Here be dragons: experiments with the concept of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ in the lecture room

Abstract

One of the most traditional challenges of teaching is that of engaging learners with delivered content both within and outside of the taught environment. There are many different approaches to achieving learner engagement; however, this paper focuses on examining the translation and adaptation of an approach used principally by novelists, that of the non-linear narrative, to provide readers with active agency in choosing the direction of a story. The readers, in this case, are the learners and the story is the lecture. The approach is evaluated through an in-class qualitative study gathering comments from both the learners and the practitioners with regards to the impact of the approach on the learning environment and student experience. The evaluation suggests that whilst there can be problems in adopting the approach, it can have a positive impact on the learner environment, including increasing student motivation to study.

Keywords:

• innovation
• teaching
• learning
• engagement
• pedagogy
• social constructivism

Acknowledgements

The work presented in this paper was funded as an innovation project by the Art, Design and Media subject centre of the Higher Education Academy. We also wish to thank the students involved in testing the concept in practice.