Stories have always been a great way to engage an individual. Be it a toddler, teenager, or an adult. We all have memories and there are some stories from our childhood which we remember even today. That is the power of storytelling and the impact it has on the retention through the cognitive abilities of the human brain. The sheer engagement factors a story entails leading to increased retention of information, makes it one of the best ways to deliver content to the modern-day learners.
Let me tell you about an interesting research which was conducted in the year 1969 by Gordon H. Bower and Michal C. Clark from Stanford University. The title of the research is “Narrative stories as mediators for serial learning”. They wanted to study the impact of stories on memory retention.
In this experiment, they formed two groups i.e., Group A and Group B. Each group was given a 12-serial list of 10 words each which they had to memorize. Having said that, the way each group was instructed to memorize was different. Group A had to memorize the words in the normal study and rehearsal method where there were random and unrelated words whereas Group B had to use the narrative chaining method. In this method, Group B was instructed to use the unrelated and random words and make a story using all those words included based on their imagination. At last, it was time for the test on which group could memorize and recall the words better. For immediate recall, there was hardly any difference in the results as both the groups could recall words accurately. But as time passed by, to everyone’s astonishment, Group B who used the story method could memorize and recall almost double the words as compared to Group A members who used the unrelated memorizing method. This resulted in the clear dominance of the story learning method to recollect information even after a prolonged duration. To be more accurate and clearer, Bower and Clark conducted the same study 12 times, and the results were the same which paved way to the result that retention is higher when shared through a story-based approach.
Stories could be in different forms. It could include sharing personal experiences about a particular subject or could be a fictional setup. The end objective of any story should include the moral and the learnings one could imbibe from them. Now let us see the different ingredients which makes a story attractive and interesting for the learners:
- Create a Theme: Try to create a common theme for the entire story you script. This will help unify information to the learners rather than it being in bits and pieces. It should look as one complete storytelling experience
- Use Rich Visuals: Visuals play a vital role in nailing down a story to its core elements. One can also use mentors or characters who would be walking the learners through specific parts of the story or even form an integral part of the story
- Impactful Audio and Music: Our human hearing ability plays a crucial role in grasping concepts faster. Having a great orator or a professional voiceover artist to deliver the story will also have a huge impact in successfully putting it across to your learners. You can also use a few music elements to set the context of a scene
- Include Humour: Try to add pieces of humour in between your stories even if it is a serious topic. It always helps the learners recollect the funny bits thereby increasing their retention. Also, it keeps them engaged throughout the whole experience
- Keep it short: As we know the world is moving to micro learning due to decreasing attention spans. In this scenario, learners would be better off consuming short stories rather than going through a complete novel
- Summarize the learning outcomes: Make sure at the end of every piece of the story you reinforce the underlying learning objective to your learners
- End it with a quick recap and assessment: Assessments have been the best way to get to know the learners have retained information. At the end of each episode of a story, check your learners understanding before you move to the next topic
Apart from creating stories, it is also imperative to think how you could deliver these stories to your learning audience. Following are a few modalities you can think of:
- Videos: 2D, 3D, Interactive, scribe and even static photographic videos can be a great mechanism to deliver a story to your learners. The best part about videos is you can even share them via informal mediums like WhatsApp and WeChat without worrying about compatibility
- Interactive eLearning: This is by far the most effective way to deliver stories by using characters, interactive elements like scenarios etc. One can also use a few gamification elements within the stories to motivate learners and keep them engaged
- eBooks: This could be similar to a novel or comic we have been reading but in a digital format. This could be self-reading books compatible with any devices. It could also integrate other elements like videos within the eBooks
- In Person or Virtual Classrooms: The most common and traditional way to deliver a story is a classroom or now even virtual classrooms also known as Instructor Led Training (ILT) or Virtual Instructor Led Training (vILT). Usually, the trainer or teacher will be the orator walking through or narrating the complete story to the learners along with having some fun activities along the way
- Augmented and Virtual Reality: With the increase in usage of AR and VR, stories and scenarios can be delivered in a complete immersive setting. There are a lot of use cases especially for soft skills and leadership trainings being developed and delivered via virtual reality mediums
The Conclusion:
Storytelling is one of the sought-after methods to deliver trainings across different domains, subject areas, verticals, and industries. They help in increased learner retention and keeps the audience hooked on to your learning content. Let it be role plays which include soft skills, sales trainings, leadership trainings or any other subjects, the retention is ought to happen better than some of the other learning interventions. Companies like PassionPro are known to take existing content which could be in any format and create or convert them to story based learning modules with engaging and interactive elements for better learner understanding and retention. Let me know your thoughts and I would be interested to hear about your experiences delivering training using the storytelling approach.