The narrative method is the conscious integration of story-telling into the course with a clear agenda and link to the learning outcomes. It is not just telling an interesting story that involved the instructor. Each narrative has to have a purpose. It has a goal of creating the mental imagery that will help students remember the ‘lesson’. The narrative becomes the cloakroom or the coat rack from which to hang things. The narrative provides the context for the brain’s memory.

Narratives and the practice of learning from narratives is probably as old as humanity. We have a long history of oral histories, song cycles with historical lessons embedded, parables, and the like. The lessons are embedded in this mechanism for a reason. When done ‘right’, the lessons are easily remembered and more stories or variants can be daisy chained, piggy backing on the original story. The narratives are not usually one or two sentences, they are a story with colorful characters, a plot, story line, and more often than not, the lesson is not so obvious. The lesson has to be initially explained, then it is discussed, and then the listeners and discussers start explaining the lesson to others. What is the lesson associated with the tortoise and the hare?

The narratives need a hook or something that piques the listener’s fancy. A web of uncertainty, an expected turn of events, the aha moment. In a course, the aha moment has to be linked to a course outcome. The timing of the narrative is also important, it has to be when a aha moment will help the students understand the point better.

A narrative is not just the instructor stroking their own ego, making the course about themselves, telling stories to fill in the time. The stories are not meant to show how sharp tongued, how cool, or how witty the instructor is. The narratives are not a longer form of twitter or self-serving exercise.

The narratives need to be designed into the course. They might appear to the students as being pulled out of thin air, a spur of the moment addition to the course, and this might be true for some, but the majority of the narrative method needs to be planned and orchestrated. Part of the orchestration is the stage craft associated with when and how to start the narrative, the pause, the glance at the ceiling, the ‘not so sure, but this happened…’ phrasing.

Suggestions…

• Do some reading about the narrative method. Do not assume that it is just about telling stories.
• If you want to really embed narratives, a short course or a few lessons from the English department might be useful. Investigate Shakespeare, study how Shakespeare tells stories and introduces aha moments indirectly. There is a science and art to this. Not all stories are created equal. Will the students remember a story and the message years later? That is the goal.
• Review each lecture and consider where the key concepts or points are introduced and reinforced throughout the term. The key concepts are what do you want to stick, be remembered.
• You will be investing time and effort into the narrative and you do not want the students to become numb to them. Pick wisely and it is quality and not quantity.

• Try to identify stories that the students can relate to, that they do not need to learn about multiple things at the same time. Learn one new thing, one big lesson or point.
• It might be possible to have an ongoing story that can be slowly revealed or revisited to illustrate another point. For example, ‘remember blah blah… well, that was not the end of it…’.
• If you want to use multiple narratives in the same lecture, try to find the ongoing story model. It is probably not wise to have > 1 ‘narrative’ base in a lecture if you want the narrative to stick.
• Through the term plan where you will revisit the narrative and lesson, where you will have the students reflect and discuss the narrative and the lesson. Even to the point of having a narrative referred to on an assessment.
• Create a document with all of the stories you plan on telling through the term and explicitly document the learning outcomes and relevancy. Document when, where, and why you will use them. This helps you think about the stories and helps make them ‘stick’ in your own brain, but also helps others inheriting your course. It is a very good thing to include with a teaching portfolio as well; a conscious and explicit use and understanding of a teaching method.
• You can appear to be ‘spontaneous’, but be planned to be spontaneous. A simple example being given and then a ‘this reminds me…’ moment.
• The narratives can float around, and be used when and if needed; depending on the glazed eyes and class understanding of the concept/point. Not all stories have to be told every course offering, you use them as needed.

Co-dependencies & The Necessary and Hopefully Sufficient

• The narrative method needs to be introduced and explained at the start of the course. The students need to understand the purpose and that you are not making the class about you, but that you will be using examples you can talk to and be able to discuss; the nuances, the subtle aspects. We usually ask the students if they want such narratives and allow the class to ‘vote’ on the story inclusion. Of course, they always say yes, who would not, but this activity in the first lecture gives you something to refer back to during the term so that the students are reminded that the story is there for a reason and it is not there to make you look cool or super smart. The course is not about you, it is about the students learning.
• A single reference to a narrative has marginal value. It should be brought up 3-4 times during the term and ask the students to discuss or identify things in the story. The goal is to get the students to think about the lessons in the story, to create the context for the lessons. The students need to fire the neural networks sufficiently that long term memories are formed; the specific point and relationships to other relevant ideas. This may happen with one story if it has really big impacts and forces the students to do big aha moments or really think about it, but you cannot guarantee this will happen. Hence the necessary repetition during the term.
• The stories and lessons need to be relevant and the lesson needs to be explicitly extracted and discussed with the students. The stories need to be discussed and extrapolated into what the students value and understand. Sometimes, it is good to have the students discuss the narrative in pairs and then in groups. This helps with the ‘sticking’.
• If you plan on narratives and narrative interpretation being part of assessments, you need to mention this at the start of the course and provide an example of how this would work. Students are not used to story telling being functional and assessed – you need to set this up and not surprise them.
• The narratives need to be self-contained and the initial delivery has to be relatively short and sweet without long tangents or non-value-added bits. You can revisit and expand by using the narrative in an ongoing way, but it should not be a long story.

Further reading

• Schank, R.C. (1995)Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Intelligence. Northwestern University Press.