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Storytelling from SMEs

So I'm sure you've seen the recent emails about the upcoming CAE "Storytelling in Psychology" event given by Dr. Sandy Siegel. Sandy is one of our best SMEs (she’s in the MACC program) and she is a force in the classroom because of her storytelling skills. I think instructors’ personal/professional stories and vignettes have a lot of power to give a course relevance and heart, especially in a blended or online format with limited or no F2F interaction, and so I’ve been thinking about getting Sandy to audiorecord some brief stories for the courses she SMEs, either as an introductory “tone-setter” or as a springboard for a ‘what would you do?’-type assignment. Thing is, SMEs are rarely the sole instructors on their courses, and I’m thinking that whoever the other section instructors are may not want someone else’s voice (or video) built in, as for that term it is “their” course, not the SME’s. (In a past corporate job of mine we created situation-specific ‘Expert Video’ clips that learners could view to help them make a task decision, but in that case there was no one person who was “the instructor” because these were self-contained job training tutorials, not academic courses.) Has anyone incorporated SME voice/video into their courses? Did you identify who it was? Does anyone else think the section instructors would care? I like Tracy's idea of presenting it as an element that the section instructor can modify or leave in as he/she chooses, as long as it's included by default, and its instructional value is obvious.

Comments

  1. I must admit, I do not know a lot about storytelling in the classroom. I think that it is a great idea if ti works. I am concerned that it may not "fit" the teaching style of the other instructors teaching the course. That said, if we incorporate the story as part of the content, just as we would with a video or article, then it becomes part fo the course. It would be coincidence that the content is from an instructor or SME at the Chicago school. So, if we treat it as part of the content then the faculty teaching it really would not have much to say about it except as content. At least that is my two cents!
    Mark

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