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What are you binge-watching on TV right now? For me, it’s the latest season of Severance. The storytelling is so good that I cannot wait to see what happens next. Like the staff at Lumon Industries, I’m desperate for answers! I’ve become invested in the narrative, connected to the characters and curious about their world.
Yet I’m far from unique in this. Humans are hard-wired for storytelling. When we hear a story, our brains activate as if we’re experiencing it ourselves. This ‘mirror neuron’ effect can also be applied to instructional design to make content more relatable and compelling.
Weaving training content into a narrative captures the learner’s attention, sparks curiosity and fosters a deeper connection to the material. Done well, storytelling not only enhances comprehension but also helps us retain and retrieve information more easily. We all remember what happened to Little Red Riding Hood, don’t we? Which is why I often joke that fairy tales are the first compliance training we ever take…
In this article I’ll share some video excerpts from popular Litmos courses that are excellent examples of how eLearning courses can leverage storytelling techniques to drive engagement and improve comprehension.
Varying Perspectives for Effective Storytelling
If you walk into a bookshop today and pick up a novel at random, chances are it uses first-person narrative. The story is told from the point of view of a character inside the story, using “I” or “we” pronouns. We’re given a window into their thoughts, emotions, and perceptions.
But if you walked into a bookshop 300 years ago, the story is much more likely to use third-person narrative, where the narrator is outside the story, referring to the characters using “he” “she” or “they”. This wider view of the story allows the narrator to present events more objectively.
By contrast, instructional writing and eLearning tends to use second-person narrative. This is where the narrator directly addresses the learner as “you,” which has obvious benefits when you need to ensure a learner knows what to do in a given situation. It’s unambiguous and direct.
Each perspective offers unique advantages for engaging learners and enhancing their educational experience. But as storytelling trends change and audiences become more sophisticated, there’s a lot to be gained from breaking out of the traditional second-person narrative in eLearning.
Let’s take a look at how Litmos Originals, our in-house pre-built training courses, leverage storytelling techniques to help users provide more compelling and engaging learning experiences.
Examples of First Person Perspective in eLearning
Using first person perspective to tell a story helps learners relate more personally to the lesson being taught, by creating empathy with the protagonist. This technique is especially effective in scenarios where personal reflection and emotional engagement are crucial.
In our Neurodiversity series, the first-person perspective is used to illustrate the particular challenges faced by neurodivergent candidates in interview situations:
Examples of Second-Person Perspective in eLearning
At Litmos Originals, we use second-person perspective to place learners at the heart of the narrative. We’re not simply addressing the learner as “you,” and telling them what to do, we’re immersing them in simulation-based training, where their choices directly influence the outcome of the story.
In our Employee Experience Management (EXM) series, we have built environments and simulations that mimic a modern remote workplace, using this perspective to not only ‘tell’ learners what to do, but ‘show’ them how to do it:
Examples of Third-Person Perspective in eLearning
For a more objective, documentary-style approach, third-person narration provides a broader perspective on a topic and allows learners to observe and analyze situations from an external standpoint. This can be beneficial for developing critical thinking skills and understanding complex systems.
In our California Workplace Violence Prevention course, this perspective is used to provide learners with an objective overview of an event:
A Question of Perspective
When Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe way back in 1719, its autobiographical, first-person style was ground-breaking. But what if the same story was told from Friday’s perspective? Or from the point of view of Crusoe’s rescuers? Imagine how different each of the examples I have shared would be if they used a different perspective?
For Instructional Designers, deciding how to present the information is as important as deciding what information goes into a course. However, that isn’t to say once you have chosen one perspective, you’re locked into it.
Check out this example from one of our courses on Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities. The framing of the scenario subtly shifts between first and third person perspective, while maintaining a second-person tone:
Leveraging Common Narrative Structures in eLearning
Despite their very different use of perspective these examples all have one thing in common: they take the learner on a journey of discovery. This is a common storytelling technique, which hooks us as readers, moviegoers and, yes, as learners, too.
In his 1949 book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the writer Jospeh Campbell suggested that almost all mythology follows the same fundamental structure, which he called “The Hero’s Journey”. An ordinary person is called on an adventure, faces challenges and hardships in an unfamiliar world, undergoes a personal transformation, and returns home with something valuable to share. The perfect learning experience!
Decades later, the writer Kurt Vonnegut simplified this story pattern into just three parts. His “Man in a Hole” model focuses on a character who faces a problem (they’re stuck in the “hole”), then overcomes it, and ends up better off than before. By plotting this story on a graph, Vonnegut showed that we are more invested in stories where the protagonist improves their situation. We want the hero to win. This has clear parallels with workplace training, where we need to raise safety standards, reduce complaints, or right a wrong.
An illustration of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Man in a Hole” graph from the Litmos webinar, “Master Storytelling in L&D This Year”. In this illustration, Litmos mascot Lenny is digging himself out of the proverbial hole (a learning and/or business challenge).
Consider the following the next time you are creating an eLearning course:
- How does your choice of perspective affect the presentation of the information?
- Is your learner “in the hole” themselves or helping someone else in difficulty?
- By the end of the training, has your learner not only increased their skills and knowledge, but also resolved the storyline in a way that will help them retain and recall these lessons later?
In the age of Tiktok, AI, and streaming services, attention spans are short. Learners are on the go and consuming content constantly. Building engaging narratives into your courses can set your eLearning initiatives apart.
When skillfully applied, these storytelling techniques can transform eLearning courses into compelling, memorable, and impactful educational experiences. Whether it’s a short microlearning module or a more in-depth suite of courses, making purposeful decisions about perspective and setting, following a simple three-act structure, and directly linking your learning outcomes to this narrative is a blockbuster formula.
