Learning from stories is an effective and powerful tool for learning design, because stories allow us to learn from the experience of others without having to face personal consequences. To paraphrase Fast Company writer Drake Baer, stories “let you demo other peoples’ minds in the comfy confines of your own.”
In Using Stories for Learning: Answers to Five Key Questions, Karl Kapp, author of The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education, explores why stories are so valuable for learning, describes how to match learning objectives to four powerful learning story types, and offers guidance on how to compose learning stories. He examines the elements of a good story and provides a storytelling worksheet to make designing your own learning stories easier.