Talking Stick - September/October 2013 - 52

34

cOntInued

Becoming an Assessment Storyteller

point out strengths, weaknesses, and
opportunities, and the open-ending
encourages the audience to get
involved in exploring ways to address
the issues and change what they do to
improve the outcomes.

The Power of
assessment Stories
The concepts of storytelling provide a
different way to think about how we
present assessment by encouraging
us to think creatively and powerfully
about what we share and how we share

it. The various elements can be used to
either broaden our options or focus our
efforts on the importance of the story.
For researchers, storytelling can
seem a bit contradictory. How can we
present complex data without a full
description of our research methods?
What about sampling techniques,
response rates, and survey methods?
What about protocols, coding
procedures, and validation techniques?
Though these are important elements
in conducting the research, they are
not necessarily important in relating
the results. As Pixar’s second rule of

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storytelling says, “Keep in mind what’s
interesting to you as an audience, not
what’s fun to do as a writer. They can
be very different.” As researchers, we
want to describe methods in order
to reassure the audience of our solid
work. But is that what audiences want
and need? As Garr Reynolds said in
“The Secret to Storytelling Is in the
Editing,” part of his Presentation Zen
blog, “Whatever the medium, the key
in storytelling is cutting the extraneous
and the superfluous, keeping in only
what helps tell your story.” So decisions
about what to include in a story should
be based on the needs of the narrative
and the audience. Essentially, the
storyteller must not only decide which
foundational element to focus on
but must also determine the clearest
path for the story. The storyteller
evaluates whether each piece of
information pushes the story forward
another step or acts as a distraction.
As presenters of assessment data, we
need to evaluate whether all of our
research information – including
previous research, methods, and even
results – has a significant role to play
in moving the story forward. If we
aspire to be storytellers, we may need
to think more like them and less like
researchers. As Reynolds emphasizes,
quoting Hollywood film editor Zach
Staenberg’s advice, at the end of the
day, “It’s about the story.”
Overall, our original questions
still stand: What if we aspired to
create assessment stories and become
storytellers to communicate our
assessment results? What kind of
impact could we have on our students,
our staffs, our programs, and our
profession? The answers to these
questions remain to be seen – maybe
they are the beginning of a new quest
for all of us. tS

Sherry Woosley

330.837.2216
52

Talking STiCk

is the director of analytics and
research at EBI MAP-Works in
Springfield, Missouri.

Kurt Moderson

is the research manager at EBI
MAP-Works.
http://www.TowerShowers.com http://www.TowerShowers.com
Talking Stick - September/October 2013

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