Learning by Doing
Would you want to manage a restaurant operation (and learn) rather than learn about managing in a eLearning course?
With campus based physical learning in schools and universities becoming more expensive, eLearning or online learning has mushroomed into a multi-billion dollar industry. The elearning market in 2017 is worth an astonishing $255 Billion. Individuals who either cannot afford the steep campus based courses and/or are in demanding day jobs (majority would fall into this category) and may need to study simultaneously along with work are looking to study online courses.
Explosion of eLearning
eLearning has exploded in the past decade as a medium of instruction. Reputed universities have often replaced a campus based live course with an online learning version with no decrease in enrollments. In particular, courses which are short, say between a month and six months are attractive to individuals who are occupied with busy day jobs. They are able to invest some time on personal development and at the same time are able to complete within a certain time frame as opposed to a diploma or degree program which can stretch from a year to two or even four years.
The flexibility to be able to do a self paced study from your home is a great attraction in favor of eLearning courses. Moreover, technology has brought these course material to a smartphone or tablet. And as said earlier, the fact that you can complete the course within a time frame and pick up some important new elements of knowledge and then apply to your work is a good draw.
Engagement Challenges in eLearning
Having said that, online courses have the challenge of striving to engage the student as much as live courses do (or at least profess to do). Engagement is a big part of live classroom teaching. A lot of teaching in these classrooms can be tailored to the responses of students and eye contact can be used to determine mood of students and so on. Many times, responses of students can be used to gauge their level of engagement, comprehension and used to bring in the person to person interaction to overcome that.
Theoretically, all these forms of engagement which are hallmarks of live teaching are difficult in eLearning. But this has changed significantly over the past decade. Research and surveys are showing that eLearning courses are catching up with the help of technology to bridge the gap caused by these engagement challenges compared to campus based courses.
How are they able to do this? Enter a powerful approach to online learning using the age old storytelling.
Storytelling in eLearning
Traditional lesson based eLEARNING techniques are being rapidly replaced by injecting the power of storytelling into courses. Human beings are wired from birth for storytelling. We respond intuitively to stories. We are natural born storytellers as well. So, what is so special about storytelling?
Storytelling is the practice of weaving a plot, characters and narrative point of view into stories. The fact that a plot and characters are major parts of a story bring in the element of emotion, suspense, drama. This is why stories can be riveting. They just innately touch a nerve and humans respond spontaneously to the magic of a story. This power has been tapped into an eLearning framework by educators in a big way.
Apart from eLearning, business storytelling has burgeoned over the years and now is firmly entrenched as a powerful technique to imparting learning. Consider this: difficult to grasp concepts can easily be woven into a story context and presented to learners. The amazing outcome of this is that the learners are not even aware that as they listened to or watched on a video, stories, they have also been learning concepts and frameworks in an unobtrusive but effective way.
Scenarios – Contextual Learning
Scenarios are a type of storytelling. The dictionary meaning of a scenario is:”a description of what could happen.” You could say that scenarios are contextual storytelling, meaning, first a particular situation is taken in context and then a visualization of what could happen is played out.
Scenarios are powerful contextual storytelling and in eLearning they can be used with concepts that the course is teaching. In business courses, their application is even more effective. For example, if you are teaching the concept of “falling profits” instead of merely defining what that is, if you wove a story around it and brought in a plot and characters involved in that business situation and created an illustration around it, the concept will get ingrained in the learner more effectively. So, a scenario goes far beyond merely an illustration – it brings in the magical plot, character elements of storytelling and in the process ends up explaining what the concept is. The learner will be so engrossed in the narrative that they may not realize that they have learned a concept. Of course, how well the scenario is laid out and is close to a learner’s existing knowledge environment are key to the success of scenarios. But they do present teaching in an entirely different light.
What is your opinion? Do you think scenarios and storytelling can make you understand a topic better in an online learning environment? Comment on this article below.