As digital learning developers, my team and Iusuallyspent most of our working time behind a screen at our desks.This is great as it allows us to experience the flow of different digital artefacts creation. However,the stories that we want to share with our learners are not laying there. They are created, happening, exposed and shared where our customers are, where the products are produced, where the sales experts who are going to use our e-learning coursesare operating. Thus, it is important that we start “…immersing ourselves in the place of most potential, in the places which matter most to the situation we are dealing with.” (Scharmer und Kaufer 2013, p.21).So, based on the belief that the best learning solutions cannot be found in a manual or document online, I am inviting my team to go out,observe, discover and witness, with an open heart and mind, the various parts of the organization where the related stories blossom. Witnessing stories in the field that they are happening is not a passive process, as the word “witnessing” may pre-assume.Even by being an observer in the field, one is influencing it (Parlett1991).However most of the times, one can only grasp and therefore solve the stress and tension of an existing problem, if is present in the moment as it emerges or intensifies.It is said that there is no story without an underlying problem to be solved by the various stakeholders involved, who often share their stories, for example in our caseon product development problems or troubleshooting issues, in an dramatic way. We are there witnessingthe creation oftension,and the effort to get it resolved, as different stories emerge towards the direction of releasing the tension.We witness people finding a proper solutionon “beating the dragon”through the exchange of their stories. NielGaiman in his novel “Coraline” nicely depicts the value of stories in an above-like mentioned condition: “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten”.(Gaiman 2004, epigraph). So digging into the collective sharing may provide also the solution that is wanted. Being present in the land of “Witnessing the stories” has a profound impact on the work of the Project team. It resembles the Greek pedagogues in the Ancient Greek times who were dedicating a substantial amount of their time for their students, not necessarily being active or teaching but literally just being present for and beside them. It is the first step of building empathy with the respective persons in the field of the informal learning lands. Throughspending time with them, we become aware of the issues they deal within theireveryday practice, and thisshapesour thinking and generates ideas on how to support the process of co-creating narrative solutions as part of the learning modules.This represents away
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On what we get from them, we add our flavor and “light” coming from our corporate experience on the topic we discuss, we offer it back to them for their reflection, then they share it back with us and this reflection and exchange process might take several rounds. This process of funneling the initially collected stories results at the end ina new lead story enriched with the personal experiences of everyone involved. We name this process “Story-dealing”,and call ourselves “story-dealers”. We tell the stories providers: “Here is the deal. You tell us your nice story, we put our digital flavor, then we’ll give it back to you via the e-learning and you sell it to your customers.” Thisis the essence of a dialogic story development. As we are continuously thickening the created lead story, “Story-dealing”becomes anessential part of this process because the stories which are later digitally transformed, they still contain the energy of the pre-existing dialogic building …show more content…
The Project Team who is leading this process needs to be connected to the system of the different stakeholders who take part in the process and to their stories as well.The members of the Project Team, who are responsible for the storyboards creation, and the Subject Matter Experts, are playing out the dialogues, as role-plays, in our working lab. By recording this experience with both audio and visual methods, we are able to provide the e-learning Design and Programming Team with a very realistic view of how we would like them to transformand build the digital version of the
On what we get from them, we add our flavor and “light” coming from our corporate experience on the topic we discuss, we offer it back to them for their reflection, then they share it back with us and this reflection and exchange process might take several rounds. This process of funneling the initially collected stories results at the end ina new lead story enriched with the personal experiences of everyone involved. We name this process “Story-dealing”,and call ourselves “story-dealers”. We tell the stories providers: “Here is the deal. You tell us your nice story, we put our digital flavor, then we’ll give it back to you via the e-learning and you sell it to your customers.” Thisis the essence of a dialogic story development. As we are continuously thickening the created lead story, “Story-dealing”becomes anessential part of this process because the stories which are later digitally transformed, they still contain the energy of the pre-existing dialogic building …show more content…
The Project Team who is leading this process needs to be connected to the system of the different stakeholders who take part in the process and to their stories as well.The members of the Project Team, who are responsible for the storyboards creation, and the Subject Matter Experts, are playing out the dialogues, as role-plays, in our working lab. By recording this experience with both audio and visual methods, we are able to provide the e-learning Design and Programming Team with a very realistic view of how we would like them to transformand build the digital version of the