Story-Based Learning Strategy In A Course For Instructional Designers - EI Design

http://www.eidesign.nethttp://www.eidesign.net
Story-Based Learning Strategy In A Course For
Instructional Designers
Part of Innovative Solutions Series
Presented by
Author-Asha Pandey
Chief Learning Strategist, EI Design
apandey@eidesign.net
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http://www.eidesign.net
About EI Design (www.eidesign.net)
2
Years of Learning Solutions
Expertise
14
6500 Hours of eLearning
Developed
390
Hours of Localisation
In 26 Languages Developed
82.3%
Customer
Retention Rate
20+ Industry Verticals
Serviced
Countries – The Breadth of Our
Customer Base
16
750
Hours of Mobile Learning
Developed

Our portfolio and the range of our services
3
Core services:
Core services: Our rich portfolio includes:
1. Custom Course development eLearning /
mLearning
2. Migration of legacy courses to HTML 5
3. Localisation
4. ILT / VILT and Blended Learning
5. Performance Support Tools
Off-the-shelf Products:
1. Suite on Instructional Design
2. Suite on generic Compliance
Value added Services : Comprehensive evaluation
strategy (cuts across various training formats)
1. Efficacy of learning (the learnability and gain
for learners)
2. Impact of training (the gain for business)
3. Return of Investment (ROI) on training
Beyond Learning: We also offer several Learning
Support services that can be used to promote
eLearning adoption or specific mandates like change
management.

In this article, I will share with you a case
study that features a course based on
story-based learning strategy for
Instructional Designers on Content Types
and their Visualization Approaches.
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Story-Based Learning Strategy In A Course For Instructional Designers

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My father was a master storyteller. He had a dual major in History and Education (specializing in teacher
training) and used his storytelling skills to weave narratives with learning. As a result, I learnt about our values,
our ancient culture, and our heritage through many of these stories. No surprises that I am a firm believer of
using storytorials (story-based learning strategies) to create effective learning experiences.
As we know, a storytorial (from the words "story-based tutorial") combines the following two elements:
1. Compelling power of storytelling
2. Scientifically proven principles of Instructional Design
Pairing these two elements produces a learning solution that provides learners with an immersive learning
experience. Storytorials feature a single fictional storyline with a beginning, middle, and an end. While a story
may have more than one plotline, depending on the content, we take great care to keep the story focused on
the content, avoiding extraneous details that don’t contribute to the training.
Case Study: Course Based on Story-Based Learning Strategy for Instructional Designers

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A story-based approach or storytorial is an effective tool to engage learners with the content. Who is not
interested in a good story? This strategy delivers not just for the K-12 segment but also among adult learners.
Advantages of a using a storytorial are:
1. It grabs and retains learner attention throughout the course.
2. Learning becomes fun as opposed to meeting a list of objectives.
3. It establishes the content flow and engages learners at every juncture.
4. It enables high retention of the concepts covered in the course (the logic being, you will always remember a
good story).
Ref: This content is from my blog, Learning Design Series Approaches featuring Storytorials, that was featured
on our website in June’14.
With this backdrop, let me move to the case study of Content Types and their Visualisation Approaches course
that we had designed for our Instructional Design team. Now, this is also available as a product.

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Learning mandate
The aim was to explain the content types and how each can be presented visually to build an engaging and interactive
course. The five content types are factual data and each type presents its own challenges during ideation and visualization.
This course ties-in information on each content type, recommended visualization approaches and interactions that can be
used for each. The content is presented from an Instructional Designer’s perspective.
The challenge and our solution
The content posed a significant challenge. The repetitive format of information for each content type made it difficult to
retain learners’ interest.
We felt that instead of listing out or describing various content types and their visualization techniques, it would be better for
learners to go through a story that presents this information in a much more engaging and interesting format.
We decided to create a storyline that treats the challenges of the content as an actual business problem and outlines the
solution through a series of real life situations. This approach helped the learners relate to the content, and apply their
learning practically.
The story introduces us to a team of Instructional Designers, who have been assigned the task of creating an eLearning
course. Their analysis of the storyboard, its review and discussions around the ways to present the content for the eLearning
course form the basis to present the information on the content types.

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Cast of characters
We identified the following cast for our story:
• Sandy, ID (Trainee)
• Ruth, Sr. ID (Reviewer and Mentor)
• Ken, another Sr. ID (Brings in innovative ideas)

Storyline
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Against a mandate of creating a cost-effective yet
engaging course for a Fire Fighting Institute, Sandy
readies a storyboard that maps to the content
accurately to the required learning outcomes. Yet, this is
rejected in the internal review by Ruth who notes that
the instructional strategy is not engaging enough.

Storyline
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The learning happens through brainstorming sessions
between Sandy, Ruth, and Ken. All three come with their
assessment of the storyboard and discuss their ideas about
the possible approaches (that can be used to create a
significantly better learning experience).
The story has learning components that are illustrated
through examples (featuring an analysis of Sandy’s existing
storyboard) followed by inputs on how it can be re-done to
create an immersive learning experience.

Storyline
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The discussion leads to Tips that map to each content type.

Storyline
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After understanding the five content types, we
introduce various levels of interaction. The course wraps
up with a summary on how to map the content types to
the interaction levels.

Outcome
By taking a story-based approach, we were able to
mitigate the intrinsic challenge to present content
(that was dry and had repetitive information) in an
engaging manner. The characters (Instructional
Designers) resonated well with the target learners
and the challenges that they faced were very real.
This kept the learners hooked. Easy, narrative style
makes the learning fun. Finally, as I said earlier, we all
remember a good story!
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http://www.eidesign.net14
EI Design Pvt Ltd
Corporate Office and Development Centre
#160, Arun Arch,
9th Cross, Indiranagar 1st Stage
Bangalore - 560 038, India.
www.eidesign.net
Asha Pandey,
CMD and Chief Learning Strategist
Tel (Direct): +91-80-25202679
Board: +91-80-25202677 / 25202678
Mobile: +91-98450-61484
Email: apandey@eidesign.net

Story-Based Learning Strategy In A Course For Instructional Designers - EI Design

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