Web-Based Learning with Non-linear Multimedia Stories

Stories and story-telling are a cultural achievement of significant relevance, even in modern times. Since ancient times stories have served to entertain and teach mankind to “transmit” knowledge from generation to generation. Story-telling ranges from simple aural narrations to traditional inter-generational discourse and, in modern times, workflow-oriented organizational learning. Web-based systems are by nature well-suited to support learning from digital stories in communities of practice. Despite the potential of story-telling to foster knowledge sharing in communities its full power to stimulate community-based learning processes in yet only marginally exploited. Although there are many story-telling approaches, most of them are not suitable for non-linear story creation and consumption. In addition, most of these are not based on a well defined methodology that underpins the story development process. In this paper we present the implementation of a non-linear multimedia story-telling environment based on the movement oriented design (MOD) paradigm. Finally, using a media-theoretic approach, we utilize structural aspects of story telling and identify patterns related to successful non-linear multimedia stories.