Absolutely Wendy, you make me laugh - who hasn't expired under the weight of a report heavy on metrics/ dashboards and light on narrative flow. I think narrative in this broader sense is a vital mechanism to connect learners across professions and disciplines and a key to successfully skilling up in new fields because it carries context and meaning.
Hi Wendy thanks for your insights. I remember doing a free online course about IVF in which many learners shared their personal stories of going down the IVF path or attempting to. Their experiences were informative and very moving, causing me to think more broadly and deeply about IVF and parenting.
Storytelling can indeed be a powerful learning tool but what about where the fit is less obvious? A powerfully logical thinker may consider it irrelevant to their learning or when designing a course. I wonder if a problem-based focus is more helpful for some course design? Alternatively, perhaps reframing storytelling could add traction eg scientific method as a powerful narrative?
Hi Lesley, you make a good point, the way we talk about or position storytelling may not resonate with some people. However if we think of storytelling as a mechanism to provide a narrative for information its application can be very broad. One example that I can think of is a well crafted annual report can tell a story about what happened over a year in the life of an organisation but many are just collections of metrics and dashboards, so perhaps in those contexts it could be more useful to talk about narrative thread.
Absolutely Wendy, you make me laugh - who hasn't expired under the weight of a report heavy on metrics/ dashboards and light on narrative flow. I think narrative in this broader sense is a vital mechanism to connect learners across professions and disciplines and a key to successfully skilling up in new fields because it carries context and meaning.
Hi Wendy thanks for your insights. I remember doing a free online course about IVF in which many learners shared their personal stories of going down the IVF path or attempting to. Their experiences were informative and very moving, causing me to think more broadly and deeply about IVF and parenting.
Storytelling can indeed be a powerful learning tool but what about where the fit is less obvious? A powerfully logical thinker may consider it irrelevant to their learning or when designing a course. I wonder if a problem-based focus is more helpful for some course design? Alternatively, perhaps reframing storytelling could add traction eg scientific method as a powerful narrative?
Hi Lesley, you make a good point, the way we talk about or position storytelling may not resonate with some people. However if we think of storytelling as a mechanism to provide a narrative for information its application can be very broad. One example that I can think of is a well crafted annual report can tell a story about what happened over a year in the life of an organisation but many are just collections of metrics and dashboards, so perhaps in those contexts it could be more useful to talk about narrative thread.