The goal of the project was to give students an opportunity to 1) cultivate storytelling skills across verbal, visual, and aural dimensions; 2) to translate insights in a compelling and persuasive manner for the broad audience that may not know theory or field-related jargon.
Students worked on a semester-long team project that starts with the traditional analysis of a corporate strategy decision. After completing a traditional academic report, students worked on translating the report into a story that can be published on website for general audience. The re-telling included re-writing the story using storytelling principles, developing informative visuals and creating a video. Students also had to conduct continuous research for two months because the news about their companies and industries kept coming.
While data continues to be analyzed, the initial results of this project are:
- Average course grade increased
- Quality of student stories increased
- Final exam scores are unchanged
- Students who were invested in the group project achieved more learning gains compared to students who were less invested in the group project. There was an impact on team performance due to this uneven student attitude.
- Future research should anticipate student resistance to reflection/revision of work.
To me, transformative teaching and learning means that students are able to experience different perspective and develop a more comprehensive understanding of how complex the world is.