Abstract:

Introduction:
People rarely forget the stories heard in childhood. Moral and social values have been taught to children for centuries through stories like the Panchatantra from India, and Aesop’s fables from Greece. According to the Bible, Jesus explained complex theological matters through stories. In adult education, particularly in science only infrequent experimentation has been done to assess the influence of narrative pedagogy on learning. Increasing voluntary pursuit of information through the internet, and growing educational technology applications provide opportunities to experiment with narrative pedagogy.

Objectives:
The aims of the study were to prepare text content on a serious topic in a medical science subject for self study conducive to multimodal delivery including e-learning, to apply narrative pedagogical concepts in preparing the content, and to assess its short term influence on learning.

Materials and methods:
This study was conducted in India among first year undergraduate nursing students as yet unexposed to microbiology. The original idea was to create a comic for self study and assess its influence on learning. However final testing was done using only textual script. To create characters with unique personalities, and ensure desired level of complexity, a Microbiology topic dealing with multiple organisms was chosen. Content on e-coli infection from text books was converted into a script and subsequently validated by a Microbiology professor. 56 nursing students were selected and equally divided using simple random sampling into experimental (Story) group and control (Formal lecture) group of 28 candidates each. The same microbiologist prepared pre and post test questionnaires for evaluation. The control group attended a lecture by the microbiologist while the experimental group studied the script for the same duration as the lecture. Both groups were tested before the sessions, immediately thereafter, and a week later. Answer scripts were evaluated by independent evaluators. Paired and unpaired ‘t’ tests were used to find the statistical significance

Results:
Pre-test results showed no significant difference between the mean test scores of the unexposed Control and the Experimental groups with: Mean Pre-lecture 4.75, Standard deviation (SD) 1.71 Pre-story 4.67, SD 1.96. There was significant difference between the pre and post-test 1 & 2 scores of the Control group with: Mean Pre-test 4.75 SD 1.71, Post-test (1) 8.10, SD 2.46 and Post–test (2) 9.35, SD 2.40 (p ≤ 0.05), and also between the Pre and Post-test 1& 2 scores of the Experimental group with: Mean Pre-test 4.75, SD 1.71 Post-test (1) 11.12, SD 2.83, and Post-test (2) 11.46, SD 3.05 (p ≤ 0.05). Finally there was significant difference between the Post-test 1 & 2 scores of the Control group and Experimental group with: Mean Post-lecture (1) 8.10 SD 2.46 and (2) 9.35, SD 2.40, Post-story (1) 11.12, SD 2.83 and (2) 11.46, SD 3.05 (p≤0.05)

Conclusion:
The results show that narrative pedagogical text content in a health science subject for self study can be prepared for multi modal delivery. Further such content has a positive learning influence on adult learners in the short term extending up to a week. Future research may focus on long-term influence, skill development, and conversion for application in e-format.

Keywords:

Narrative Pedagogy, Stories, Microbiology, Health Science, e-learning, multimodal delivery.