Ch 2 - Characteristics of Instructional Design Models

A system of procedures for developing education

1-  Early ID models based on behaviorism

2-  General Systems theory become another fundamental tenet f ID.

Nine characteristics GST: Systematic: adapting rules and procedures as a way to move through a process.

Systemic: application of the creative problem-solving methods.

Responsive: accepting whatever goals are established

Interdependence:  all elements within a system are connected and depend on each other.

Redundancy: duplicate processes and duplicate procedures to prevent from failure

Dynamic: system can adjust to changing conditions.

Cybernetic:  elements communicate among themselves

Synergistic: all together elements achieve better than one can

Creativity: use of special human talents

ADDIE: based on a systematic product development

Analyze: needs assessment, identifying a problem and stating a goal.

Design: writing objectives, specifying learning activities and media,

Develop: preparing student and instruction materials

Implement: delivering the instruction in the setting which it was designed

Evaluate: both formative evalution: involves collecting data to identify needed revisions, summative evalution: collecting data to assess overall effectiveness, and revision: making necessary changes based on the formative evaluation data.

In ADDIE, one can move back and forth, doesn’t have to be step by step.

ADDIE is iterative and self correcting

Characteristic of ID:

1-    student centered: learners can be given to select their own learning objectives

2-    goal oriented:

3-    focuses on meaningful performance: instead of learners recalling information, ID prepares learners for complex behaviors and solvings of authentic problems

4-    assumes outcomes can be measured in a valid way:opposite of a paper and pencil test, observer observing learner’s performance with a checklist

5-     empirical, iterative, self-correcting: data is the heart of ID. Not linear, or sequential

6-    team effort

Pebble-in-the-Pond Approach (Merrill)

For whole problems or task

An alteration to traditional ID

Traditional ID starts with some abstract representation and has actual content  is delayed until the development of the ID process

1-    casting in a pebble, identify the problem

2-    identify the progression of such problems

3-    identify the component knowledge and skill required

4-    determine the instructional strategy

5-    interface design

4C/ID model:(Merrienboer and Kirschner)

ten steps approach:

-specifying a series of learning tasks

-learner will perform a simpler version of the whole skill and gradually move on to complex versions.

Ch 1- What field did you say you were in?

Instructional Technology definitions:
- 1963 definition:  "the design and use of messages which control the learning process"
- 1970 definition: 1 - media born of communications revolution which can be used for instructional purposes...
2- a systematic way of designing, carrying out and evaluating whole process of learning and teaching in terms of specific objectives...
1977 definition: educational technology is a complex, integrated process involving people, procedures, ideas, devices and organization, for analyzing problems and devising, implementing, evaluating and managing solutions to those problems involving all aspects of human learning.
1994 definition: beyond viewing Instructional Technology as a Process: is the theory and practice of design development, utilization, management, and evaluation of processes and resources for learning.
- Early definitions focuses on instructional media that is being produced by professionals
Definition by AECT: educational technology is study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.
 - ethical, focuses on the ones that should maintain a high level of professional conduct.
Book's definition: 
"instructional design and technology encompasses analysis of the learning and performance problems, and the design, development, implementation, evaluation and management of instructional and non-instructional processes and resources intended to improve learning and performance in a variety of settings."
- the goal of the field has changed over the years and the most recent goal is: to improve learning and performance

Cognitive conceptions of learning

Shuell, T. J. (1986, Winter). Cognitive conceptions of learning. Review of Educational Research, 56(4), 411-436.


Cognitive approaches  vs Behavioral approaches
Cognitive approaches argues that learner is active during the learning process whereas the behaviorists argue that the change happens around the learner who is passive. 
Active learner:   
1- active in metacognitive process, setting goals, plans, etc
2- active selection of stimuli
3- attempt to organize the material 
4- construction of appropriate responses
-Memory and learning require actively constructing new knowledge
Learning paradox: when the learner acquires new cognitive structure that is more advanced then the one present.
Higher level Processes in Learning
two types of metacognitive activities: 1 - regulation and orchestration 
2- what one does and does not know about material being learned

Avatars of Story

Ryan, M-L. (2006)

Ch 1: Narrative, Media and Modes
Definition of Narrative:
Bruner: identity
Jean-Francois Lyotard: Grand Narrative of capitalized History
Abbe Don: narratives of interface in computer software
Abbott: story is an event and an sequence of events, narrative is those events represented
-Story is a metal image, a cognitive construct  that concerns certain types of entities and relations between these entities -> Narrative is a combination of story and discourse with the ability to evoke stories in mind
Spatial dimension: Narrative must be about a world populated by individuated existents
Temporal dimension: Narrative must be situated in time and undergo transformations
Transformations are caused by nonhabitual physical events
Mental dimension: some in events must be intelligent agents with a mental life and react emotionally
some events must be purposeful actions motivated by goals and plans
Formal and pragmatic dimension: sequence of events must form a unified causal chain
occurrence of at least one event must be asserted as fact of story
story must communicate something meaningful to the recipient
-Memories stored as stories - being narrative: evoke a story to the mind of story
Narrative Modes: 
1- External/Internal: External is textualized, internal is not - we can tell ourselves storied
Fictional/Nonfictional
2- Representational/Simulative: representations is an image of one of the possibilities, simulation is a productive engine that generates different events
3- Diegetic/Mimetic: diegetic narration is verbal storytelling act of a narrator. Mimetic narration is an act of showing, a visual or acoustic display
4- Autotelic/Utilitarian: In autotelic mode, story is displayed for its own sake ad in utilitarian mode the story is subordinated to another goal.
5- Autonomous/Illustrative: in autonomous mode, text transfers story that is new to the receiver. In illustrative mode, text retells and completes a story - pictorial narratives  
6- Scripted/Emergent: In scripted mode, story and discourse are determined by inscribed text. In emergent mode, discourse and story are created live through improvisation by the narrator, actors, recipient, or computer software  
7- Receptive/ Participatory: In receptive mode, recipient is not active. In participatory mode, the activities of the recipients completes the story.
8- Determinate/Indeterminate: In determinate mode, sufficient number of points are specified. In indeterminate mode,  one or two points are specified
9- Retrospective/Simultaneous/Prospective: In retrospective mode, past events; in simultaneous mode, events as they happen; and in prospective mode, future events 
10- Literal/Metaphorical: Degree of metaphoricity depends on how many features are retained and on how important they are to definition.
Media from Perspective of Transmedial Narratology
semantics: study of plot or story
syntax: study of discourse or narrative techniques
pragmatic: study of uses of narrative
Media features that effect narrative experience:
Spatiotemporal extension:  cinema, dance, and digital texts
Kinetic properties: dynamic or static, whether the text changes over time
Number of semiotic channels: spatiotemporal use multiple channels. Combinations include, still pictures-language, moving picture-music (silent films), moving pictures-music-language, and touch, VR technology
Priority of sensory channels


Ch 5: Toward an Interactive Narratology

Features of digital systems:

- interactive and reactive nature ; computer takes input and adjust behavior accordingly

- volatile signs and variable display: change in value, causes pixels on screen to change color

- multiple sensory and semiotic channels: what makes the computer pass

- Networking capabilities

Narrative top-down planning of a storyteller, interactivity bottom-up input from the user

Interactive narratology doesn't have to be from scratch, it could be built upon existing building blocks time, characters, space and events.

Textual architecture: a building composed of a story and a discourse level.

In a rich user-computer interaction system, user  create stories by activating the diverse behavior of agents, alter the total state of the system and open new possibilities of action and reaction.

When the world contains high number of  different objects, and when these objects offer variety of behavior, system can produce complex combinations.

Types of Interactivity:

two binary pairs: internal/external and exploratory/ontological.

Internal vs External Interactivity: In internal mode, users as members of the virtual world with an avatar; In external mode, users are situated outside the virtual world.

Exploratory vs Ontological Interactivity: In exploratory mode, users navigate the display and in ontological mode, users' decision change the destiny and alter the plot.

External-Exploratory Interactivity: In external-exploratory mode is represented by hypertext fictions.

-no limits to user actions

Links between nodes of hypertext

1- Spatial links: textual networks of contrasts and analogies between themes, images and episodes.

hyperlinks forced these to the reader's attention. - challenging her to arrange them into meaningful structures.

2- Temporal links: succeed each other in time.

3- Blatant links: give the reader a preview of the content of the target lexia, enabling her to make an informed choice among many plot developments

4- Simultaneity links: allow the reader to jump form one plotline to another in order to find out what others in different locations are doing.

5- Digressive and background building links: opposite links together suspend the development of the story momentarily

6- Perspective-switching links: bidirectional links take us into private worlds of different participants in the same episode.

Internal-Exploratory Interactivity: transport the user into a virtual body inside the virtual world

External-Ontological Interactivity: user plays god into a virtual world - Simcity, The Sims

Internal-Ontological Interactivity: user cast as a character situated in both the time and space of the virtual world. - Quake, Half-Life, EverQuest

Myths about Digital Narrative

1- Digital narrative is about choice, and the more choice you give to the user the more pleasurable.

2- Narrative can be produced through a random combination of elements.

3- Becoming a character in a story is the ultimate narrative experience.

Ch 6: Interactive Fiction and Storyspace Hypertext

Chapter asks the questions for each authoring system: what are the affordances and how do these affordances affect the construction of narrative meaning?

Interactive Fiction: first narrative genre out of a digital environment, hybrid of game and literature

Video games: much like IF, but more interactivity in real time, 

IF and video games, both operate according to the building a dynamic model of a fictional world.

Storyspace Hypertext: a network of links and nodes: lexia (units of text) = digital equivalent of page

when user clicks on a link-> display a new page on the screen-> can activate several different lexia 

order of lexia is variable = multilinear - > readers' choice is sequential 

a map shows the current state of the developing network

-Combine different linking logics

-Work with little stories that fit within on screen

-Present text as a simulation of mental activity

Best hypertexts are the ones that present the reader's activity of moving through the network and reassembling the narrative as a symbolic gesture specified text, a gesture whose interpretation cannot be predicted by reading the medium.

Gesture

Selection from Herman, D., Jahn, M., & Ryan, M-L. (2010). Gesture - William McGregor

Gesture: visible bodily actions of hands, arms, face and head.
-Humans use in interacting with each other face-to-face, accompanied narrative speech.
-Gestures play important roles in spoken narrative - expressive means for denoting the aspects of storyworld that is difficult to convey in words.
-Frequency depends on the narrator, narrative, narrative situation and culture
-Gestures can be important for collaboratively constructing narrative.
McNeill proposes gesture types and three levels: Narrative, metanarrative and paranarrative
Narrative frame; constituted by expressions representing the storyworld. Gestures: iconic and deictic (pointing) gestures
Metanarrative frame: concerns the organisation of the narrative as a text. Gestures: deictic or metaphoric (representing an image of the narrative), and beats (mark the significance word or phrase)
Paranarrative frame: concerns the construal of the narrative interaction itself - is constituted by the projection of the narrator's own voice to audience. Gestures: beats and deictic, and gaze!

Narrative

Fiske, J. (1987). Narrative. In J. Fiske, Television culture. London: Routledge

-Narrative and language two main cultural processes shared by all societies. 
-Narrative is a way of making sense of our experience of the real
-Narrative is a fundamental cultural process -> television is predominantly narrational in its mode.
-Narrative works as a sense-making mechanism primarily through two dimensions: 
1- Syntagmatic: upon which it links events rationally - so as to make them understandable and meaningful
2- Paradigmatic: narrative takes character and settings and makes a non-temporal sense of them that serves as an additional unifying agency


Realistic narrative is dominant on television
Classic realist narrative: construct a self-contained, internally consistent world which is real-seeming.
features by Kuhn, (1985)

1. linearity of cause and effect 
2. high degree of narrative closure
3. fictional world governed by spatial and temporal verisimilitude
4. centrality of the narrative agency of psychologically rounded characters

Structuralist approaches to narrative:

concerned to reveal and investigate the discursive nature of all cultural constructs

Mythic narrative:

One way which structuralism tried explaining what diverse narratives have in common is through myth.

Levi-Strauss, a structural anthropologist, and Barthes, a Marxist semiotician, share the same idea that myth making is a universal cultural process and the deeper truer meanings of myths are not immediately apparent.

Levi-Strauss' "logic of the concrete": process of transforming the binary oppositions such as good:evil, nature:culture, humankind:gods, into concrete representations.

Hero/Heroine: Myth produces hero and heroine with characteristics from both opposed categories. 

- Hero has excessive meaning, extra ordinary semiotic power and acts as a mediator between the opposing concepts

-acts as embodied resolutions of the conflict between the forces of order and those of disorder  

-For Barthes, myth works as to naturalize and universalize the class interests of the bourgeoisie-> ideological 
-For Barthes, myth is bourgeois: it always promotes interests of the dominant classes by making the meaning that serve these interests appear natural and universal. 


Narrative structures:
Propp's (1968) structure: 
- Preparation
- Complication
- Transference
- Struggle
- Return
- Recognition
According to Propp, they are always in the same sequence and common to all fairy tales
Character is defined in sphere of action 
Universal structure of popular narrative of which individual stories are transformations
Struggle between the hero and the villain in Propp's structure, is a metaphorical transformation between the forces 
of order and forces of disorder, good and evil, culture and nature. - fundamental to all stories and narrative explores the role of human and social agents in it.


Todorov's (1977) model of narrative: also emphasizes the social over individual- narrative begins with a state of equilibrium or social harmony.
Two kinds of elements: 1- State: either equilibrium or disequilibrium
2- Passage: from one state to another, through an event or chain of events


Barthes(1977)' functions and indices: 
functions are events that are strung together to form the sequence of the narrative.  - distributional and syntagmatic
indices: are the constants that are involved in the narrative sequence, but not advance it - characters, settings, atmosphere. - integrational and paradigmatic
e.g popular tv series like cop and adventure shows, aimed for mean and children, tend toward functional, serials like soap operas, aimed at women, more towards indicial
- Functions have two types: nuclei, which are essential to the progress of the narrative and catalyzers, which fill in between the nuclei and could be dispensed with.
- Indices have two types: indices proper, narrative agents, mood, atmosphere, and informants, which identify or locate in time and space. 
Informants are called realism operators by Barthes, that make the world of narrative close to real. These functions are then structured into sequences, like words into phrases.


Narrative codes:
Structuration, process by which meaning is structured into narrative by writer-reader, for if there is a universal in narrative it lies in this structuration in which the writer and the reader engage on equal terms.
Voices shared by reader and writer, according to Barthes, organized into five codes:
1- Symbolic code: organizes fundamental binary oppositions that are important in a particular culure e.g. masculine:feminine, good:evil - Levi-Strauss would prioritize above all other codes.
2- Semic code: voice of the person, to construct the meaning of character, objects,and settings. - the means by which a figure individualized into a character. Figure, cultural stereotype common - more Levi-Straussan than Propp's.
3- Referential code: which a text refers out beyond itself, not to reality in an objective, empirical sense, but to cultural  knowledge
4- Code of actions: relates most directly to Barthes' earlier structuralism - suggests that we understand any action in a narrative by our experience of similar actions in other narratives and that our narrative experience is an aggregation of details arranged in generic categories of actions
5- Hermeneutic: sets and resolves the enigmas of the narrative and is motivated by the desire for closure and truth. - controls the pace and style of narrative by controlling the flow of information that is desired by the reader to solve the enigma or make good a lack.


Televisual Narrative:
Feuer arguesTelevision produced distinctive forms of narrative that invite producerly relations with the text.
Series and Serial are the dominant narrative forms on TV.
Time in television: -In soap opera, time is metaphorical equivalent of real time, and the audiences constantly engaged in remembering the past, enjoying the present and predicting the future.
-In series, the future may not be part of the diegetic world of the narrative. Even though characters do not act like they will be with us next week, we know they will.
In television, hermeneutic code is more imperative, the engagement it requires is more equal  
According to Feuer, television has three diegetic worlds that intersect and interrupt each other: 1- Television program, 2- ads and promos, 3- viewing of the family

Remembrance of things passed: story structure and recall

Mandler, J. M., & Johnson, N. S. (1977). Remembrance of things passed: story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology, 9, 111-151

Representation of stories forming schemata for encoding and retrieval

Tree structure with basic units and their connections is used for single and multiple-episode stories.

Terminal Nodes: STATE or EVENT

STATE: external: current condition of the world

            internal: emotion or state of mind

EVENT: external: actions of characters and changes of state in the world

             internal: thought, plans and perceptions 

Connections Between Nodes:

three types of relationship: 

1. AND: connects two nodes when notions of simultaneous activity or temporally overlapping states isbeing expressed

2. THEN: if two noes are temporarily ordered  

3. CAUSE: when first nodes provides a reason for the occurrence of the second

Regular expressions for the story according to Mandler and Johnson: 
STATE* -> STATE((AND STATE*))

EVENT* ->EVENT (({AND | THEN | CAUSE} EVENT)^n)((AND STATE)^n)

Basic Nodes:

can appear only in certain places in tree and more constraints: 

rewrite rule: STORY-> SETTING AND EVENT SYTRUCTURE

Episodes:

EVENT STRUCTURE -> EPISODE ((THEN EPISODE)^n)

Episodes are causally connected by one of the three types:

1. Ending-embedding: development of one episode may cause an ending which itself consists of a new episode  - an ending may be rewritten as an episode

2. Beginning-embedding: when an entire episode forms a beginning to next episode

3. Outcome-embedding: each outcome induces the protagonist to form a subgoal in the service of the larger goal represented in the higher level episode.

Subepisodes: continue the episodic structure from the subdivided node  

Transformational Rules: Two types of transformational rules: governing deletions and reordering of nodes

deletions: 1- any kind of reaction to be omitted from the surface structure without destroying the well-formedness of the story

               2- beginning-deletion, when a character who has already appeared in the first episode becomes a protagonist of an ending-embedded episode

reordering: out of order structures: presenting ending of a story first, with events leading back to it as flashback.

IMPLICATIONS of STORY STRUCTURE FOR RECALL:

people use story schemata, based on ideal structures of simple stories, to guide encoding and retrieval

Encoding and retrieval involve selection and construction but they are not identical:

•    more will be encoded the recalled 

•    effects of the story schemata will be more apparent during retrieval than during encoding

•    importations of new material into recall which fill the structural requirements of a given node may be only loosely related to initial encoding process.

1 - Overall Accuracy and Extent of Recall

- more story conforms to an ideal structure, better it will be recalled.

a) A story with surface structure containing all the basic nodes of an ideal structure will be more accurately and extensively recalled than a story lacing one or more nodes

b) the more the sequence of sentences in the surface structure follows the sequence of an ideal structure the better the recall will be - function of three factor 1- how given sequence of propositions differ from the expected, in terms of deviations and distance of given propositions from their expected locations

                                                                           2- whether sequential displacements are marked appropriately in the surface structure  so correct underlying structure can be recovered 

                                                                           3- the extent to which a displacement interrupts the internal structure of basic node

2- Likelihood and Accuracy of Recall of Parts of a Story

basic node is the main unit of recall

a) Elaboration of nodes will be poorly recalled - including descriptive adjectives and adverbs of all sorts

b) Nodes which are optionally deletable will be less well recalled

c) Causally connected episodes will be better recalled than temporarily connected episodes

d) The recall of a given state or event will be a function of the type of node or episode in which it occurs.

3- Inversions of Sequence

Inversions in recall are function f violations in sequencing of propositions int he surface structure of a story

a) With ideal structure - ideal order, less inversions, will be recalled better - like (1a) - a displaced node will more likely to appear in the correct place in an ideal structure story

b) Sequence of basic nodes is invariant in recall, if the surface has ideal structure, temporal ordering of nodes will be respected in recall

4-Additions and Distortions

a) Addition if new material into recall will supply missing basic nodes, or basic nodes with non-retriavable content

b) Distortions in recall occur when ambiguity or violation of an ideal structure occurs in the surface structure

-Changes in schema from encoding to retrieval, Piaget and Ihelder (1973), a child encodes on the basis of his or her current concept of the content, and makes a reconstruction according to the level of comprehension operative at the time of the input. If asked to reproduce later, child uses the concept of the content as a retrieval cue but concept had changed.

Narrative Models of Action and Interaction

de Beaugrande, R., & Colby, B. N. (1979). Narrative models of action and interaction. Cognitive Science, 3, 43-66

Stories  must have well-formedness conditions statable in abstract grammar (Mandler & Johnson)

Cycles of episodes, as event plus reaction, an exposition, complication and resolution, a series of acts and their results

-How story structures relate to story-telling rules and story comprehension processes

Human actions are controlled by PLANS toward the attainment of GOALS

Implementation of plans and the fulfillment of desires are inherently problematic because:

1- various goals of a character can conflict with each other

2- goals of different characters can conflict 

Narrated world: a progressive system in which events and actions occur and bring about changes from one state to the next.

:discourse evoked pair of states with an intervening action or event link

Interesting narrative: evoking a world in which  the action or event changes the initial state to the goal state is not so Obvious

-Knowledge is processed differently according to the perspective in  which the narrator of a story presents it.

-Protagonist character: if the audience shares the same values according to character's plans or goals

-Antagonist character: if the audience rejects the values according to character's plans or goals

Rules and continuity of state and action

Problem solving: narrator links up the initial ans terminal states of a story via a pathway audience will not easily anticipate - audience will try to solve characters' problems in terms of their own personal strategies - harder the problem, greater the energy expanded on story comprehension

Enjoying listening to same stories over and over: 1-processing depth, knowledge of global structures of a narrative might not be on the same processing depth : audience knows the global data but rediscovers new local data each time 2- if they process narrated worlds in terms of state-action with branching alternatives, then they recompute the consequences of actions and reactions all over - reconstructing alternative states

Usability engineering: process, products, and examples

Leventhal, L. M., & Barnes, J. A. (2008). Usability engineering: process, products, and examples. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, pp. 67-74.

Factors influencing user reaction and usability: situational characteristics, user characteristics, and characteristics of the user interface.
Analysis: activity of understanding and breaking down of a problem ->task analysis:understanding user tasks at a high and a detailed level
>Specification: documenting and describing in detail ->task specification: the documentation of your understanding of the user's task.
Strategies to analyze user's problem:

• Use Case Analysis: construction of use case models in Unified Soft. Dev. Process.
  Use cases: expected functionality of a target system - use case model documets how the target system will interact with people and systems
Sequence diagrams: step by step description of how the task is to be done Activity diagrams: workflow necessary to accomplish use case
• Analysis Using Scenarios: SBD- scenario based development
Scenarios are stories that are detailed and contain descriptions of user's plans and goals, and description of tasks they will accomplish
• Hierarchical Task Analysis: understanding user's tasks by decomposing them into the detailed subtasks that define them.

Effective prototyping for software makers

Arnowitz, J., Arent, M., & Berger, N. (2007). Effective prototyping for software makers. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann (Elsevier), pp. 21-50.


Verify prototyping assumptions and requirements:
4 requierments categories:

1. Business/marketing requirements: define the needs of business or marketplace. Derived from market field research, market analysis, competitive analysis, domain expertise, sales force intelligence, focus groups
2. Functional requirements: define the functionality necessary to support the business and market requirements. Derived from field research with user research, market analysis, competitive analysis, domain expertise, force sales intelligence, usability testing
3. Technical requirements: technology needed to implement the requires functionality. Derived from technology research, technical analysis, competitive analysis, technology expertise, sales force intelligence
4. Usability requirements: define the user experience and needed for user adoption of the software. Derived from any combination of user research, task analysis, competitive analysis, domain expertise, sales force intelligence, customer support intelligence, design and prototyping, usability testing

Transforming assumptions into requirements: iterative 3 steps

Step1: gather business, functional, technical, and usability requirements

Step2: inventorize requirements

Step3: prioritize requirements and assumptions

Iteration 1: From idea to first visualization

Iteration 2: From quick wireframe to wireframe

Iteration 3: From wireframe to storyboard

Iteration 4: From storyboard to paper prototype

Iteration 5: From paper prototype to coded prototype

Iteration 6: From coded prototype to software requirements

Schank - Tell Me A Story

CH 1- Knowledge is Stories
Scripts: set of expectations about what will happen next in a situation.
-Life experience means knowing how to act and how others will act in a given stereotypical situation - this knowledge is script.The more scripts you know, the more situations will exist in which you will feel comfortable and capable of playing your role. Also, more scripts, failure and confusion.  
Memory: contain specific experiences-memories and labels-memory traces
stories comes with indices: locations, attitudes, quandaries, decisions, conclusions
More indices-> more comparisons with prior experience -> greater learning
-Knowledge is experiences and stories, intelligence is the apt use of experience and the creation and telling of stories.
-Major processes of memory: creation, storage and retrieval of stories .
-Understanding means constructing labels and using them to retrieve similar situations.

CH 2- Where Stories Come from and Why We Tell Them
Five types of stories:
1.Official
2.Invented(Adapted)
3.Firsthand experiential
4.Secondhand
5.Culturally common
1.Official Stories: learned form school or business
carefully constructed
by a group that wants to sell a message
Facts are made simple  e.g. "AIDS - It's a Hop in the Sack"
Simple, no details
intent ro make complex issues clear
2.Invented Stories
like official stories, real and firsthand
created to make a point - but adaptations of previous stories
less details first, then elaboration to make it richer
massaging the reality - how much reality is massaged depends on the goal of the teller
3.Firsthand Stories
can be highly inventive - art of storytelling: finding good ways to express one's experience appropriate for the listener
have to make your story more interesting
no intended point
4.Secondhand Stories
stories of others
facts cannot be recalled perfectly so can be made up as needed
like telephone game is about recall and relate properly what they have just heard
indices less rich more specific
5.Culturally Common Stories
from our environment
Why we tell stories:
1- Me-goals: intentions that storytellers have with respect to themselves
-to achieve catharsis; to get attention; to win approval; to seek advice; to describe themselves
-self-descriptive narrative,
-a personal myth derived from one's experience, from parents, teachers, friends or enemies: starts with you-goal intention but retelling makes it me-goal intention
2- You-goals: intentions that storytellers have with respect to others
-to illustrate a point; to make the listener feel some way or another; to tell a story that transports the listener (to make others experience certain sensations, feelings), to transfer some piece of information in our head into the head of the listener; to summarize significant events
3- Conversational goals: intentions that storytellers have with respect to the conversation itself
- for topic opening, topic changing and continue conversation
The educational point: we must teach cases and the adaptation of cases by telling stories, not teach rules and the use of rules by citing rules - it is not easy to find the situation to apply the rule exactly - applying the stories help more.

CH 4 - Indexing Stories
Memory uses structures as indices to find stories it had already understood
-as in the schema theory, indices = schemas, we code the stories into our memory with indices, which then will help us retrieve.
Thematic Organized Packages (TOPs): indices that are organized around themes in Dynamic Memory

• Indexing is different for everyone, 
• the way to compute indices is common
• different indices for each of us depending on what we know of the world - our perspective of things

Advisory stories: have lessons, derived from real experiences and meant as advise for a person with a problem.

Observation stories: meant to illustrate some in the world, and the truth offered not as an advice but as observation.
Proverbs: is a piece of advice - also observation.
     -elements that make up proverbs are the same elements that make up mental indices

Indexing stories - storytelling is relevant to one's intelligence
-no intelligent system can function properly if it cannot find what it needs to know when it needs to know it
-being able to tell stories at the right time
-intelligence depend upon clever indexing
-but indexing cannot be taught, we make our own way of seeing the world
-intelligence implies the creation and use of indices


 CH 6 - Story Skeletons 

Skeleton stories = Standard stories. Some stories are constructed around these skeletons.  

Sometimes a word of  culture cannot be translated into another language because there is a story unique or well known to that culture and can only be explained in another language by a story.

A word can be recalled by a story -> children learn complex words by being described in a situation

Words have different meanings or stories for different people -> My version of some word can be different than your version.  A meaning of a word can change according to different points of views because of the related skeleton stories they have first being told. People have non-identical skeleton stories.

Skeletons and Memory

Since we understand the world with stories, we remember the facts of an event with the story we have been told. We choose the story that is correct for us.

You need to believe your own story in order to tell it effectively. ->Decision making depends on story construction.

People wouldn't use a skeleton that you listener is unfamiliar with. Even though you can instruct your listener about the meaning of the skeleton, you want something more familiar to get a support from your listeners. So people choose a well known and culturally approved skeletons while telling their stories.

We speak in generalizations that our listener will understand.

Storytellers = story-fitters, people fit events/facts to the standard story they choose  

We adopt a point of view by telling a story. We are the stories we tell. We shape our memory by the stories we tell.

Gist of a story: what is held in memory

                            -the language, the way the story is told, the points we have in mind  

:Structured sets of events that function as a single unit in memory that can be transformed by a variety of processes into actual stories
-each time a story is told, gist is accessed.
-a dynamic entity that can change or be replaced over time by adding or deleting details. Gist: is an evolving kind of entity
Transformation of the gist - stories are different because intentions are different

Gist stored in memory and then transformed  by the processes:

1- Distillation: two-part process,
  Memory process: reduces events of a story to a set of simple propositions = Gist Construction

 -searching through the events and finding the most important ones, - that your listener would be interested into
 -construction of a memory representation of the story.

  Translation: puts those propositions into English  - from their representation in memory to English

2-Combination: Combining two stories deciding which is the master and which is the coloration of the master. Events are interwoven to make one coherent story.

  Suppression: examines gist of each story

  Conjunction: must weave two stories into one by deciding which is the dominant one

3-Elaboration: finding additional things to say. e.g to create an emotional impact

  Detail addition: details are added to the gist, by searching memory to add details.
Story gets more interesting and attention-getting

  Commentary: adding our own view of the situation, adding comments according to audience and our view   at the time

  Role-playing: involve story combination
4-Creation:
combines elements of a real story with a standard story author wishes to tell
5-Captioning: reducing a large amount of information to a very small amount.
6-Adaptation: taking one story and making another one out of it.