could remember. The researchers found that recall was betterwhen information was presented as narrative as opposed to a bulleted list. Thisresult has been confirmed in other research.

The Guild’s new Big Answers report, Using Stories for Learning: Answers to Five Key Questions, describes this kind of research and its implications. Init, Karl Kapp says, “Given the linkbetween learning and storytelling, it would seem that stories would be the mostprevalent method for learning. However, people do not commonly considerstorytelling in the same sentence as learning design. This is unfortunate,because storytelling and learning design have a lot in common.”

In this research report, Kapp describes Maxine Alterio’sfour types of stories for learning—expressive, strategic, reflective, andtransformative. For example, a strategic story can promote certain ways ofworking or thinking. They can help people think purposefully.

Here’s a strategic story one of our benefits counselors usedto use at orientation at a company I used to work at.

• My name is Leila, and I want to tellyou a story about an employee I knew at a previous job whose benefits selectionhad a crucial impact on his family. Many employees make assumptions when theyselect their benefits that tomorrow will look exactly like today. They don’tconsider things that can happen in the future, things like disability or jobloss. And so they don’t plan for those things when choosing benefits, becausethose things cost extra money.

  This employee, whose name wasMarcus, had three children and a wife who stayed home with them. He asked me ifI thought he should pay extra money and buy long-term disability insurance,since he was rarely sick and was healthy. I always advise people to pay forlong-term disability insurance because the likelihood of being disabled duringsome time in your lifetime is much higher than you think. I saw Marcus over thecourse of many years and Marcus often laughed when he saw me and sometimessaid, “Leila, I haven’t used that disability insurance yet!” and I alwaysreplied, “That’s good news, my friend, but it’s good that you have it!”

  A number of years later, Marcus wasin the warehouse and someone on a forklift ran into him in a freak accident andMarcus was in the hospital and out of work for five months. That disabilityinsurance simply kept his family afloat. I was so glad that he had it.

  So remember, it’s important to considerthe future and your loved ones when selecting benefits.

This story shows how stories allow us tolearn from the experience of others without having to face another person’s personalconsequences. To paraphrase writer Drake Baer from an article in Fast Company, stories “let you demoother peoples’ minds in the comfy confines of your own.”

In this Guild research report, Karl Kapp, author of The Gamification of Learning and Instruction:Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education, explains whystories are extremely valuable for learning, describes how to match learningobjectives to four powerful learning story types, and provides guidance on howto compose learning stories. He explains the elements of a good story andprovides a storytelling worksheet to make designing your own learning storieseasier.

Reference:

Adval, Rashmi & Wyer, Jr. S. Robert. “The Role ofNarrative in Consumer Information Processing.” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 7(3). 1998

Baer,Drake. “Why Did Apple Lose Its Humanities?” Fastcompany.com.2013. https://www.fastcompany.com/3020609/leadership-now/why-did-apple-lose-its-humanities