Today’s guest post is from Sonia Sulaiman, who recently facilitated a workshop on storytelling, “To Instruct and Delight”: Storytelling for Higher Education for the GATA Network. Sonia is a professional artist, storyteller, and MA candidate in the department of English Language and Literature at the University of Windsor. For information about this and other GATA Network workshops, please visit the Centre for Teaching and Learning’s registration page.

Last week, in a land far far…

Well, no, it was right on the University campus, actually, where I had the pleasure of leading a very special workshop for the GA/TA Network at the Centre for Teaching and Learning. Lecture, in some form, is still the predominant instructional strategy for many courses at the post secondary level. Last summer, while attending CTL’s half-credit course on lecturing with Pierre Boulos and Michael Potter, I was introduced to storytelling for teaching in higher education.

Once people get talking, once the silence is broken, stories are inevitable. The workshop looked at storytelling as a vehicle of communication, although that is just the beginning of the potential for this alternative to lecture. Storytelling can transform classes into communities, engage learners (instructors included), and revitalise content. There is no single method or technique, but an acknowledgment that the story is interactive. The hearers are active participants when storytelling is at its best.

If you are a graduate student I would like to welcome and encourage you to get in touch with CTL, explore an idea and lead your own workshop. Your experiences are valuable, and you have stories to share.