{"id":13422,"date":"2025-11-10T09:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T09:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=13422"},"modified":"2025-11-12T11:15:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T11:15:26","slug":"the-power-of-stories-in-learning-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2025\/11\/the-power-of-stories-in-learning-design\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Stories in Learning Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Stewart Utley <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Storytelling in course design and instruction
<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Storytelling Matters in Learning Design
<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we harness storytelling practices to support stakeholders in engaging with course design principles and processes?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mapping Design to Narrative<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To explore this, I turned to Freytag\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cBackwards Design\u201d approach, could be mapped onto this familiar narrative structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building a Shared Narrative
<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viewing the course as a story isn’t just limited to SMEs. A well-developed course story allows, for example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n