Storytelling in Higher Education
In attempt to understand moments and events in our lives, we as humans assemble bits and pieces of an experience into a story. Storytelling can be used within the Higher Education system, to engage and build an empathetic relationship among students and staff. Storytelling is a useful tool for translating complex topics into engaging, meaningful and relatable matters for students. Storytelling is the perfect companion to a design approach in which we intentionally design learning experiences and outcomes and how students interact and engage with the university.
We can incorporate the art of storytelling into everyday lessons with guidance from the narrative arc. The narrative arc can be regarded as a hidden structure behind a story, that can be replicated in a lecture or lesson. Freytag’s Pyramid was created by novelist, Gustav Freytag and divides a story into five sections that includes: the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and conclusion or denouement.
Exposition: The Exposition acts as an introduction or overview to your narrative. By briefly introducing the main elements of your lecture, you can grasp the attention of your students as your story begins.
Rising Action: This Rising Action is sometimes referred to as the ‘inciting incident’. As the plot line gathers momentum, students become more invested through moments of surprise and a thickening plot, that leads towards the climax.
Climax: The climax is essentially the peak of your narrative. The exposition and rising action have been leading up towards this moment and it should be memorable for the student. It is likely to be the key learning that your students will takeaway after that lecture is completed. So, what is the key learning objective of the lecture and how might we work integrate this as the climax of our lecture?
Falling Action: Following the climax, the story depicted in your lecture should not stop there. The slower pace of the falling action should resolve any unanswered questions that linger from earlier stages. It is often an important stage to keep the student engaged and excited but also acts as a linking stage between the climax and the denouement that makes the narrative more lucid.
Denouement: Also referred to as the resolution, the denouement is when the lecture begins to wrap up. It concludes the lecture and often reflects on the journey that has just been taken. It rarely provides new information to the student, but instead, recites a form of synopsis to reiterate the main events of the tale.
Try and replicate the pyramidal nature of this narrative arc in your lectures as the art of storytelling can be beneficial, relatable and memorable to students.
