How story-telling can be used as an important tool of pedagogy and effective learning – Session conducted by Dr Deepti Ganapathy

Stories have been particularly effective in conveying messages. In the realm of digital education too, where keeping learners engaged and motivated is a challenge, visual design and storytelling can be powerful pedagogical aids. Recognising the importance of storytelling as pedagogy, the IIMBx team recently invited Dr Deepti Ganapathy, faculty of Management Communication at IIMB, to conceptualise and run a storytelling workshop for its team members.

The workshop, conducted by Dr Deepti Ganapathy and her Academic Associate Sruthi, was split into various activities to help the team exercise their storytelling muscles and express their creativity. The first activity conducted was zine-making, in which team members learnt how to put together an eight-page zine, complete with a narrative arc and quirky visuals. While some teams made informative zines about climate change and home remedies, others were of a more humorous bent.

The second activity was an exercise in creating plot baskets — team members were assigned random characters, settings, and conflicts, which they then had to weave together into a compelling story. Despite the strange combinations of characters and conflicts, the team members managed to come up with coherent stories, trying to form interesting and logical connections.

The third activity was an individual exercise, in which team members had to narrate the autobiography of any object in first person. This gave room for a lot of creativity and people spoke about everyday objects such as their water bottles, clothing, watches and even their bicycles. The main purpose of the storytelling workshop was to experiment with different narrative forms to include in digital pedagogy.