Have you ever wanted to know why stories help us learn? Stories are a compelling and effective way to enhance learning. What you’ll learn today is useful for more than just training classes. Remember the magic of stories the next time you want to teach anyone anything.
Please enjoy this recent speech of mine at my local Toastmasters club.
“Why Stories Help Us Learn” – Competent Communicator Project #5: Your Body Speaks
(Full script below – the bold and italic are just for my own reminders on my gestures!)
A few years ago, I was doing a training class on Microsoft Word skills. Now, if you don’t know this already, here’s a few quick shortcuts. Your HOME and END keys, up by the backspace button – CTRL + HOME takes you to the beginning of your document, CTRL + END takes you to the end. I’m teaching the class these shortcuts, and I had one learner just panic: “Oh no! Where did my document go? What happened?” She had pressed CTRL + N – the letter, N – which opens a new document, instead of CTRL + END. So in my next training class, I spell that out for them. CTRL + HOME and CTRL+ END, that’s E-N-D. Of course, someone does CTRL + E-N-D.
There’s a lesson in that story, and not just about Word. We all enjoy a good story, whether it’s a novel, a movie, or a story about a training class. Stories entertain us. Stories inform us, tell us right from wrong. Stories motivate us and inspire us to act.
It’s no wonder that stories are central to how we learn.
Stories are compelling because they organize information, events, and actions into a coherent whole. Stories place that information into a familiar structure of a beginning, middle, and end. We call this narrative structure, and it provides a reason to keep on listening. It pulls the listener forward.
Narrative structure gives a meaningful order to events so that it motivates the listener to pay attention, anticipate, and ultimately be able to use that information. The end result is that we more easily retain, adapt, and share that information.
But why do we feel so much more engaged when we hear a narrative? And how does that help us learn?
It’s simple. If we listen to a powerpoint presentation with boring bullet points, a certain part of the brain gets activated. The information hits the [left ear] language processing parts in the brain, where we decode words into meaning. And that’s it, nothing else happens.
When we are being told a story, things change dramatically. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too.
If someone tells us about how delicious and savory certain foods were, our [headband] sensory cortex lights up. If it’s about motion, movement – our [forward] motor cortex gets active.
In the story I told earlier, I bet your motor cortex was active when I showed you those keystrokes. A story can put your whole brain to work. Anything you’ve experienced, the emotions you’ve felt, you can get others to experience the same. Or at least, get their brain areas activated that way too.
Now, all this is interesting. We know that we can activate our brains better if we listen to stories. When our brains are more engaged, we learn more. The still unanswered question is: Why is that? Why does the format of a story, where events unfold one after the other, have such a profound impact on our learning?
The simple answer is: We are wired this way. A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect. And that’s exactly how we think.
We think in narratives all day long, no matter if it is about buying groceries or about work. We make up short stories in our heads for every action and conversation. In fact, research shows that personal stories and gossip make up 65% of our conversations.
Now, whenever we hear a story, we want to relate it to one of our existing experiences. That’s why metaphors work so well with us. While we are busy searching for a similar experience, we activate a part of the brain which helps us relate to that same experience of panic or frustration.
We link up metaphors and literal happenings automatically. Everything in our brain is looking for the cause and effect relationship of something we’ve previously experienced.
So, we know that a story is the only way to activate parts in the brain so that a listener turns the story into their own idea and experience. How does a story help someone learn?
Getting someone to learn from a story relies on being able to connect the dots of the information you’re teaching into that narrative structure that drives the learner forward. How you connect those dots will depend on your topic and the goal of your training lesson.
One great use of stories is through a chronological connection: steps in a process, a timed activity, or a history lesson. The best training stories pull the learner forward, setting up expectations and questions that should be answered in the next step or at the end of the lesson. This is the essence of the narrative structure.
The learners want to know more, want to see what is just around the bend, and want to understand how this training fits into their lives. Stories help make sense of a complex collection of information.
It’s tricky to get the balance between entertainment and learning just right. The story sets the stage for the learning experience. It’s the core of the journey, not a quick stop along the way to serve as a distraction from otherwise mundane training material.
Training and storytelling is not a plug and play model. A funny story may entertain or make an insight easier to remember – who remembers how to get to the end of a Word document? [PAUSE]
But for you to retain that knowledge long-term, that story needs to connect emotionally – could you relate to the emotions I felt in that training class, or that my learner felt? If you did, you’ll probably remember those Word shortcuts a little longer.
Emotional connections through the narrative structure – that’s the magic of why stories help us learn.
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