Stories offer us tons of amazing benefits, such as helping us to get a better understanding of our place in the world. Apart from that, they also help to shape our perspective of the world we belong to. Furthermore, in the eLearning industry, storytelling is arguably the most effective ingredient that can make your course content stand out.
According to research, information rolled out as stories can be approximately 22 times more memorable than facts. Storytelling is an approach that will enable you to come up with course content that will most likely strike your learners’ emotions. It’ll also enable your learners to care and connect with your content. In the rest of this post, I’ll further share with you everything you need to know about storytelling in eLearning courses. So, without wasting time, let’s get straight down to business.
How important is storytelling in eLearning courses?
1. Making learning and development interesting
One of the importance of storytelling in eLearning courses is that it makes learning and development more interesting. Here’s a quick question; can you still remember the jokes from seven years ago? Have you ever asked yourself why you can remember jokes from many years ago but easily forget other things? Yes, that’s the power of storytelling.
Stories are instrumental in cognitive, social, and emotional development. Unarguably, learning approaches, such as gamification, tend to add some elements of engagement to eLearning courses. However, by having a mix of storytelling and gamification, you’ll be able to immerse your learners in your learning. When you create your eLearning course using storytelling, you’ll get to inspire your learners, keep them engaged, without boring them with your training.
2. A better way to remember the learned content
Another reason why storytelling is important in the eLearning course is that it enables learners to quickly remember the learned content. According to a scientific study, humans tend to forget about 50% of what they learn within 24 hours of learning. Since that’s the case, it means the best way to create and deliver your eLearning course for your learners is to first address the issue above.
One of the strengths of storytelling, which has been proven over the years, is that it is a great tool for increasing retention in training. By implementing storytelling in your eLearning course, you’ll be able to boost your learners’ retention ability. As soon as your learners begin to engage with your content, the probability of them forgetting what they learn after a long time is slim.
3. Better performance
Apart from increasing your learner’s retention ability, storytelling can also help your learners to improve their overall performance at work. It’s pretty simple; with storytelling in your eLearning course, you won’t only be able to increase your learner retention ability. You’ll also keep them engaged in your course. If your learners are happy with your course and are capable of remembering almost everything they learned, they’ll certainly be more productive at work.
Tips on how to implement storytelling in your eLearning course
Now, let’s move ahead and talk about the best way to implement storytelling in your courses. When it comes to implementing storytelling in your eLearning course, the first thing you need to do is to think of a story. Of course, it won’t be just anyhow story. Instead, the story must be relatable and relevant to your learners.
For you to come up with a touching story, you’ll need to take the time to understand your learners and get familiar with most of the issues they face while performing their jobs. By so doing, you’ll be able to deliver a storytelling course that is relatable and relevant to your learners.
Furthermore, another way to make your eLearning course better with storytelling is to ensure that the stories aren’t what you focus on. Storytelling doesn’t necessarily mean that the entire course should be full of stories. Instead, you only need to add the story in your course to better teach your learners about the subject matter. So, make sure that the content is the main focus and not the story.
Moreover, before deciding to use a story in your eLearning course, another thing that you need to put in mind is “cultural differences.” Culture, as we all know, is a way of life. What is interesting to someone in the US might not be interesting to people in other countries. Since that’s the case, you need to make sure that the stories you’re using are culturally relevant to your learners. That way, you’ll be able to achieve the best results with your eLearning courses.
