As educators, whether we’re teachingstudents, corporate staff, volunteers, or other professionals, we all facecommon problems in the design of eLearning: inspiring trust in the content, elicitingacceptance to change, and getting learner engagement. It’s amazing howsomething as simple as a story can make a breakthrough difference in thecredibility and relevance of learning content.
A success story
I’d like to start by telling a story;a story of how a well-crafted telenovela—a kind of serial dramatic program muchbeloved and followed in Latin America—helped to inspire and educate animportant group of learners.
A few years back, while I was workingas a consultant for Arizona’s Medicaid, my group was responsible for creatinghealth education to assist our state’s Hispanic residents with betterself-management of chronic disease. This was not an easy audience to reach orto educate. For many of these residents, diet, mistaken health beliefs, andmistrust of medical professionals were culturally ingrained.
The state Medicaid (AHCCCS) directorasked us to research an eLearning program that members affected by or at riskfor chronic disease could use to increase their health literacy. He also asked usto determine the efficacy of this program. AHCCCS staff proposed several ideas,but it struck me that none of the ideas made the important connectionsnecessary to reach this group and to overcome some of the mistrust andmisperceptions of chronic disease.
A family connection
We brainstormed ideas and decided tocreate our own telenovela. The telenovela format, we felt, would encourage thetarget population to relate to characters going through similar health issues.
We hoped that, by telling a story in whichthe characters better managed their chronic disease, patients would begin tounderstand their own issues. The story would portray characters that thepatients would care about, in circumstances that would be familiar to them. The Perez Family was born.
Our eight-part telenovela addressedthe many health issues that exist in a family—there is rarely just one isolatedissue. Each episode showed how each family member addressed the issues bothwithin the family and through their relationship with their longtime familyphysician, Dr. Alvarez, and other professionals they trusted. Topics included type2 diabetes and its complications, preventing heart disease, managing asthma,prenatal care, child wellness, and teen depression. The storylines wrappedthese issues in a way that allowed the patient to get to know the charactersand their daily lives and drama.
The rollout and the results
We rolled out the program in bothEnglish and Spanish and saw a 15 to 20 percent across-the-board increase inhealth literacy among viewers. But more gratifying in our research were the reactionsof the patients to the stories.
Patients complained that Juanita Perezneeded to take better care of herself, especially with a granddaughter on theway. They loved Miguel Perez and didn’t think his mother-in-law appreciated himenough. They were desperately worried when teen Eliazar ran away from home, andthey hoped for a healthy baby for Alicia. Their level of engagement was evidentand their trust in The Perez Familywas clear.
Cultural relevance made the connectionto the learning. One woman in our Spanish-speaking focus group said, “The Perezfamily does not look exactly like my family, but I know each one of them fromsomewhere in my life. They face the dilemmas we face each day.” That was my proudestsingle day as an educator.
What designers learned from ThePerez Family
What’s the lesson here? Well, it turnsout that one of the best learning solutions for adults in the modern eraactually comes from the ancient ritual of storytelling. From mythic tales toldaround a tribal campfire to biblical parables, it remains one of the oldestforms for disseminating knowledge.
On storytelling
Researchers now believe the storytellingprocess may be the best and longest-lasting form of preserving knowledge. Toprove this point, look to the Navajo, who have yet to record their historyusing the written word. They have preserved their entire past solely through theart of storytelling.
According to Katalina Groh, co-authorof Storytelling in Organizations: WhyStorytelling Is Transforming 21st Century Organizations and Management,storytelling provides adult learners with a powerful method to help them retainfacts and figures. While developing educational videos, Groh found that adultswere able to recite a story, containing all the relevant facts and figureswithin it, verbatim, even weeks afterthey had originally heard it. In contrast, adults who attended a lecture retainedless than 50 percent of these facts and figures.
What is it about storytelling thatmakes it so effective for adult learning? Researchers have offered up a numberof theories. According to Sandra Morgan of the University of Hartford, learnersbecome immersed in the content on a deeper level because it makes emotional andpersonal appeals. Storytelling paints visual imagery for the student to processmore memorably. Morgan explains that learning experiences associated withemotions are more easily stored and recalled. In essence, this means that agood story connects with the listener on a personal and far more relevant level.And that beats the impersonal lecture on every level.
To further support storytelling’smethodology, adult learning theorists such as Malcolm Knowles and John Kellerhave long claimed the process makes a deeper connection to the leaner, as theadult learner must find relevance in a topic to fully invest in the learning.
There is more evidence of storytelling’sefficacy. Renate Caine of John Hopkins University’s School of Education hasfound in his research that the mind organizes, retains, and accesses informationbetter in the form of stories. He explains that information can occupy a rangeanywhere from experiences in human relationships to the duties expected of aworker in an organization. He emphasizes that, if you want a worker to really click with their job and the workexpected of them, you should tell a story about someone else in their position.
Bringing learning to life
The effects of storytelling have takenon an even greater significance in my own life. In my work, I see the power ofmultimedia education and its potential, which all too often goes unrecognized. Inthe past, eLearning creators incorrectly assumed tutorials needed to be dull,lifeless PowerPoint-like presentations sans the benefit of a colorful classroominstructor. It became a widely accepted practice to allow educational videos todrone on hypnotically for 30 minutes or more.
Devoid of any kind of interactivity orhumor, the monotonous stream of information challenged viewers to stay awake,let alone to learn from the content. No wonder training professionals andlearners alike began to let out a collective groan at the thought of having toview the growing number of CBTs and long, mind-numbing video programsavailable. Unfortunately, no other options existed at the time.
New technology and a Next Gen culture havechanged the landscape of multimedia education. Today’s learners are no longerwilling to sit catatonically when there are so many possibilities fortransferring information. The ability to mix the old media with the new nowprovides a near-perfect vehicle for storytelling. Unfortunately, not everyonein our field has recognized the shift. Educators too often continue to hold onto archaic teaching methods, which is even more frustrating to learners.
A personal epiphany
Why continue to bore learners with a PowerPointon steroids and a 60-minute (so-called educational) video? Whatever therationale, I have personally made it my mission to become a catalyst forchange.
As part of my commitment to bettereducation, I teach classes in how to make eLearning more engaging throughstorytelling. To demonstrate, I show my students—instructional designers—atypical PowerPoint presentation from an instructor-led training course ondelegation techniques. The content itself is sound; the course itself can beengaging with an instructor who makes the content relevant through stories andexamples. In this form it was actually a solid piece of learning.
However, the PowerPoint for the courseis a bad 1990s template—bubbles in the background, clip art of bull’s-eyes,cartoon men with large heads, and lots and lots of text on the screen. Historically,many companies would order their instructional designers to convert the instructor-ledclass to eLearning. The designers would do no more than to export the PowerPointto an eLearning format, part and parcel. I then ask the class if they would beinterested in taking such a course—in other words, just clicking through thePowerPoint alone. The answer is always a resounding, “No.”
A conversion process that works
There is an effective transformationprocess, however, and this is the focus of my classes. As egregious as thePowerPoint may seem, it is still filled with valuable information. The key is touse the existing PowerPoint as a basis for conversion, to extract theinformation, and to present it in a more engaging format.
Look at the objectives and examine thecontent carefully. To make the material more engaging and relevant to thelearner, wrap a story around the content. Use the classic storytelling elementsof setting, characters, event (problem), development (actions andconsequences), climax, and ending.
Here is an example of the way thisworked in a class I originally developed for instructional designers in a high-techcompany. The story took place in a pressurized technology setting. It featured abusy, overworked manager who refused to delegate. His staff became frustratedwith him because he coveted information and made it difficult for them to dotheir jobs. In the story, the manager eventually misses an important deadline,falling asleep at his desk. His manager steps in, begins to mentor him on theimportance of delegation, and shows him how to delegate properly.
A fast-paced two-minute YouTube-likevideo conveys the entire story up to the point of consequences. The course thenbecomes a more traditional interactive CBT, taking the learner and the managerthrough the proper steps to delegation. Along the way, scenarios get learnersto think critically about their own delegation skills and to apply what they’velearned.
The course participants immediately seethe difference a story makes. In most cases, when I teach this approach, thestory-based product blows designers away. For many, it is an eye-openingexperience to see what was once considered appropriate eLearning (thePowerPoints) transform to something enlightening.
My next step is to challenge thedesigners to apply this new knowledge. Starting with a typical PowerPoint deck,they create a story, choose multimedia, write scenarios, and present it back tothe class. Universally, at the end of the class we have stories and programsthat continue to surpass my expectations. The stories are relevant, thescenarios connect with learners, and there is a transformation of both the learningprofessionals and the learning. It is amazingly satisfying to me as an educatorand storyteller.
Finding a better way through storytelling
Education has gone through a lot ofsoul-searching the past few years. People have examined the method used fordecades to teach. They have realized that surely there must be a better way toimpart knowledge than barking facts at learners. Who would have thought theanswer came from an ancient tradition, or Latin American television? Asresearchers and organizations are discovering, storytelling is not an artifactof the past. It may be the future of learning. For the world of multimedialearning, the story is the driver of interest, relevance, and gettingresults.
