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Journals by EmailTom Johnson has me thinking about using story in technical writing. Run a search on “story” on his blog, and you’ll find a long list of results. Because I enjoy fiction writing, I’ve tried to think about how narrative can be woven into documentation more. People connect readily with narrative because it’s part of our everyday interactions. And I think it’s more fun to write. I haven’t written about this as much as Tom, but I’ve written a bit.
I was thinking about it today and had an idea. I think I may have seen this done before, but not much. The concept is creating tutorials around the idea of the learner helping someone who’s stuck. Many people learn better, get concepts cemented in their minds, when they teach those concepts to someone else.
Well, why not work a narrative into an e-learning module that describes a problem a co-worker is having, and then turn things over to the user to guide this character through the next steps? You work in both a story and a way to have the user teach someone else (albeit a fictional character). And it may remove pressure from the learner because the focus isn’t on him or her.
This is certainly an idea that needs some development. If you’re aware of places where this concept has been used in e-learning, please let me know.
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Ben Reply:
April 21st, 2010 at 4:54 pm
I asked the instructional designers on our team if they had heard of or tried this approach, and they hadn’t. As we discussed it, I realized and pointed out that this kind of approach also may work better because we’re putting some imaginary third party in an imaginary situation, rather than asking the learner to imagine he or she is in some fictional situation. Or worse, saying, “You’re working on a project where …” and it’s something they don’t identify with. Then they get confused or resistant, and learning suffers.