Surpassing Lectures: Using Stories to Enhance Education

Today, the "traditional" approach to education results in classes centered around lectures and rote memorization. In our research, we examine the effectiveness of an alternative form of education called "story-based learning". A story-based learning approach follows "case-based reasoning" theory, which states that humans evolved to learn through story telling. For our study, we will produce a narrative-driven short video accompanied by an expert analysis video that reinforces the teaching points of the story. Test subjects will be evaluated on their ability to retain and recollect the lessons of the story videos with certainty-based testing (CBT). CBT evaluates a learner's performance on the based on response accuracy and the degree of certainty with which the learner chooses his or her response. The ultimate purpose of this project is to design a new, more effective educational and training model with a focus on emulating the way humans naturally learn.