Storytelling as a Means to Transfer Knowledge via Narration

1 Introduction

Storytelling has been recognized as a powerful tool in many communication scenarios and working branches like leadership, advertising and especially organizational communication (Escalas 2007). Stories are memorable, comprehensible and credible (Barker and Gower 2010) and can create empathy for experiences and views of others (Lämsä and Sintonen 2006). Following the Narrative Paradigm Theory (NPT) human beings can be described as intuitive storytellers (Cragan and Shields 1998). Stories help them to make sense of who they are and where they come from (Soin and Scheytt 2006). In an organizational context, storytelling can be used to communicate organizational change processes (Kahan 2006, Boje 1991), brand stories (Chui, Hsieh and Kuo 2012) and internal relations (Gil 2011). In short, storytelling can make complex conceptions more accessible for different audiences (Mattila 2000) as long as the storyteller is perceived as being trustworthy.

Following this line of thought, the credibility of Pedagogical Agents, as conveyer of knowledge, have been thoroughly established within the scientific community. Besides its established benefits by forming a link to the learner via the persona effect (Lester et al. 1997), recent scientific research kept its focus on testing individual aspects of an agent like having them present the material as an animated or static entity (Lusk and Atkinson 2007, van der Meij, H., van der Meij J. and Harmsen 2015). Other research tested whether or not a polite agent was more suitable (Wang et al. 2008), how gender and ethnicity affects learning (Kim and Wei 2011) or if a bit of small talk might be helpful in creating a more socially accessible agent and hence a more suitable mentor (Veletsianos 2012). An extensive review of current research about Pedagogical Agents was presented by Heidig and Clarebout (Heidig and Clarebout 2011). However, while research on Pedagogical Agents appears to be invested in making an agent appear more lifelike regarding non-verbal abilities or enhancing the agent’s verbal expression for natural means of communication, the presentation of knowledge or information is rather limited by suitable ways of interaction. Following the Media-Equation-Theory from Reeves and Nass (Reeves and Nass 1996), people tend to project everyday behaviour onto Human-Computer-Interactions. Inter-Human-­Communicational behaviour however is rarely limited to a pure exchange of information but rather to telling and receiving facts embedded into a cohesive storyline. These stories often follow established narrative rules like character-development, overcoming of obstacles as well as protagonist-antagonist relationships (Bordwell 1985, Parker 2005). Following this line of thought, the shaping and transmission of a piece of information is another media-equated interactional paradigm which presents a promising new way of improved human-computer-interaction.

These narrative structures have to be divided into three distinct elements – temporal cohesion, progression of the storyline and characters. Within the temporal dimension, any narration is limited by having an elementary beginning and an ending as well as the time necessary to ingest the story (Chatman 1978). How the storyline progresses within these natural limits, being straight forward, jumping time or being told in retrospect, is up to the narrator. But within the framework of an optimized human-computer-interaction, time should probably be used in a straight-forward way. The second structural distinction is the development of the narration, meaning the establishment of an interesting narrative, the key-moments of a progressing plot like obstacles, antagonistic actions etc. This allows for suspense to foster by creating basic dichotomous outcomes, being either positive or negative for the protagonist (Ohler 1994) and thereby ‘interesting’. The third distinction is about the character establishment and its development inside the narrative framework. Presenting the recipient with a relatable protagonist that lives through the narration allows for a deeper understanding of the storyline and of the information conveyed. Once implemented the established narrative structures in combination with the characters and the narrated storyline will facilitate a suspenseful engagement by the human counterpart. Furthermore, traditional models of narrative experiences like the affective disposition (Zillmann 1996) allow for the recipient to hesitate between a good outcome and a bad one – where a good outcome would be correct information and a bad one would be wrong. This in turn would possibly even lead to an anticipated information transfer by forming theories about the correctness of information instead of the outcome for a character. Therefore, we are arguing for a combination of and from three distinctively different points of view.

2 Narrative Elements of a Story

This goes back to the origins of primordial human beings and their tendency to tell stories for conveying information to other members of the tribe (Mielke 2006, Cobley 2014). Sugiyama (1996) describes the usage of stories as temporally as well as causally linked representations of the surroundings – including mental states, abstract concepts and causal links. Thereby influencing the recipients and adjusting their way of thought, perception and therefore their anticipated behavior. This corresponds to the narrative mode by Bruner (1986) which states that experiences are framed by storylike functions.

From a purely architectural perspective, a story is a recognizable pattern of events introduced in a common and expected fashion (Parker 2005). Leading back to the aforementioned statement that narrations are basic building blocks of social human civilization. Once the events are clear, they have to become relevant for the recipients by introducing one or multiple relatable characters (Hendricks 1972). And once the character is introduced, an obstacle or an influencing event has to happen, which either threatens the protagonist or other relatable characters which in turn would threaten the current living situation of the main character. This is important, since the audience prefers characters and their developments over events (Mar 2004) and have to have enough information to be able to have a sense of why those characters belong in this narration (Crittenden 1982, Benjamin 2007). Furthermore, the foreshadowing conflict looming over the storyline should be constructed in a way which makes it essential for the continuation of the characters’ environment (Campbell 1968, Wood 2008). In order to achieve this important goal, narrations can be simplified by using stereotypical features and characteristics. This can be helpful in order to understand and relate to a specific person inside a narration (Lebowitz 1984).

What follows is a chained succession of components to describe the setting, other characters, objects and events as well as developments in case of the protagonist. This leads to a narrative continuity which conveys the information of the story to the target audience. When looking at the story as a whole, specific segments become visible which reflects most of told narrations, following the postulated five acts in accordance with Horaz and as published by Freytag (Freytag 1863). The first act, exposition, describes the involved characters, describes the primary setting and teases the upcoming events including, at this point, a rather abstract challenge. Within the second act, complication, the events become more detailed and the characters, as well as the audience, become aware of the looming catastrophic events which might follow. The peripetie, act three, culminates the events and confronts the protagonist with a desperate situation which becomes the defining moment of the character development. Within the fourth act, the retardation, the events are slowed down as to give the protagonists time to think through the events from the third act. This appears to be somewhat weak in terms of imminent narrative development, but it prepares the transformation of the involved characters and especially the protagonist. Afterwards, during the fifth and final act, the narration culminates in a metaphorical catastrophe and the described events lead to either a positive or negative outcome.

This outcome in turn tells the audience what is to expect as a result of certain actions, behavior or state of mind beforehand, which leads over to the main idea behind this paper: the use of storytelling as means of knowledge transfer.

3 Applications of Storytelling

A wide array of applications for storytelling already exists. Journalists call their work ‘getting the story’ (Ritchie 1997, Peterson 2001) by which obviously ongoing or concluded events are described by following traditional narrative paradigms. And in advertising, the storyline describes the product and how the courted recipient would profit from owning it or how to relate to the product (Woodside, Sood and Miller 2008, Woodside 2010). Obviously there is no black painted house for the gothic girl as depicted within the Hornbach advertisement (2014) – nevertheless this little piece of story has been branded into the minds of millions. The same paradigms are visible in the form of public relation officials, which in turn tend to focus their effort on the explanation and conveyance of information.

Although storytelling itself is not a very often implemented tool in PR strategies, this field combines the approaches of journalists as well as advertisers to relay events, their origins and their effect on society, environment and / or a company, client etc. So while journalists are focused on telling what has happened, advertisers stir up a need for something and people in public relations want to explain and communicate, within the domain of knowledge management the narrative elements of telling a story are used to foster and retain specific pieces of information. This for example is done by anchoring instructions into the flow of a storyline (Vanderbilt 1990), using narrative techniques to highlight certain elements which will become useful in the future. Within the Jasper Woodbury stories (Vanderbilt 1990) in one sequence the main protagonist will have to calculate whether or not it is possible to motorboat home before dark. Throughout the storyline up to this point, relevant pieces of information have been presented to the audience in a rather unsuspecting fashion like the radio news telling about the time of sunset, a test drive of the boat conveys the information about the cruising speed and a map at the beginning of the overall area, allows to measure distances. Goal Based Scenarios or constructivist learning environments (Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy 1999) in general incorporate these important elements and convey their general usefulness by providing a crucial moment inside the storyline, where action by the audience is required in the form of incorporating problem solving skills. But, although proven to be successful, the proposed agent system would improve on providing the necessary information within the same medium and while enabling the learner to work inside an interactive environment.

4 Pedagogical Agents as Narrators

Contemporary use of pedagogical agents in a learning environment is furthermore invested on having the agent as part of a learning group, having it as a learning companion (Kim and Baylor 2006) or as a traditional teacher substitute. But although these approaches seem to be fruitful regarding the learning outcome, we thought up an alternative implementation whereas the agent is serving as the narrator of a story, guiding the learner through a set of instructions and events which affect both himself and other characters of the storyline. This combination of primary, self-learned, and secondary experiences, conveyed by other influencing characters, leads to a better integration of information, since they are not only processed but cross-referenced.

In this example, the goal for the student is to learn about the basic principles of web programming, server and file structures and basic html tag knowledge. Therefore, the student should be included as a character inside a company specialized in website generation and content management. The role is that of a project manager, having to organize and plan the web roll-out of a major new client. Since the applied story revolves around a fresh start to the project, the learner will have to set up the correct file locations of the website first, which in case of the Dreamweaver tool involves certain steps as to where in the menu to click and choose specific options about how to connect to the project’s webserver, either by FTP or a directory connection.

The information necessary is thereby conveyed by different characters, working alongside the learner in the office. These pseudo-social interactions of the virtual characters amongst each other and with the learner, build the framework for the aforementioned secondary experiences. By watching another virtual colleague setting up their own project space and webserver connection or by listening in to a conversation about the user name and passwords to be used, the learner is able to integrate the knowledge necessary to complete the different tasks.

As a next step in the storyline, the content will have to be created. Inside a virtual project meeting, the characters first present other ongoing projects so as to convey basic principles about the orientation of menu bars, content, pictures and so forth. Shortly before the events take on the learner as being asked to present their own idea for the new site, the pedagogical agent depicts the work area of the Dreamweaver tool and the learner is able rearrange parts of the website, following the design principles conveyed earlier. Due to this practical approach, the learner is able to instinctively internalize the usual steps in designing web elements. Back out of the meeting, the next steps include not only the position of web elements but their creation via tools and tag commands. Once more the storyline introduces a set of characters working alongside the learner on similar projects. An Intern is introduced to the set, getting to learn about the tag lines, rules about their implementation and in what way the software tool supports the team in creating the webpages. By watching the Intern handle the different commands, the learner is able to reintegrate the learned commands into their own website creation.

Figure 1

A pedagogical Agent inside an enhanced learning environment.

Task specific interactions with other characters, a set of questions to ask and a corresponding conversational database, linked with the instructional goals of the learning environment, continues to match the progress of the student and the projected learning success. The result of this alignment has an effect on the behavior of the pedagogical agent as the main narrator of the storyline. In case of an apparently difficult to understand item of the learning curriculum, the narrator changes the flow of the storyline to reintroduce other helpful characters or revisit events, which help in understanding and application of the item in question. The agent therefore is serving as the conveyor of the storyline and pro-active guide to the content. This pro activity is not confined to the aspects of the narration but also to the learner behavior in front of the screen. A webcam allows to track the gaze of a user and therefore the general attention (Wuttke and Martin 2014). Should a learner deviate away from the screen, the storyline can either be stopped or reintegrate the learner by talking to him – including him or her into the ongoing conversation by asking for an opinion or a quick, web-content related question which was mentioned earlier.

In the end, the storyline will take the learner to a point, where the created website is handed over to the client, which obviously comes with feedback about the project. Within this discussion, the learned objectives are assessed and evaluated against the goals of the training scenario. Did the learner implement the correct file structures regarding media content and textual information? Have the tags been incorporated in accordance with the usual standards? Is the produced code readable and indented? This fact-related feedback supports the learner by having another character, one with superior knowledge about the process, making live adjustments based on the client’s feedback. Therefore showing the learner in what ways to improve a site the next time. And by implementing the narrative elements of the five-act-structure, complications and challenges during the workflow can be used to keep the stakes and the pace of the learning experience on a high level.

5 Conclusions

The result of this combined approach is an improved human-computer-interaction by establishing a human-like behaving agent that does not rely on a conveying of information but instead treats them as a building block for a narrative storyline. Embedded into this story, the most important aspects would be serving as narrative milestones which have to be experienced rather than just assimilated. Characters would serve as relatable cornerstones whose knowledge or expertise can be requested by the recipient or skipped over to facilitate a user-centered approach or adaptive / pro-actively engaging narration. Due to this, pedagogical agents would not be limited to being a presenter for information but rather a conversational partner for future human-computer-interactions. Especially the pro-active elements of the agent and reactions to the decisions of a user inside the storyline and the behavior in front of the screen, present a novel approach to the conveyance of information and the fostering of knowledge inside a computer or web based training application. As this proactivity of an agent system is currently explored (Wuttke 2014) future research will incorporate the storyline elements of the described scenario in combination with a narrating pedagogical agent system.