Our recent BAEF webinar featured Dr S M A Moin who is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Queen Mary University of London. Dr Moin researches and publishes in brand storytelling, strategy, leadership and creativity & innovation. For this webinar, Moin describes his experiences of using storytelling as a pedagogy to create an inclusive classroom that empowers both academics and students to foster intellectual engagement/exploration and teacher-student/student-student co-creation.
Moin has had a varied career and came to education with
the purpose of creating the leaders of tomorrow with knowledge, skill, and
character. Over time he has developed a
teaching approach that uses storified and creative teaching to reach the
students rational mind by tapping into their emotions. Moin highlights the teaching practices that
can switch students off and reduce engagement, and how using a creative
narrative can help to foster engagement and hold the student’s attention. As with all stories there is a beginning,
middle, and end as well as a protagonist.
Moin starts by recounting his own journey into education,
from a career in the Navy followed by a corporate career, he came to education
with a desire to shape the leaders of tomorrow.
He then goes on to introduce two characters, Dr JoJo and Dr MoJo. Dr JoJo is the classic exemplar of a
university lecturer; he views lecturing as a job whose role is to pass on
knowledge to the students in a transactional fashion so that the students know
what the right answers are. Whereas Dr
MoJo is a less typical exemplar of a university lecturer; he views lecturing as
a calling to one who cares about how the students learn. Rather than a transactional relationship, he
has a transformative relationship with the students and is focused on helping
them become who they are. Dr JoJo wants
to learn how to teach better so that the students can identify the dots and
follow the rules. Whereas Dr MoJo wants
to learn how to get the students to learn better so that they can connect the
dots and then break the rules, as this where creativity happens. As you can imagine, Moin has Dr MoJo as the
protagonist of our story.
Moin describes the impact each approach to teaching has
through a scenario of a job interview for a digital marketing executive after
graduation. JoJo’s students would focus
on the knowledge gained from their studies, whilst MoJo’s students would focus
on their journey and what they have become through what they have learned.
JoJo’s student might talk about a project where they created a digital
marketing plan and got a high grade for it.
However, MoJo’s student would be more likely to talk about how they set
up a YouTube channel to host videos of themselves describing various marketing
principles. How it started with little
traction, but after applying digital marketing approaches the views and likes
increased and that now they are a content creator with a real world
understanding of how digital marketing methods work/don’t work. JoJo’s students
might well be able to answer factual questions, but MoJo’s students are better
placed to be asking interesting questions of the interviewer as they have a journey
mindset.
Moin goes on to argue that imagination (as Einstein
proposed) is more important than knowledge.
As knowledge only represents what we know currently whilst imagination can
embrace the entire world and all that there could be to know. Also, that knowledge itself doesn’t have an
impact, but that rather it is the application of knowledge that has an
impact.
Dr Mojo’s teaching pedagogy, although using some
transactional approaches, is focused on a transformative mindset where the
student learns about who to become on their educational journey. He encourages a questioning perspective so
that even after graduation the student is able to learn, unlearn, and relearn
new things.
Moin highlights the importance of recognising that all
students are unique, in that they all come from different backgrounds, have
different motivations, think differently, and have different representations of
reality. And that this diversity among
the students can create a vibrant and challenging environment to push the student’s
imagination and creativity. This happens
because the students learn from each other as they all have different
views. It also encourages openness and
the ability to understand the viewpoints of others, even to have their own
views challenged by this exposure to differing worldviews, thus this creative
friction can generate new ideas and approaches.
Moin goes on to differentiate between using inclusive
education as a method and as a philosophy.
When used as a method it will typically take a crafted case study that
relies on the application of some specific knowledge to solve it, it is a
representation of a problem. Whereas, when
used as a philosophy it will try to use as many differing worldviews as
possible to solve a problem, it becomes representative of approaches to
problems/methods. This subtle difference
recognises that an inclusive classroom is highly diverse, and that this
diversity of worldview can be utilised to create novel solutions to problems as
well as the students learning from each other.
To highlight how storytelling can have an impact, Moin
highlights a recent study that investigated what it is that lecturers do that
makes students “turn off”. This study
found 3 key issues: lecture heaviness, delivery problems, and relevancy
problems. By lecture heaviness he means lectures with lots of explanation but
little conversation, too many slides with dull presentation. Delivery problems
tend to be characterised by a less passionate delivery with little energy or
enthusiasm for the subject. Relevancy
tends to refer to a lack of real-world application.
This standard delivery can be a switch off to the
students because it is predictable, by stating the learning outcomes the
student is no longer caught as they know what is coming. A story, by its nature, is unpredictable and
keeps our attention because we want to know what happens next. So, to keep the student’s attention you need
to craft a narrative for the lecture and wrap up the content with stories that
highlight the knowledge you want to impart.
To keep a focus, it helps to humanise the narrative by using characters
and to keep surprising the audience (this keeps them awake!) as you go
along. At the end of the lecture, you
can then bring out the learning outcomes and how you achieved them.
To conclude, Moin asks MoJo to describe the typical
journey a student makes on their transformational journey. It starts off with them coming into the
university with their diverse worldviews, desires, and weaknesses. They enter the special world of the inclusive
classroom where they meet their mentors and peers and have their worldviews
challenged. Eventually, they start to survive
in this special world, they learn to appreciate other worldviews, and start to
share their own. After this they start
to thrive and find their own voice and find the magic in the world and
themselves. At this point they graduate,
but the journey does not finish there.
Now they enter the special world of the workplace and the challenges
that they will face there. In deference
to Moin I shall leave that as a cliffhanger to keep you wanting to know what
happens next on this student’s journey…. You can find out by watching the
presentation!
To fully conclude, Moin describes how to approach
students for whom this method might not fit as well and how to respond to
feedback from students. As you can
imagine there was a great deal of debate afterwards about this method and how
it can be done in the contemporary university environment. Questions ranged from engagement issues to
how to deal with the baggage that comes from the secondary education system and
its conveyor belt approach to delivery.
Moin gave some great examples and approaches that can be used. And again, I’m going to leave you with a
“what happened next?” moment and recommend that you watch the final half hour
of the webinar to discover his advice…
Author: Dr Chris Davies, Assistant Professor, Bangor University, and BAEF committee member.