Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge:

I am in third year of Bachelor’s degree and for the final grade we had to make a Presentation on any  topic assigned to us by our teacher. We were divided into groups and the topic given to us was  environmental pollution. Our teacher the instructed us on what aspects we will be marked on like  the informativeness of it, time limit, etc. out of which a key element was holding the attention of the  class. Also, we were specify given a topic that has been done over and over again so that we also be  judged on uniqueness of how we present our topic.

We knew right of the bat that grabbing attention of final year students on a topic they are already  aware about will be very challenging and we will have to bring something new to the table.

Selection:

My group sat down to discuss on how to go about the presentation after going around when my  turn came, I explained about Storytelling tool and how we can use a narrative to present. We can  weave a story around the problem and with help of it we go ahead covering all the points we have  to. It was then mutually agreed on that using this we will be able to hold attention of the class and  also cover everything asked by out teacher.

Application:

Before we got started, we made sure that everyone was on the same and understood what  storytelling and narration is and how are we going to merge this tool in our presentation. We first  started with researching and gathering all the material that we need on the topic which took a lot of  time. With all the information now available to use we had to come up with a story that could be  built around it.

We looking into how narratives/stories are, a story always has a beginning, middle and an end. As  we started to bring together ideas and stories, we noticed that we can’t actually make a story that  has a legit climax but we still have the exposition, and a conflict and rising action. For climax and  resolution, we thought it was better to keep it loose ended and follow up with the solutions and  reforms that can be done to prevent and stop Environmental Pollution.

On the day of presentation, we started of with the introductions, definitions and laws pertaining to  our topic. After that, we started with our story of a little boy and his daily life. The boy lived near a  small hill and how he used to always go on hikes. As the boy grew up his small town grew too with  offices and different businesses and factories and how he noticed the changes and pollutants along  his usual hike trails and investigated them. Similarly, he ponders as how when he was little him and  his friends used to drink water straight from the tap without and worry and now almost all of the  houses have and use a water purifier. With every point of his discovery we followed it up with actual  real-life stories and statistics that held a shock value to the audience because they were just  following a little story and wasn’t expecting to be hit by a hard fact. It is what also helped us hold the  attention of the audience while making an impact as well.

By the end of it we quickly presented on how the things our protagonist face could have been  prevented by making an intervention in time and by having laws in place. We also covered on how  we as people can make a change by being more responsible and by holding people accountable.

Insight:

Usually when we are making a presentation for the class, we used to just worry about how many  slides we had to make and get done with our part. Nor the audience or the person presenting  seemed to just do it because they had to, it was just done under an obligation and it shows. When  we were given the challenge to make the presentation interesting, we picked on the Storytelling  tool.

While we prepared out presentation, we ourselves were moved with the approach and our goal  shifted from getting grades to actually making an impact on people present there. And I realised it  was because of the tool we chose, we looked up so many real-life stories and hard facts to build our  story around that it actual impacted us and made us more passionate about the topic itself which  was something I never expected.

Approach:

I still feel that the tool we chose was perfect and we also borrowed from the Visualization tool a lot  while presenting statistics and facts. What I feel we could have and will do differently in the future is  start with my story without wasting too much time on definitions and details that we could have  included in the story telling. Also, I felt our story was still jejune which will require some work as it  was just our first time attempting to do anything like it but, it was a success for sure that we know of  well with the response we got.

