Disaster Education: a narrative-based approach to support learning, motivation and students’ engagement

Abstract

Over the last decade, the interest in disaster education has grown rapidly. Several studies demonstrate that effective results can be obtained in this field only with instructional methods able to motivate the learner and to support them in practicing skills by means of narrative situations. The narrative is a privileged method that can help developing cognitive skills, organize knowledge and support the construction of meaning. In this paper we present a novel adaptive storytelling model defined in the context of ALICE project and its contextualization in the field of disaster education. The defined model aims at maximizing learner’s understanding and development of concepts fostering the “learning in action” and problem solving skills in natural disaster contexts by combining direct experience, observation, discovery and action. In particular the model arises motivation in the story and creatively engage learners in finding solutions to a problem and building personal responsibility. The experimentation results are encouraging and confirm that the storytelling offers higher engagement than the traditional practicing methods.