Narrative writing nurtures students' creativity and imagination, but educators and parents often face limited resources and time to effectively teach story writing while providing timely, personalized feedback to each student. Additionally, traditional storytelling tools mostly cater to adults or content creators, which makes them less engaging and intuitive for younger learners.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
According to PA Core Standards for English Language Arts Grades 6-12, students in 6th grade should learn and be able to write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using well-structured event sequences, relevant descriptive details, and effective techniques.
"StoryMate," was developed to provide an interactive storytelling experience aimed at middle school students. The core objective was to teach creative writing using Freytag's Pyramid as the foundational structure, while leveraging generative AI tools like VoiceFlow, GPT models, and DALL-E to facilitate students in building narratives.
Course Flow Design
How does the learning experience unfold?
The course was divided into multiple units to scaffolds students' skills:
Course Introduction
A welcome and orientation module that helps students understand the course objectives and get comfortable with the platform.
Unit 1: Mastering Freytag's Pyramid
Students learn about the foundations of storytelling and the elements of Freytag's Pyramid—Setting, Conflict, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution. Take short quizzes and get just-in-time feedback to reinforce the foundational understanding of these elements.
Unit 2: Iteration with Narrative Techniques
Students explore narrative hooks, dialogue, pacing, and description. They iterate on these techniques, receiving feedback to refine their storytelling skills. For instance, they practice using dialogue to bring characters to life and pacing to build atmosphere.
Course Conclusion
At the end of the course, we offer a final project recap where students can reflect on the key storytelling concepts and the narrative techniques they've learned and used.
Creative Approach
Facilitating creativity through AI-driven storytelling
The course flow utilizes interactive storytelling techniques while providing structured support for learning the key elements of storytelling:
Learning by Doing: Students directly interact with AI to ask clarification questions, co-create narratives, inputting their story elements into the VoiceFlow chatbot, which provides real-time feedback. For example, students start with the "Setting" of their story, describing characters and context, and receive suggestions for improvement before moving on to the next narrative element.
Scaffolding Narrative Structure: Scaffolding was a key component of our design, providing students with step-by-step guidance through each stage of Freytag's Pyramid. Through interactive prompts and conversational feedback, students were supported in setting the scene, building tension with rising action, and resolving their stories, ensuring they could effectively apply narrative techniques while maintaining creative freedom.
Learner Testing
What worked and what could be improved?
We conducted several rounds of user testing to refine the course based on real user experiences. Here are some insights and changes we implemented:
More Visual Elements: Feedback indicated that the course was initially too text-heavy for middle schoolers. To address this, we incorporated more images to enhance engagement and making learning less daunting for young users.
Enhanced Instruction Clarity: To improve clarity and enhance instructional guidance, we replaced generic instructions with more descriptive and student-friendly language to help students understand their next steps clearly and connect storytelling concepts effectively.
Detailed Onboarding Process: To address initial confusion with navigating the chatbot and storyboard, we implemented a detailed step-by-step onboarding process to guide students in understanding how to use key features, helping them feel comfortable and confident in interacting with the platform.
Future Possibilities
Bring students' stories to life with visuals
Although we didn't get the chance to fully integrate DALL-E into the story creation process, we envision a significant impact if this tool could be utilized. By allowing students to generate visuals for their stories, they could see their ideas come to life.
This could be done through a set of predefined prompts that guide students step-by-step, helping them craft characters, settings, and key events visually and offering new avenues for creativity.
Students could also export their narratives as a PDF to share in the classroom, empowering them to tell their stories, engage in further discussion, and receive constructive critique from peers, fostering a culture of creativity and collaboration.
