The Power of Stories in Learning Design

By Stewart Utley

When most people think about stories, they often see them as tools to exemplify, contextualise, or embellish. While that is certainly true, I have come to view stories differently. For me, they are anchors that help ground abstract thoughts, concepts, and feelings into structures that make sense to us. Through this anchoring, stories can open the door for curiosity and engagement with the underlying message or process.

Storytelling in course design and instruction

The use of stories in education is not new. Narrative pedagogy (Diekelmann, 2001) and other approached to storytelling in instruction has been associated with benefits across social, cognitive, and emotional domains (Brown et al., 2008). Yet, what captured my interest was not just the learner-facing applications of storytelling, but its professional function in sense-making and communication, particularly in the often-complex and interdisciplinary world of learning design.

Why Storytelling Matters in Learning Design

Designing educational artefacts is an inherently collaborative and cross-functional process. It involves designers, subject matter experts (SMEs), technologists, and many others who all bring different taxonomies, perspectives, and priorities. The question I wanted to explore was simple:

How can we harness storytelling practices to support stakeholders in engaging with course design principles and processes?

Mapping Design to Narrative

To explore this, I turned to Freytag’s narrative arc model (1863) which has helped unpack the structure of stories for centuries. I wanted to see whether our learning design process, shaped by Wiggins and McTighe’s “Backwards Design” approach, could be mapped onto this familiar narrative structure.

What emerged expanded beyond an analogy as it set the foundations for a reshaping of the way we present the course design process to wider stakeholders, way to help SMEs and collaborators see a course as a story in its own right. This reframing helped make course design principles more tangible and accessible, reducing friction for those unfamiliar with the terminology and logic of design.

Building a Shared Narrative

Viewing the course as a story isn’t just limited to SMEs. A well-developed course story allows, for example:

• Operations teams to understand learners’ stories and tailor support systems accordingly.
• Content developers and technologists to align tools and digital environments with the nuanced journeys of learners.
• Marketing teams to draw from an existing narrative arc when communicating the course’s purpose and value.

Storytelling helped clarify not just what the course is, but what it means for learners and for those who build it.

The Workshop and Beyond

This workshop for ALT25 explored how stories can be applied to professional practice within the realm of course design and beyond. Those who joined were invited to reflect on how storytelling might enhance their own work, both in what they do and how they collaborate with others.

By reframing our processes as narratives, we can make complex processes more tangible, more accessible, and ultimately, more engaging.

References

Brown, S. T., Kirkpatrick, M. K., Mangum, D., & Avery, J. (2008). A review of narrative pedagogy strategies to transform traditional nursing education. Journal of Nursing Education, 47(6), 283–286. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20080601-06

Diekelmann, N. L. (2001). Narrative pedagogy: Heideggerian hermeneutical analyses of lived experiences of students, teachers, and clinicians. Advances in Nursing Science, 23(3), 53–71. https://doi.org/10.1097/00012272-200103000-00006

Freytag, G. (1894). Freytag’s Technique of the Drama: An exposition of dramatic composition and art (E. J. MacEwan, Trans.). S. C. Griggs and Company. (Original work published 1863)

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd ed.). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).

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