The Powerful Webcomic Approach: Learning from Smithsonian

Daniel Bilton, Booz Allen Hamilton
Robert Costello, Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH)- responsible for electronic educational outreach

Stories are experience simulators. They provide the information, the context and the models that people need to make decisions. (There's that context word again!)

How do you turn a boring story into a sticky story that produces action?

Case study (boring)
Provide the teaching point, definition and the scenario. Too much facts, but not enough feeling or attention spend on the background stimulus. Where's the human factor?

Action story
Introduce the nurse and what she notices about the patient. ... (then into a compelling story of how the nurse saves the day and what happens). The discussion after the story talked about the learning point. The story provided simulation (knowledge and how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act).

Sticky Story SUCCESS Checklist
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Sparks Action or, Provides a Solution
(from Made To Stick book)

Stories are good vehicles for many types of communications.

The Smithsonian needed to expand reach and teach scientific learning objectives. So they had to: increase the public understanding of the process of science, increase pubic awareness of NMNH research and increase the understanding of forensic science.

How evffective is storytelling? Among middle and high school students (NMNH target audience), they are technically savvy, connected and play video games, watch movies and read comic books.

So in the MNNH project, the main storyline hero is a character that the audience can relate to. Provide the storyline, give the hook and blend in the lessons, objectives, practice examples and scenarios. The story was based on a true story: a bone forensic mystery found in a cellar in Colonial America. The coolest part... the character even got her own Facebook page!

The webcomic got the audience to become emotional about the training. They became empathetic about the characters in the story. (As well as the other SUCCESS factors)

How popular are comic books? Have you seen the magna section in Barnes & Noble? And those reading... not just nerdy boys. There are plenty of magna for girls, too. Young female creators are also among the hottest new comic artists. So don't think that just because it's comic style that it won't be accepted!

Visual storytelling is sticky and an effective instructional approach.

NMNH didn't do a game because it needed to be done quick, and get acrosss a lot of information. And no audio either because of the cognitive load issues. Most read faster than the audio can run.

Sketches done on the comics. Then focus groups with middle and high school kids to get their reaction. The kids in the gropus played out the characters to see if the jokes and learning were received properly. Turns out, they got the story and provided great feedback on the language (lingo) used, font style, and other stuff that could only come from the target audience.

The story is a passive experience, but there was the goal to engage the learners into apply what they learned through exercises. They could dig deeper into the information, make their own judgement calls or compare their answers with other learners.

The story used collaboration in an online community and that made them pay more attention to the story (lesson). Try: instead of a regualar multiple choice question that provided an answer, make it a polling question where you can see the results of other learners.

The results of Google Analytics on the course:

• bounce rate low -- good! People are sticking around -- for about 9.5 minutes!
• the target audience is middle & high school kids, but survey respondents on "how old are you" indicate that 66% is older than 46!

Favorite parts of the comic:

• generates more interest
• liked the mystery aspect
• visuals great for memory and learning

The ABC Approach to telling a Sticky Story
Action - What is the starting event?
Background - What is the situation?
Conflict - What needs to specifically happen?
Development - What happens and who is involved?
End - What is the key take-away?

Lessons Learned

• ID's shoudl think of themselves as writers
• Apply SEction 508
• Try to use social media networks

Really interesting session!!