Narratives for a brighter future

In the campaign, humour serves as a powerful discursive strategy to educate the public and makes the content relatable, while addressing the taboo topic of bathroom business.

With the advent of technology, people are now able to share stories across the world through the Internet. In education, this development brings about profound changes.

Like an engaging story, an effective lesson draws students in and makes them want to learn more. Educators are now able to communicate lessons and teach students from anywhere in the world through online learning. This rose in prominence amid the COVID-19 pandemic when students had to study from home and could not physically attend school as governments tried to minimise the spread of the coronavirus early in the outbreak.

But there are challenges.

A study by the National Institute of Education (NIE) at NTU, led by Dr Imelda Caleon from the institute’s Office of Education Research, suggests that online learning could be less effective among secondary school students. There was consensus among the 40 students from five schools interviewed from October 2020 to March 2021 that online learning was less effective than in-person lessons.

Some students even attributed stress they felt to online learning, as they expressed doubts of its effectiveness, according to the study published in Educational and Developmental Psychologist.

Still, several students did not find online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic stressful.

To ensure students are engaged during online lessons, the researchers say teachers “should consider ways to help students adapt to the new learning environment and provide channels to check their understanding of lesson content and seek clarification”.

NIE lecturer Dr Tan Chee Soon, one of the study’s co-leads, adds: “As adolescents are particularly worried about peer relationships and reported loneliness during the pandemic, teachers should explore ways to provide students opportunities to work together and interact, even during online lessons.”

The format that online instruction takes also matters. 

“Personal contact is often missing from online learning,” says Asst Prof Sonny Rosenthal from NTU’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (WKWSCI). “Even when everyone uses video and audio in an online learning environment, the experience lacks the richness of face-to-face instruction. Based on my research, ‘live composite’ videos seem to reduce that richness gap, but it’s not perfect.”

In live composite videos, slides with a transparent background are superimposed on a video recording of the lecturer, which creates the illusion that the lecturer and the slides are in the same space.

But fundamentally, despite online learning, storytelling as a mode of communication will remain the same, says Asst Prof Rosenthal. “Developments in technology and pedagogy create new ways of sharing ideas, but the stories and their effects on listeners will largely be the same, even though storytelling as an act may change.”

GETTING REAL ABOUT FAKE NEWS

Social media has now become an increasingly important source of news for many people, with platforms encouraging users to share, tell stories and craft their identities through the content that they post. However, with the rise of social media, more fake news has been created and shared.

“If you were to look at it from a journalism perspective, it seems like with the digitisation of news and proliferation of social media, everyone can be a journalist,” says Assoc Prof Edson Tandoc Jr, Associate Chair (Research) at WKWSCI and Director of NTU’s Centre for Information Integrity and the Internet. The distinction between the news producer and the news consumer is now extremely blurred.

“This has effects on the way we connect with other people,” he adds, explaining that traditionally, news was not only used for information purposes. “We consume news not only to inform ourselves about what’s happening in the world; it has social utility as well. For example, when we used to do news clippings and send them to another person, it acts as a conversation starter. It’s also a way to show people that we care about them, we remember them and we know what they’re interested in.”

Assoc Prof Tandoc says that as sharing and distributing stories among our social networks become much easier, the act of exchanging such content is now more salient in shaping and strengthening our social connections.

“Our expectations of how trustworthy stories should look like have also changed due to our usage of social media.” He elaborates that in the past, news was written in formal language, in the third person and in an inverted pyramid format where the most crucial information was presented first – but now, people gravitate towards more informal and conversational first-person narratives.

“We seem to trust stories more when they are presented as personal anecdotes, and this makes it easier for false accounts to go viral,” Assoc Prof Tandoc says. He explains that this could be due to us as a society still figuring out how to deal with the technological advancements that have been moving faster than we can react.

“We have not even solved or figured out how to best deal with text-based misinformation, and now there’s audio and video-based misinformation on TikTok to deal with. There’s a lot of work to do, and we always end up playing catch up with technology – sometimes, it’s too late by the time we realise how serious the problem is.”

Assoc Prof Tandoc adds that part of the issue lies with the institutional bias towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. “In general, many STEM efforts, including technological innovations and novel medical approaches, do not sufficiently incorporate social sciences. It would be helpful if we could understand how people respond to these new technologies and how these inventions can fit into preexisting social processes.”

COMMUNICATING HEALTHY LIVING