Five reasons why instructional designers should harness the power of stories



We know that our minds respond in a special way to stories - I’ve gone into more detail about exactly why in a video explaining Walter Fisher’s ‘narrative paradigm’ in an animated video I made for youtube - you can find it here.

But sometimes we rule out the idea of using stories to teach adults, perhaps thinking that it is too childish, or too time-consuming to produce or consume.

Read below for eight reasons instructional designers can’t afford to ignore stories any longer.

1. Stories structure information in a way our brains understand and remember

So often elearning courses, or other digital courses, are structured like reference materials. But often elearning is meant to be completed from start to finish, rather than dipped into as a reference. Things that are meant to be read (or watched) from start to finish (like novels or films) generally have another layer of structure that gives our brains a line to follow. This other structure is most often a story.

2. Stories are widely used in business and education

Think of business books like ‘Who moved my cheese?’ by Spencer Johnson - a runaway success that used an analogy to make a point about dealing with change. Think of how many of the TED talks you’ve watched are peppered with anecdotes and stories. Think of writers like Malcolm Gladwell that educate and entertain on a vast scale, in part because he is a master storyteller.

3. Stories can be branded in many ways

If the word ‘story’ is still making you worried about your materials appearing childish, there are a number of ways to rebrand stories. How about case studies? Parables? Analogies? Anecdotes? Histories? Narratives? Few people have ever felt that case studies are childish.

4. eLearning is already heading in that direction

The large amount of interest in scenario-based learning in the elearning industry at the moment is a sign of the appeal of stories: what is an elearning scenario if not an interactive story in which you can help define the outcome?

5. The power of narratives has stood the test of time

Some of the oldest human creations that we still have are stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh. On average US adults spent nearly 200 minutes a day watching television in 2020 - and a lot of what we see on TV is stories. The podcast era has seen the rise of true crime stories being pumped into our ears on our daily commute. And although the very earliest video games didn’t have a story (like Pong) when games designers wanted people to engage with their products for longer amounts of time they made their games into long, interactive stories, like The Last of Us and Assassin’s Creed. If you’re wanting to make something that engages people, and lasts, then making it into a good story is a pretty safe bet.

I hope I’ve convinced you to experiment with adding stories to your learning design!

You can check out my video about why stories superpower our learning here.

Have a look at my other videos here.
You can get in touch via the ‘contact’ page on my website.


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