This #Take5 provides a summary of the recent LD@3 event “The art of storytelling for Learning Developers: how to transform complex ideas into compelling narratives” that took place on the 27 June 2024 with Dr Katharine Jewitt, Consultant and Associate Lecturer and Researcher at The Open University. Katharine looks at why stories work so well, sharing some of the secrets of great storytellers and explores types of stories you can use in your own work.
Katharine delved into the art of storytelling, offering invaluable insights and practical techniques to effectively communicate with students with empathy, clarity, and impact. During the webinar, Learning Developers seeking to enhance their communication skills or looking to navigate difficult conversations were equipped with tools to engage students and convey sensitive topics in a powerful and persuasive manner. This #Take5 provides a summary of the secrets of great storytelling and why stories work so well. Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your storytelling prowess to new heights.
During the webinar, Katharine proposed the development of a storytelling resource bank, which some of you expressed an interest in, along with a storytelling community of practice. Thank you to those of you who have also followed up since the event, by email. In this #Take5, you are invited to complete a short survey, if you’d like to express an interest in joining a community of practice for storytelling and/or to share your ideas on the development of a storytelling resource bank.
Stories and identity
Our memories are stories.
Stories form who you are, your identity.
As a youngster you are asked what will you be when you grow up?
How we interact, the way we think are based on stories.
How is a story used?
Cave people survived based on who was the biggest and had the best survival skills.
As groups got bigger, there was a need to communicate with more nuance and overcome other enemies from taking their territory.
Stories are part of us
Fig 1: Diagram depicting why stories work so well.
As the world evolves lots of stories have developed and are used by elders to pass on lessons.
The most compelling, combine stories, to make new ways of living, new technologies.
You may have been taught a lesson about crossing the road – look, listen, look left and right, left and right again. Stories change – for example, the green cross code, animals crossing, stories are adapted for different generations.
Stories can bring groups together, how we should act, lessons about leaders and heroes, and stories are used to separate us or distinguish us from other groups.
We make stories about other worlds, aliens, spaceships.
Stories are a part of us, everywhere.
Why do stories work so well for Learning Developers?
Stories work well because students are biologically attuned to them. I carried out some research a few years ago asking students what engaged them in their learning and storytelling was one of the top things that came out of the research findings.
Activity 1
Scientists monitored activity in participants’ brains whilst they read a storybook. Various areas of the brain lit up.
What do you think these areas of the brain related to?
Scientists measured brain activity as stories were read to them. As they read or watched the story – what do you think happened to brain?
Fig 2: For the first time, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have identified which emotion a person is experiencing based on brain activation. This image shows the average positions of brain regions used to identify emotional states. (Kassam et al, 2013)
Lesson: stories give us physical experience.
Stories are a safe space for us to learn and experiment.
In fig 2, participants were living the story.
They were feeling as they felt, whatever was happening in the tale – sadness, joy, happiness,
Stories help our students to understand how different people feel and help students to take on different viewpoints.
Which do you think your students prefer in a workshop: a list of 5 bullet points or the same information told in a story?
Stories help us function.
Activity 2: Look at the pair of images. What is the man feeling in each of these two images?
Figure 3: Stills from a demonstration of The Kuleshov Effect, where the perceived emotion changes depending on the context
The webinar participants said the man looked moody, sad, disinterested.
Figure 4: Stills from a demonstration of The Kuleshov Effect, where the perceived emotion changes depending on the context
In this picture, the webinar participants said the man looked smug, showed desire and longing.
The Kuleshov Effect
There isn’t actually a link with the image on the left. The picture of the man is exactly the same in both images. The images are from a demonstration of The Kuleshov Effect (Butler, 2021), where the viewer derives more meaning from the interaction of two images, rather than one in isolation. This was a ground breaking discovery at the time because it demonstrated how filmmakers could manipulate an audience’s emotions without editing.
Our brains make a link between left and right. We are naturally telling a story and filling gaps and making a connection. We are making our own story.
Stories are memorable which is why they work well.
Our students if given 5 bullet points, in 6 months’ time won’t remember as much as a story with the 5 bullets woven into the story. Experiencing it biologically, there’s more opportunities, more neurons to hook us into making the information become more memorable, more alive. We experience visually and information is much easier to recall, when it is in a story form.
Steve Jobs
When Steve jobs launched the smart phone, he probably wanted to tell you every feature of that phone, but he doesn’t have time or the ability to reach you in that way. So, what Steve did is use imagery and told a story to help to get the message across in a much clearer way. He simplified how the iPhone can improve your life.
Show rather than tell
Always try to find ways to show your students, rather than telling them. If you think of a charity advert, if they were full of statistics, you will not remember that as well, as seeing a child forced to pick one toy and their parent covering their eyes to stop seeing death as they walk for days to reach a border to escape war. The use of stories makes information more compelling, more real, more relatable, showing rather than telling.
Entertain multiple viewpoints
Stories help you entertain multiple viewpoints. It allows students to walk in another person’s shoes. Anyone can create stories. You don’t have to be a public speaker to tell a story. We all tell stories every single day without thinking. How was your day? – it is storytelling. We’ve been telling stories for thousands of years. We are biologically born to do this.
Secrets of great storytellers
- Know your goal
- Use your voice and show emotion
- Use your body and build characters
- Bring the detail and relevance
- Don’t lose your message. Move your students from where they are to where you want them to be.
- Define what you want to achieve – do you want to be entertaining, serious?
- Move your students to a different future.
- If you know your goal, stories become easier for you to shape.
- Bring detail and relevance into the story, get your students to feel the story.
- Great storytellers add details and make it relevant to audience.
- You need to make sure the setting and characters are relevant to your audience.
- Storytellers are never bigger than the story. The story is what changes minds and moves your students. Allow your story to breathe and tell your students why you’ve told the story. Don’t leave them hanging. I’ve shared this story to show you X, Y and Z.
Here are three different kinds of story to help you get started with storytelling.
Story 1: Who I am story.
Share stories with your students that relate to you, that scary story and how you moved on.
Craft who I am, – think about a moment when you wanted to do what you do – e.g. learning development, what was the incident that made you decide what you wanted to do?
If you want to display a value or a particular learning point, when was it that you realised that value or that piece of learning was important?
The best who I am stories, include a beginning, a middle and an end.
The who I am story might be who you were in the past, I was the naïve young student who didn’t listen….
Share the moment everything changes – a big incident.
How did you react to situation and what did you go on to do?
When meeting new students having a ‘who am I story’ is a great way to introduce who you are.
Story 2: The problem / solution story
The problem solution story are two stories that will influence and persuade your students to act in a certain way, to follow a certain direction. You are selling a vision.
Steve Jobs told a story when introducing iTunes in a world where lots of people accessed dial up internet connection, downloaded illegally, recorded from the radio, it was bad quality. He told the story of how difficult it was and that there was a solution. Rather than searching for 2 hours, you can download in a few seconds.
Two stories – a terrible story of a problem we didn’t know we had and a success story – persuading us to change (buying Steve Jobs’ product).
This storytelling technique is about persuading your students to act in a certain way.
To start crafting it, you will need to know a world with or without the solution.
Put the student as a hero of the story. Make the story about them. Include lots of detail, include detail about that person, how they feel frustrated inefficient, slow, make it real, make it relevant – without the solution. Make them feel it. Make the solution so real with detail, more compelling, incorporate smells, sounds, feelings, experiences. And the audience as a hero. You’ll start to see your students taking on your ideas in a much more engaging way.
Story 3: Teaching values
You can use this kind of story to ensure students act in a way when you’re not around.
It’s a great way to bring people into a group.
If there’s an action that you want your students to do, craft a story, think about people who set the standard. Who have you witnessed achieving highly to make students want to do the same?
Embellish it. Stories teach in ways that manuals can’t.
The best teaching value stories, teach one value in the story. They have a relevant identifiable hero, they’re just like us. They also finish with the lesson.
Do you recognise these stories in stories you tell or know?
Take and adapt stories. By reading this blog, you’ve been empowered about storytelling, you are now a storyteller, you now know how you can tell stories to a greater effect.
This blog has covered:
How to make stories relevant -voices, characters etc.
You’ve heard practical stories to introduce yourself, set a vision to drive your students to a course of action and to teach and set a culture within your students.
Stories have been used throughout history to bring nations together, start religions, sell iPhones. I’m sure stories can help you in challenges you are facing and hopefully…
live happily ever after….
Thank you.
References
Butler, S. (2021) Clarification of Video Retrieval Query Results by the Automated Insertion of Supporting Shots. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349520611_Clarification_of_Video_Retrieval_Query_Results_by_the_Automated_Insertion_of_Supporting_Shots (Accessed 27 June 2024)
Kassam, K.S., Markey, A.R., Cherkassky, V.L., Loewenstein, G. and Just, M.A. (2013) ‘Identifying Emotions on the Basis of Neural Activation’, PLOS ONE, Vol 8 (6). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0066032 (Accessed 27 June 2024)
About the author: Dr Katharine Jewitt
Dr Katharine Jewitt is a Consultant and award-winning Associate Lecturer and Researcher at The Open University. She also works with the Digital Schools Company to guide and implement its ongoing strategy to promote digital skills in Nursery / Primary / Special Education / Secondary schools & organisations. Her role focuses on maximising the opportunities offered by digital technology in education by working with educational leaders and practitioners to build their confidence and assist them to embed digital skills in their everyday learning and advising on areas where progress can be made. She has a Ph.D in Virtual Reality and is a Fellow of Advance HE. Katharine is Co-Chair of the UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab for Education and Digital Skills. She is former Chair of the Evaluation of Learners’ Experiences of e-learning Special Interest Group (ELESIG) and the UK Digital Learning Community of Practice. Katharine is the Administrator for the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education and Technical Editor for the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. Katharine posts at Blue Sky, LinkedIn and X.