Once Upon a Keyboard: Designing Stories Into E-Learning

Heard any good stories lately? Sometimes stories are pure entertainment; sometimes they have a deeper lesson. For thousands of years, parents have taught their children everything from life skills to religious beliefs with stories. Today, we get constant exposure to stories, through television, movies, books, magazines, and conversations around the water cooler at work.

As e-Learning designers and developers, we use different media types. We design our learning modules to include graphics, movies, narration or other sound, text, and animation. Interactivity is a key that helps learners engage with the material and take skills back to their jobs. Another key, though, is the use of stories to give context and to involve the learner at an emotional level with the material.

Stories to teach, stories to learn

A trainer standing in front of a classroom has a captive audience and can become a showman for a few moments. A classroom trainer can use the spaces between the technical points of the agenda to connect the dots for the learner – using stories, snippets of true events, examples, and humor to transfer sequential procedures into a body of knowledge the learner can later recall.

E-Learning modules must accomplish this same transfer. The story needs to be the magnet that attracts bare-bones facts to the reality of the student’s daily job life. Then, the story needs to maintain that magnetic attraction to connect the trainer’s message into a cohesive body of knowledge and action so the student can access it when the time is right. Like parents teaching children not to go into the woods alone or how to find ripe berries in the summertime, e-Learning designers and developers can use memorable stories to transfer knowledge and skill.

What is a story?

So, what are stories? According to Merriam Webster Online Dictionary (www.m-w.com), a story is simply “an account of incidents or events.” Stories can be true accounts or fiction, long or short, tragic or humorous.

If you study the art of storytelling or creative writing, you will find that stories have a basic structure, called the story arc. This arc includes an introduction, a conflict or problem, complications, climax, resolution, and conclusion. (See Sidebar 1.) Other elements of stories include plot, characters, setting, theme, and style. These elements help the storyteller build a story that grabs the reader’s attention, keeps the reader involved, and leaves the reader with a sense of satisfaction that the conflict or problem was resolved. E-Learning designers share these goals with storytellers. We must gain our learners’ attention and keep them involved. We want to help them see the resolution to a conflict or problem, and leave them with the satisfaction of having gained knowledge or skill.

Will a story used for e-Learning be as complex as stories written for entertainment? Probably not. The reality of e-Learning, especially in the corporate world, dictates that we use as little of our learners’ time as possible. We must make the lessons effective but fast. Therefore, those of us who design and develop e-Learning should use stories for their power; however, we should understand how to structure those stories to get the biggest punch for the smallest investment.

E-Learning designer’s guide to story structure

E-Learning designers can apply the basic story elements with a variety of online media. The art of e-Learning design and development is challenging. We are trying to teach in a situation where some would say the learner is isolated, communicating not with other human beings, but with machines. Any method we can use to make a “human” connection with our learners will help us achieve our ultimate goal. Stories can help make this connection. Our learners will walk away with new knowledge and skills that they can apply to their jobs, making them more valuable employees and making their company’s investment in training (and in training designers) demonstrate a true return on investment.

The introduction

The traditional story arc begins with an introduction. This element gives us the first incidents in the story (“inciting incident” in the novel-writer’s vernacular). It introduces characters and setting. In a novel or short story, it is used to “set the stage” for the rest of the action in the story. Our e-Learning story introduction serves the same purpose, although it may be only a few sentences instead of a chapter or two. We may have characters to introduce, especially if we are going to present a complex story type. The characters might be a stand-in for the learner themselves; however, we must introduce them with enough detail so the learner can identify with their actions. We certainly have a setting (often the workplace or a customer’s environment), which may not need to be described in detail, but needs to be stated to set the learner’s mind in the space of the story. We definitely will have an inciting incident – a customer’s phone call, a moment of sale, the filing of a complaint, or an event that requires the employee to take action. Think of the inciting incident as the event that will begin a specific workflow for your learner. You will kick off the series of events here, and build on those events in the next phases of the story arc.

Presenting the inciting incident and accompanying details can take the form of many media options in e-Learning. You might include a photograph of an office environment and workers, accompanied by text or narration to set the stage. You might produce a short movie clip showing the action or conflict taking place in the story setting. At its most basic form, the introduction could be text, perhaps accompanied by graphics to help illustrate the initial conflict or incident. If your course is part of a blended learning solution, you might choose to have the introduction built as a Web page where students can come and go before the other training modules begin, learning details about the characters, settings, and the inciting incident.

The conflict

The next phase in the story arc is the conflict or problem. Here is the crux of your training agenda. Your customer, fellow employee, or organization has a question, problem, or issue that needs addressing with specific action. This is the time in the story arc to describe that need. What problem does the customer have with your product? What question is the employee asking their HR manager?

The complication

Next, a traditional story arc has rising action, also known as “complication.” In e-Learning, this may be very limited. After all, we are not writing the next great American novel. Rather, we are trying to set up a specific learning moment for an employee who probably doesn’t have much time in which to learn a task. At most, the rising action for an e-Learning story could include additional details about the problem that the customer is reporting. If, for example, you are teaching customer support representatives how to support a software product, you might need to include details about the customer’s environment here. What kind of operating system are they using? Is the customer new to the product? When did the problem occur?

Designing the conflict and rising action into e-Learning involves a balancing act. Media choices are many and varied, but beware of bogging down your objectives in fancy, flashy vehicles. People don’t learn because they are impressed with movies or graphics. In fact, the more intricate or non-essential detail you include in the rising action, the more you risk losing your main message in the flashy presentation you are using to communicate it. E-Learning should present the conflict clearly, with all of the necessary details and rising action to lead the learner to a conclusion. E-Learning should, however, avoid the tendency to build a block-buster, movie-length media-rich presentation involving more details than are necessary.

The climax

The climax is the turning point of any story. This is the event or skill for which you have a written terminal objective in your training plan. To continue our software support example, this is the point where your learner must realize that they must complete a specific task to solve the customer’s problem. They may have to use online resources built into your training – access a knowledge base, use a decision matrix, or run a diagnostic tool – as part of this decision-making process. You may have a stand-in character for your learner. Someone who is a fictional representation of their job title, for example, will come to a realization about the action he or she must take at this climactic point in the story. Again – we aren’t writing War and Peace, so this may only be a bit of narration or a video clip showing our character deciding to take action. The idea is to give your learner the message that they must gather information or diagnose the issue first (during the rising action), and then decide on the best action for the situation.

The resolution

Our story arc will end with resolution and conclusion. These steps show our learner the exact action they must take – again, through video, simulation, audio narration, or whatever media best illustrates their environment. If the climax maps to the terminal objectives in your training plan, the resolution maps directly to the sequential procedures the student will learn. This is how to do the task, or how to apply the knowledge you have taught them. The resolution is the meat of the training, and where you hope you have kept your learner’s attention so they can make the connections between the original inciting incident described at the beginning of your story and the desired outcome as described in the conclusion.

Story types

There are different story types that you can use when designing e-Learning. Each type uses elements of the story arc we have already discussed. The story type to use will depend on a variety of factors. These include whether the learning event will be live (such as a synchronous online class), whether the story will be a prerequisite that will be referenced during later modules of a blended delivery method, the types of skill or knowledge you are trying to communicate, and the time you have available.

E-Learning stories include examples, anecdotes, scenarios, case studies, and simulations. Each of these types has its place and its purpose. See Sidebar 2 to familiarize yourself with the definitions of each story type. Throughout the rest of this article, I will present examples of how my training team has implemented different story types in our e-Learning solutions.

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