This case study outlines the success of Story Centered Curriculum (SCC) implemented in an online environment at the University of Texas and Rutgers University. Story centered learning will be defined and demonstrated in this educational session and the specific impact on student retention and engagement in an online environment will be the focus.
How would you like to retain and engage more students? This case study will outline how you can use Story Centered Curriculum in your classrooms and online settings to improve retention and engagement; a four-year case study implemented by the author/presenter will be used as evidence to support the concepts. This educational session is perfect for instructors, administration and curriculum designers in all educational settings and will be presented in part through narrative and ‘Learn-by-Doing’ with participants serving in the role of learners. This will not be a lecture and PowerPoint will not be used, but rather leaners will fully be immersed in this topic area for the first half of this session and the second half will be informational and inquisitive.
Experiential Teaching Online is a curriculum delivery organization that partners with institutes of higher learning to provide curriculum driven by Story Centered Curriculum and expert mentoring. In 2014 XTOL partner with the University of Texas – Austin and Rutgers University to deliver a continuing education certificate program in Data Analytics and Big Data. The program was specially designed for continuing education students and adult learners and was delivered in an online environment. Incoming students were not required to have any technical requirements or background whatsoever, programming experience or prior experience in Statistics.
The program, which would later be implemented at three other universities, was designed with a learn by doing approach that was faceted and delivered through Story Centered Learning. Online students went through the program either as part-time or full-time students and each cohort met with an expert mentor once a week in a virtual environment to discuss progress, ask questions and be challenged with answers. Expert mentors guided this weekly virtual session with the Socratic Method, so students were not simply given the answers but rather were challenged on their assumptions and learning. Story Centered Curriculum was delivered through an online learning management system and engaged the students daily in their learning challenging students with real life ‘pitfalls’ and ‘brick walls’ and could be considered 100% full immersion. In other words, students went through the program as data analysts or potential data scientists and were engaged in real-world activities, problems and presentations just like they would encounter in such roles.
Students were assessed by the expert mentors through demonstration of mastery of skill of each task in the program and were not allowed to progress forward until such mastery had been accomplished.
This educational session will cover:
- Story Centered Curriculum – Defined and demonstrated
- How to properly mentor (even with inexperienced staff)
- The Socratic Method - Implemented Online
- Successful retention methods for online education
- Problems and solutions
- Program and course structure
- Students success stories (from A to B)
- Q/A
it’s important to note that while this case study specifically is related to higher education SCC has also been implemented in high school curriculums and in classroom settings. This educational session will also provide examples of each and convey the success of how this method of delivery and implementation of curriculum continues to drive engagement and increase retention. Many studies have also shown that this ‘Learn-by-Doing’ approach has a great impact on knowledge retention and lifelong learning skills. The overall concept being the best way to learn how to do something - is to do it - not through attending lectures.
According to Dr. Roger Schank (2018):
In contrast to a passive, subject-oriented curriculum, a Story-Centered Curriculum (SCC) can be viewed as a carefully designed apprenticeship-style learning experience in which the student encounters a planned sequence of real-world situations constructed to motivate the development and application of knowledge and skills in an integrated fashion. A realistic story, at the core of each SCC, provides a meaningful, motivating role for the student, designed to ensure that the student faces exactly the right progression of challenges to stretch and build his or her abilities. While the "characters" that a student encounters in a traditional apprenticeship are primarily concerned with their own-life goals, the characters in a Story-Centered Curriculum are specifically constructed to further the student's education by providing appropriate challenges. Mentors play the expert role, providing one-on-one coaching, help, and feedback to the student, while encouraging self-directed learning. Through these mechanisms, the SCC provides accelerated experiential learning.
Although realistic projects are crucial to a successful SCC, a curriculum is not just a random collection of projects. Rather, it is a carefully crafted sequence in which each project builds on and extends the knowledge and skills of previous projects, while remaining in the same overarching story context. This progression of projects is the heart of any SCC. A rich and realistic context promotes the acquisition of knowledge to be used, while extended interaction within a single story leverages the story context, reducing the need for "non-value-added learning" unrelated to targeted knowledge and skills (e.g., learning the particulars of a fictional client company).
Because real-world problems are often large, multifaceted, and complex, students in a SCC are taught to work through very large challenges in a principled and incremental way, building systematically on previously acquired skills and knowledge. This helps students understand how to break down problems into manageable sub-problems, put together a sensible work plan for accomplishing all the required tasks, and not be daunted when facing similarly large problems in the world around them.
From an administration standpoint the impact on retention in an online environment has been truly astounding. In an area that is so often difficult to grasp a solution for the engagement created by story centered curriculum and online mentoring not only outperformed more traditional methods but did so handily producing and continued 98% retention over the course of its four-year implementation. To date over 300 students have gone through the program and it continues to be a success at all locations where it was originally offered.
References:
elearn Magazine: The story-centered curriculum. (2018). eLearn Magazine, an ACM Publication. Retrieved 4 June 2018, from https://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=1266881