Live Online Version of Arouse

We frequently export face-to-face training activities to the virtual classroom as live online learning activities. Earlier, we presented an interactive storytelling activity called Arouse. Here’s the online version of this activity.

Most trainers find it difficult to arouse emotions while presenting stories online. In this live online training activity (LOLA), we focus on how to arouse emotional outcomes during storytelling in a virtual classroom.

Purpose

To tell a story in an online meeting room to evoke a specific emotion.

Synopsis

Teams of participants work in breakout rooms to select an emotion they want to evoke through a story. They modify the story and select a team member to present it. A poll is conduct at the end of each presentation to identify the team that most intensely aroused the selected emotion.

Players

  • Minimum: 6

  • Maximum: Any number, organized into breakout groups of 3 to 7 players.

  • Best: 12 to 30

Time

30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the number of breakout groups.

Technical Requirements

  • Chat

  • Audio

  • Breakout rooms

  • Poll

Flow

Brief the participants. Welcome the participants. Point out that most live online training activities tend to present tedious facts and ignore feelings. Explain that you are going to conduct an online storytelling activity to evoke one of these four primary emotions. Notify that the participants will work in teams to present a story to evoke a selected emotion.

Present a story. Tell some well-known folk tale in a monotone, focusing on facts. Avoid any attempts at eliciting emotions. Ask the participants to listen to the story and to take notes.

Form teams. Send equal numbers of participants to three or four breakout rooms. It does not matter if a breakout room has one more participant than the other rooms.

Specify an emotion. Explain the four basic emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Invite the team in each breakout room to secretly select one of these emotions to elicit through the presentation of their version of the story.

Announce a suitable time limit (of 5 to 10 minutes) for the members of each team to suitably doctor their story to arouse the selected emotion among the listeners. Also ask the teams to device virtual storytelling techniques to emphasize this emotion.

Select a storyteller. A couple of minutes before the end of the time limit, ask the teams to select one of its members to be the storyteller.

Present the story. At the end of time limit, assemble all participants in the main room. Select a random team and ask the storyteller from this team to present its story. Ask all participants from the other teams to listen to story.

Conclude the story. At the end of 3 minutes, stop the presentation even if the story has not yet concluded. Thank the presenter and their team. Ask the storytelling team to identity the emotion they were attempting to arouse.

Conduct a poll. Set up a poll with these five alternatives to measure how intensely the story aroused the specific emotion:

  1. not aroused at all

  2. mildly aroused

  3. aroused

  4. clearly aroused

  5. intensely aroused

Conduct the poll and display the results.

Continue the storytelling activity. Select different teams, one at a time, to present their version of the story. Repeat this procedure until all teams have had their chance. Display the poll results at the end of each storytelling presentation.

Conclude the activity. Congratulate the team with the highest poll scores as the champion storytellers.