Storytelling for adult education

Paola Romano

Challenge & Selection I

I work as leader of an information technology team, training adults. I have a team of young instructors who are very technologically skilled. On many occasions, I have used storytelling as a way of bringing technology to be used during the day-to-day life of our students, who must use it in their daily professional work.

Many of our students are employees in large companies with middle and senior management positions, who are dealing with the way they work through new technological platforms.

When it is working with young teachers and students are sometimes twice their ages, students feel fear of learning new technologies, the use of storytelling facilitates the creation of bonds of trust and empathy.

Application

With groups of older students, small groups, usually they do not want to participate or ask questions about the use of Google Workspace applications, for example, I tell the story of a manager of a company in which we carry out a training plan for the use of these technological tools.

The manager was an older man from middle management who in the class on using Workspace showed a negative position regarding the use of these ofﬁce applications, did not perform the exercises and was always on the defensive.

After the group training, he approached the trainers' room and he asked for help to explain the basic concepts of using Workspace. I spoke to him and noticed that his fear was being vulnerable to other managers if he asked questions. In his words, being the oldest in the company, he was a benchmark for others and because he was the oldest, technology was not his strong point.

In order to achieve empathy and the adults decrease his fears about learning, the use of a new technology, I told him my own story: A person with whom for 20 years I had handled different ofﬁce automation applications and 4 years ago when he entered the start up where he worked They gave me a couple of hours of training and told me "well for tomorrow we need you to build a presentation but it can't be in powerpoint, you must use Google slides, if you have any questions look for the answers on the internet or ask your colleagues". At ﬁrst I had a lot of fears about whether I would be able to learn as fast as the rest of the people in the ofﬁce (largely millennials). Over time I have discovered that it is worth making a

mistake at the beginning, asking others and using self-learning resources to adapt to the use of new technologies.

Being open minded to learn keeps us encouraged in organizations and a leader who is capable of learning and accompanying the learning of the people in his charge is highly appreciated by his work team.

With this story I managed to calm down this manager and agree that one of the young coaches will explain the basics of using Workspace to answer his questions.

As time went by, this manager became enthusiastic about collaborative work with Workspace and even took his colleagues to the teachers' lounge and encouraged them to seek the answers to their questions about the technology platform.

Insight & Approach

With the use of stories like these, my team's coaches and I have made several advances in training on the utilization of information technology in organizations, including:

● Breaking down the resistance to change produced by the use of

technology among old people.

● Establish a climate of openness and empathy for the questions of those attending the training sessions.

● Show with examples how we can all work on our self-learning.

● Change the perspective of error in learning as an opportunity to advance knowledge.

In summary, the use of a tool such as Storytelling has facilitated the work of trainers and has allowed an easier approach to technology by our students.

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