tips for trainers: increase e-learning retention with storytelling

Storytelling is a really powerful tool that can be used to teach adult learners and help them retain information. 1. Stories help the learner see the relevance of the topic. Adult learners need to know the reason for learning something and are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance to their work or personal lives (see andragogy by Malcolm Knowles). By telling a story you can demonstrate how your subject matter relates to their job and why they need to pay attention. 2. Stories allow you to emotionally connect with your learners. Emotional responses help persuade learners to engage in the training and perform desired behaviors. 3. Stories make facts easier to remember. There is a lot of research to support this (see David Ausubel and Donald Norman) but most of us have experienced this phenomenon for ourselves. This is why mnemonic devices like “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” work so well. It’s a short story, but a much better story then “Parentheses, Exponents, Multiply or Divide, Add and Subtract”. 4. Stories make learning more fun. Carefully crafted stories can teach and entertain leaners, thus making learning a fun experience and increasing attention spans. 5. Brains listening to stories are more active. When you tell someone facts, you active the language processing section of their brain. When you tell someone a story, you active any part of their brain that they need to experience the story, including emotion, motor, sensory and frontal cortex. In some cases the brains of the storyteller and the listeners actually begin to synchronize