How to Design a Narrative Story For Experiential Learning

I frequently write about experiential learning and how to use this methodology effectively. I'm going to share my design thinking behind a very basic narrative story-based activity.

One of the challenges with designing experiential learning is that it's much more difficult to create than conventional learning. It requires much more effort, skill, and budget — perhaps 10 to 100 times more.

This means that it's not always feasible to deliver learning content in this way. That's where text, graphics, and video can be used effectively. Not as the main activity in the learning experience, but as subactivities or supplemental resources.

When I have a lot of content I need to deliver as supplemental resources, my current preference is to use one of these methods:

• Microlearning?— Short video, followed by summary text for reflection, followed by a short activity or quiz. I describe this in detail here —?Converting a Book Into Microlearning Modules
• Narrative Story?— Using text, I guide the learner through their own personal story and journey of discovery. I'll explain how I do this in this article.

Narrative Story Example

I'm going to show you an example of this methodology using an activity I designed to teach the basics of personal financial literacy.

This activity is designed to be completed before the learner plays a highly-realistic personal finance and investing simulation. The simulation is very comprehensive, so it helps to have some foundational knowledge before playing.

Watch the video below to see the narrative story activity in action. Then keep reading to discover the design thinking behind this simple, but effective, learning activity.

Note that the video does not have any audio other than button clicks. The actual activity is not a video, it is a clickable app — I'm only using video to make it easy for you to watch.

Effective?

As you can see, this activity is as basic as it gets. Just text on screen.

Compared to the complex educational games and simulations that I normally design and write about, this is not in the same league. But — that doesn't mean it's not effective. This is about using the right tool for the job. And never underestimate the power of simplicity in learning.

Let me break down the design thinking behind this activity ...

Tell a Story

Our human brains are wired to pay attention to stories. So the script is written as a story — not just a presentation of information that I want you to know. (Consider this the next time you are preparing a slide deck for a presentation).

It's About You

The story is about you. You are the subject. It's your experience.

It's personalized — or, at least, I make it feel like it is. More on this below.

Text Only

I only use text — one font style with large text and high contrast.

Few words per screen.

No visual distractions or cognitive overload.

Narrated

The story is narrated. It's not a dialog or conversation.

It's easier to write and follow a narrated story than a dialog-based story. A dialog is better when using characters and voices (I'll share an example of this type of story in a future issue of this newsletter — subscribe to be notified).

Narrative

According to Merriam-Webster, a narrative is "a way of presenting or understanding a situation or series of events that reflects and promotes a particular point of view or set of values."

I'm trying to teach something, so I do have a particular point of view or set of values that I'm trying to impart to the learner. In this case, related to personal financial literacy.

So, this is a narrated narrative (I made that up, not sure if this is literary accurate or not).

Perception of Choice

To make the story feel more personalized, I occasionally allow the learner to make a choice.

But it's not a real choice. The story remains the same regardless of what choice is made. It's a linear experience without appearing to be a linear experience.

I could make the choice real by taking the story in different directions based on the choices made. That's not hard to do. But it requires much more writing and development work. Even easy tasks require effort and I don't need this activity to be any deeper or more interactive than it is because the learner is about to play a highly-realistic simulation. This activity is the prep, the warmup.

Maintaining Engagement

Reading screen after screen of text can eventually become tedious, even if it's a story about you. So, I use two methods to re-engage the learner:

• Choice — Near the end of the video example above, you are given a choice of three jobs. I use the same mechanic at strategic points in the activity, such as choosing a place to live and how to invest money. I prefer to present three options for each choice because it's just enough to encourage engagement without requiring too much commitment from the learner. And our brains like choices in threes.
• Anticipation or Mystery — In the video example above, I build anticipation by having you try to find a job. And then I create mystery by disclosing that you did not get a job — and later reveal the reasons why.

I don't consider myself a creative writer. My writing experience is more factual. So, if you are a creative writer, you can run with these concepts to create very compelling learning experiences — likely much more so than I have demonstrated in this example.

Audio

The example I shared in the video above has button clicks and a few sound effects, but the text is not narrated with audio. There are two reasons I chose not to include narrated audio:

1. Budget — this is a warmup activity to a highly-realistic personal finance and investing simulation. The simulation was very time-consuming and expensive to build. So, it was not feasible to invest more time and money in a supplemental warmup activity (and this is only one of several other supplemental resources created to support the simulation).
2. Design Choice — this activity takes nearly 2 hours to complete. That's a lot of narrated text to have to listen to a single voice, slide after slide. Even though the script is written as a story, it's not quite the same as listening to a novel or non-fiction audiobook. So, I wasn't confident that adding audio would boost engagement enough to justify the extra time and cost of doing so. (If it was a dialog with multiple characters, I would rethink this decision.)

Simple Can Be Effective

That's all there is to it.

As I hope I have illustrated here, delivering content in a simple way can be effective — as long as we put some design thinking into the process.

The next time you have to present some information to a group of people, consider this methodology.

Another Example Coming Soon

In this article, I've shared my design thinking behind a simple narrative story activity.

I've also designing an experiential learning program to teach digital marketing that takes this concept further by including dialog (and audio) with multiple characters, microlearning, and simulation — all integrated together — read about it here.

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I'm Mathew Georghiou and I write about how games are transforming education and learning. I also share my experience as an entrepreneur inventing products and designing educational resources used by millions around the world. More about me at?Georghiou.com