Elearning Tools and the Art of the Story

Story telling is one of the oldest art forms that have ever come into existence. In the past, tribes used to gather around and tell stories about their gods, their history, and their legends. This was how so many things were taught and passed down from the elders to the younger generation. This is also a great thing to use or incorporate into an elearning tools generated module. This is important with elearning because a lot of elearning modules tend to just relay information in a colorful but not exactly meaningful way.

So what is it in the story that makes it such an effective teaching tool? Well, a story not only gives flavor to the lesson, it gives it life. It gives structure to the learner’s experience of the lesson. What are its implications? How would real people probably react when faced with its issues? Why does it matter to anyone? And more abstractly, how does it feel, taste, look like, smell, and or sound like?

This does not mean that one has to use a story in every lesson. But one must think in terms of a story. Getting the flow of a lesson module can sometimes be just a bland list of interrelated facts. Feeding this to students or trainees will just make them feel like they’re eating regurgitated material. This has been happening in the academe and corporate training for a very long time now. Teaching has been reduced to such a job of telling students about facts and laws and theories. However, such lesson technique fails to connect the students or trainees to the lesson. It does not allow them to see the lesson in context of the bigger picture. And this bigger picture includes their own experience of the world.

Introducing the context should always happen at the beginning of the class or the module. But that should not stop there. There must be a constant reminding at each important point in the lesson. There must always be a time when the teacher will suddenly segue from the lesson to another perspective: a look at how these things are affecting the real world. This is applicable to every subject, otherwise why would these subjects be taught in the first place.

This kind of teaching does not simply apply to the academic subjects; it can be applied to software and other employee training elearning solutions. These are perhaps the best place to use such a strategy since employee training elearning tools are notoriously boring and bland.

Trainees and module developers can try to spice things up by creating what can be called “special effects”. One can put in music sound effects, tons of game quizzes, and the most eye pleasing and at the same time eye catching template designs. But in the end, there is just one thing that all of these comes down to and that is surface effect. Its just sugar that helps them take the medicine. But it does not help them actually process and absorb the entire lesson to the point that they can integrate it into their very selves.