Storytelling In Courses: 7 Tips For Impact

Storytelling In Courses To Grab Learners’ Attention

A woman with silver-streaked hair is busy typing at her desk. Suddenly the office door is pushed open by a young man.

Young man/Bjorn: Jessica! We need your help. I know you wanted to launch our product globally this quarter but we have a bottleneck.

Jessica: What? Bjorn, our investors and stakeholders expect us to go global this quarter. What’s the roadblock?

Bjorn: We did not consider a vital piece in our project plan. When we go global we will need to address currency conversion on a real-time basis. It looks like we’ll need to factor in the time to evaluate and enter into an agreement with a currency converter agency.

Think this is the beginning of a drama or an advertisement? Not exactly. This is the introductory script to a 45-minute course we developed for a large payment gateway company. Many courses like this are being developed to help sales, marketing, and other related teams become well-versed in a company’s products. Nothing grabs attention more than a narrative that plunges the audience right into a situation where the characters they empathize with are facing challenges and obstacles. The audience tends to live each step of the hero’s and heroine’s journey along with them. This in turn doubles the impact of the information embedded in the story and also increases retention.

That’s why we use storytelling in more and more of the courses we build. From building an entire universe of characters embroiled in creating a social media analytics engine (that was for a 32-hour course in data science) to a 15-minute conversation between a merry mentor-mentee duo about the basics of time management, the courses we’ve built, with stories interwoven into their fabric, have been very impactful.

How To Use Storytelling In Your Courses

Here are a few tips if you are thinking of incorporating storytelling into your courses.

1. Identify Learning Objectives And Map Out The Learner Persona

The first step before you sit down to craft your central storyline is to identify the learning objectives and learner persona. Imagine creating a storyline about the trials and tribulations a data engineer faces at work, only to then realize that the learning objectives are more suited for the trials and tribulations of an HR manager.

2. Create A Universe Of Characters That Are Relatable

Make sure that the characters you create are relatable to your audience. If your course is designed for grassroots-level NGO workers in north Africa, the characters should live and breathe in the same environment. This makes the story more relatable. It becomes more impactful while increasing retention.

3. Refer To Real-Life Examples

Learners relate better to examples from the real world. Make sure to weave many such references into your course. For example, you could point to the US subprime mortgage crisis to show how the financial crisis of a country could affect the whole world.

4. Pay Attention To The Tone And Language Used

Make sure that the scripts or voice-overs are conversational. Try to use language as close to that of your intended audience as possible. This becomes tricky when you are designing a course for an international audience. We get around this by using characters from around the world while incorporating as much of a local flavor as possible.

5. Mix-And-Match Multimedia Elements

Your story need not be limited to videos. You can weave the narrative into other multimedia elements like infographics, audio bytes, etc.

6. Use Sensory Details

Make sure to add sensory details like sights, sounds and even smells when building the story. A description of the environment and characters makes it more tangible for the learner.

7. Pepper The Story With Emotion

Emotions like surprise, humor, and even angst evoke the empathy of the learner. As human beings, our brain registers events and facts that evoke an emotion. So the use of emotion helps the learner connect with the topic being discussed and helps them retain the information.

Conclusion

Embedding your course with a story that the learner can relate to makes creating the course a satisfying and enjoyable effort. It also significantly enhances the entire learning experience with increased engagement and retention. Ready to take your learner on an immersive experience with your storytelling chops? Don’t forget to load the story with interesting twists and turns peppered with emotion and sensory details.