5 Tips to integrate Storytelling into your course

We love stories; they capture our attention and heighten interest. If you want to know how to enrich the lessons, facilitate the understanding of the topics, and increase your students' retention, read on. In this article, you will learn how to integrate Storytelling into your course.

Storytelling is using a variety of digital tools to tell stories. These stories are short, lasting 2 to 10 minutes.

You can enrich the content of your courses with them. Still, you must consider that despite being a handy and versatile tool, it must fulfill the purpose of educating and not just entertaining.

Not all stories teach something, and not every type of content can be turned into a story; much will depend on the purpose of the course.

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So to start, check that the story is aligned with your learning objectives. When you're ready to start, don't forget to take the following into account:

5 Tips to integrate Storytelling into your course:

Use realistic scenarios:
Your students are interested in knowing the real work environment and how to perform in it, so the context of your story is critical and should include realistic scenarios and situations that the student has a high probability of facing. The problem and achieve your goals. You can watch a video here: Digital Storytelling.

Seeks to create emotional connections:
Stories humanize us; through them, we create emotional connections, and that is why people have been telling them generation after generation throughout history.
Stories unite us and have educational value. When you start working on your story, you must ensure that the course topics apply to the world of work in which the student will work. In this way, he will be able to put himself in the character's place and live the experience, looking for the character to inspire, motivate and teach. To achieve this, you must look for commonalities between your audience and the character. Write the story as realistic as possible. The success of your story is that the student can identify with it.

Here you can see a good example of storytelling where the student can put himself in the place of the character who models the correct behavior: Emotional connection.

• Create a strong structure: Very well, you already know that you will make a story for your students with which they identify and can visualize themselves in their future work environment. Before starting to design and produce, you must have a clear structure that must include:
• The script: Include your idea here; why? Who? How? Introduce the main problem that must be solved throughout the story, holding the student's attention until it is solved. There must be an introduction, a midpoint of conflict, and a resolution. Throughout the story, the student should be advised on how to solve the problem. Don't forget to keep your script aligned with the learning objectives.
• Storyboard: Here, you must make the storyboard of your story that includes organizing the content in the correct sequence, including the visual concepts, photos, images, and multimedia to use.
  Multimedia: Here, you must prepare all the multimedia material such as audio, videos, images, etc. In this step, you must consider that any media you use must be a Creative Commons license, free of copyright or audio that is part of the application's library. If not, you must process the corresponding permits. You can also use your own voice and your own images.
• Create: At this point, you join all the elements following the sequence of your storyboard. Check that everything is synchronized and working properly.
• Share: Your story is ready to share on the LMS.

Don't neglect the learning objectives: The story should bring the student closer to the learning objectives. This will make it easier for you to achieve this if your story is short, simple, and interactive.

The use of multimedia can aid in understanding and retention of complex material. Something needs to happen on the screen every 3-5 seconds to retain attention. Use less text and more visuals. The ending can be open to allow the student to engage in the story.

Ask for feedback:
You can get feedback from your students through questionnaires, direct questions, forums, or chats. Did they identify with the story, elicit an emotional response, learn something that they can immediately apply, and better understand the content? This information will be essential in meeting the learning objectives. After learning how to integrate Storytelling in your course, encourage yourself to explore various options of multimedia tools such as; Wevideo, Glogster, Videoscribe, and Storybird.