Using Storytelling to Meet the Technology and Information Literacy Needs of Millennial Students

Storytelling is an increasingly popular tool faculty can use to enhance generational interest and participation by millennial students and other generations to foster learning and create organizational cultural change.This presentation will present technology and information literacy options for faculty to consider as part of their storytelling teaching portfolio and organizational role.The paper will include results from a survey taken during the Tilford Diversity Storytelling project, provide examples and strategies for using stories, and include a review of literature to show how storytelling can be an effective mode of communication. Storytelling in Organizations TodayIn an age of ever new technologies to enhance classroom teaching, the "sage on the stage" may be making a comeback through the power of stories and the technique of storytelling.Once thought to be mostly for children, or for library programs, storytelling is now applied widely in the business and corporate world by management and human relations departments for employee training, knowledge transfer, and cultural change and in academic settings by faculty as a pedagogical tool for effective teaching.One reason storytelling is making a comeback is because of the estimated 60 million to 74 million millennial generation students and employees born from around 1977 to 1995 who are flooding colleges and entering the workplace with learning styles favorable to storytelling.Another reason is the value of stories in a learning setting."Our generation isn't all about sex, drugs, and violence.It's about technology, discovery, and coming together as a nation." 12Storytelling creates a "coming together" of those participating.It is the "common" in "communication."Millennials have a commitment to arts, leadership, interactivity, service, and they respond to authority and entertainment. 12sponding favorably to authority is a trend supported by a 2002 Harris Poll which listed the top five groups that influence millennials: 12 59% --my mother 43% --my father 22% --my grandparent 19% --a teacher or coach 18% --an entertainer