2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Stories have been a pervasive, ubiquitous feature of our lives throughout human history—indeed, storytelling itself is robustly associated with a host of positive benefits, including better mental health (Robertson et al., 2019), increased empathy (Cummings et al., 2022), and a greater sense of belonging (Ritter et al., 2019). As such, storytelling has the potential to be a powerful tool in a range of settings, including higher education (i.e., story-driven learning). To uncover how story-driven learning has been used in higher education so far—as well as to discover patterns in pedagogical methods and student outcomes—we conducted a systematic literature review of the topic. We sought answers to the following research questions: 1) How do scholars define storytelling? 2) What benefits do scholars conjecture storytelling and personal narratives provide to students in higher education? 3) What pedagogical approaches have been used to integrate storytelling into learning activities in higher education? 4) How have scholars approached studying the impact of story-driven learning in higher education? After querying Google Scholar and applying our exclusion/inclusion criteria, we identified 37 articles that centered on story-driven learning in higher education. Although the articles ranged in terms of educational discipline and form of storytelling focus (e.g., theoretical, empirical, case study, etc.), student outcomes from the respective story-driven learning approaches tended to align across articles. Most commonly, outcomes tended to involve at least one of the following areas: 1) leadership and career skills, 2) well-being, 3) empowerment among marginalized groups, 4) self-concept clarity, 5) empathy and sense of belonging, and 6) learning skills and engagement. While the results from our analysis revealed a relative paucity of story-driven learning in higher education, the conclusions show a range of positive impacts for students—highlighting the potential utility of story-driven learning.