Book Chapter On An Emergent Narrative System to Design Conducive Educational Experiences
In February 2021, a chapter I authored with Stefano Perna was published in the book “Universities and Entrepreneurship: Meeting the Educational and Social Challenges Edition: Volume 11” by Emerald Publishing. Our contribution is chapter 11, named “An Emergent Narrative System to Design Conducive Educational Experiences”. It is based on prior work, using narrative theory and emergent narrative concepts for designing learning experience in active or project based learning environments.
Abstract: The authors present concepts developed at University of Naples Federico II (Italy), where the Challenge Based Learning methodology (CBL) is utilised in a programme aimed at software development for the Apple technology ecosystem. The collaborative and self-guided, inquiry-based learning method focusses on intrinsic motivation of learners, working on real world problems organised in projects (Challenges in CBL) with an experiential and progressive approach. As entrepreneurship is best promoted through practice, the programme is a guided immersion into reality that is entrepreneurial in nature, rather than a simulation of hypothetical projects, and requires learners to take ownership of entrepreneurial skills to complete the course. Academic research has shown that use of storytelling is beneficial to learning and can foster engaging and more formative experiences. Additionally, scholars have developed systems to design unscripted narratives within educational contexts using emergent narrative concepts. This conceptual chapter describes an educational experience design system that encourages unscripted, emergent narratives for experiential education. It categorises the components for designing an educational experience that allows the learning progression to be affectively driven by learners. By focussing on setting parameters and giving learners autonomy as co-authors, the model describes mechanisms that allow powerful, unscripted narratives to emerge based on intrinsic motivation. The Emergent Narrative System developed by the authors is a contribution to innovation in entrepreneurship teaching and intends to empower learners towards building entrepreneurial and twenty-first century skills complementary to software development education in a conducive and experiential learning environment.
cite as: Recke, M.P. and Perna, S. 2021. An Emergent Narrative System to Design Conducive Educational Experiences. In P. Jones et al. eds. Universities and Entrepreneurship: Meeting the Educational and Social Challenges (Contemporary Issues in Entrepreneurship Research, Vol. 11), Emerald Publishing, Bingley, pp. 185-198. DOI: 10.1108/S2040-724620210000011012
The chapter is connected to work done at the University of Naples Federico II’s Apple Developer Academy, where my co-author Stefano Perna and myself are faculty members. In various other publications we showed how the application of narrative theory and the concept of emergent narratives can be be leveraged in context of learning experience design in active learning environments.
