Today, one of the major problems in online education – or in all forms of education – is student disengagement. This often leads to learners not participating in classes or failing to complete their courses.
Educators can utilize the power of storytelling in online courses to combat the issue. Storytelling helps to boost engagement in online courses and, therefore, revive your students’ interest in what you have to offer. It greatly humanizes your content, which can entice many types of learners.
Consider this article as your introductory guide. Later on, we’ll even show you how to create an online course with storytelling. Let’s begin!
Why Storytelling Works in Online Courses
As mentioned earlier, when you create an online course with storytelling, you’re making it more personal and relatable. It’s like breathing life into your content. Overall, it affects three things in people, including their emotions, retention, and motivation.
Increased Emotional Connection
It’s a medical fact that our emotions affect the way we learn and all the other factors associated with it. So, when you use storytelling in online courses, you strengthen the connection between your course material and the learner.
Improved Knowledge Retention
Whether it be in college or high school, many of us remember more of what happened during those years than the lessons we learned.
Once you create an online course with storytelling, students may be more inclined to remember its content because of the enjoyable process.
Enhanced Motivation and Application
Storytelling in online courses drives students to be motivated and apply what they learn. Here’s how:
- As stories create context, you can show them how to use their learnings in real-life scenarios.
- You capture attention and boost engagement in online courses because you’re hooking them onto what’s next in your story.
- Success stories can drive students to finish the course and even achieve more in the field they’re studying.
How to Craft Compelling Stories for Your Online Course
You’re busy with what you’re doing in your industry, and that’s perfectly normal. That’s why, for some, getting started with storytelling in online courses may seem just another tedious task. To help you simplify the process, here are three steps to writing compelling stories:
- Choose the right story type. You can easily boost engagement in online courses if you present your students with case studies, client success stories, or personal narratives.
- Seamlessly integrate stories into your course structure. The general rule of thumb for storytelling in online courses is to let the narratives blend into the content organically.
- Many people are visual learners. So, once you’ve chosen where to put the stories, use multimedia content to bring the stories to life. Storytelling in online courses is always better when there’s movement or colors.
Taking Action: Start to Create an Online Course With Storytelling
Storytelling in online courses can be easier if you understand the learning objectives and persona of your target audience. Your knowledge of these things helps you select or tailor stories that resonate best with your students. This lets you boost engagement in online courses even more.
Meanwhile, there’s another way you can leverage the power of storytelling in online courses: give it a course narrative arc. This lets you group your stories based on the lesson type or where their progress is. Doing so gives your stories and course a sense of continuity – something that story lovers are very fond of, too.
Storytelling in Online Courses with CourseAI
As a course creator (and an industry expert, we believe), harnessing the power of storytelling in online courses gives you access to easier engagement and a better learning experience.
Doing these can take up much of your time. That’s where we, CourseAI, come in.
With our platform, you can simplify the entire course creation process by generating the following for you:
- Entire course outlines
- Course content
- Targeted audience personas
- Engaging content
- Quizzes
With CourseAI, storytelling in online courses becomes way easier. Just start by telling our AI Course Creator tool what you need, and you’ll see a draft that’ll make the entire process less daunting.
Ready to start telling stories in your courses? Do it with CourseAI today.