Storification is a project by Dr. Lobna Hassan, M.A.Ed. Isabella Aura and Prof. Juho Hamari, funded by the Media Industry Research Foundation of Finland, The Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Foundation for Economic Education. The project examines the holistic employment of stories, narratives and connected gameful and playful approaches to foster engagement and motivation in various contexts, such as in education, citizen participation or emotional skill development.
A primary focus of the project has been on storified learning environments. The aim is to explore the possibilities that educational storification holds; what kind of influence it has on students’ academic performance, well-being and social behavior, as well as on teachers’ pedagogical practices, job satisfaction and decision-making.
This project contributes to the growing demand of constructing more flexible, engaging and creative motivational technology and environments, both, online and offline. The knowledge and practical guidelines this research provides help and strengthen the global perception of Finland as an educational pioneer and further improve the current effectiveness of the school system. For business and economy the project provides useful information on designing and producing new storification and gamification products and strategies for engagement.
In the video below, a doctoral researcher Isabella Aura describes her work on storification of education:
Relevant publications
Aura, I. (2024). Storification in Formal Education: Experiences, behavior and 21st century skills propensity [Dissertations, Tampere University]. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-3251-8
Aura, I., Hassan, L., & Hamari, J. (2023). Transforming a school into Hogwarts: Storification of classrooms and students’ social behaviour. Educational Review, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2023.2170332
Järvelä, S., Wei, L., Hassan, L., & Hamari, J. (2022). Storifying a Serious Mobile Game: Exploring Players’ Perception of Storification Features, Narrative Engagement, and Behavioral Intentions. Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3569219.3569343
Aura, I., Hassan, L., & Hamari, J. (2021). Teaching within a Story: Understanding Storification of Pedagogy. International Journal of Educational Research, 106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2020.101728
Aura, I., Hassan, L., & Hamari, J. (2020). “Harry’s escape was education”: A Case Study of Storified Pedagogy. The 2020 Finnish Educational Research Association (FERA) Conference.
Hassan, L., Deterding, S., Harviainen, J. T., & Hamari, J. (2019). Fighting Post-truth with Fiction: An Inquiry into Using Storification and Embodied Narratives for Evidence-Based Civic Participation. Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, 11(1), 51–78. https://doi.org/10.1353/STW.2019.0000
Movarrei, R., Aspara, J., & Hassan, L. (2019). Storification of Status Consumption, the Effect on Perceived Awareness and Willingness to Pay. Presented at the 48th Annual Conference of the European Marketing Academy (EMAC). Hamburg, Germany.
Hassan, L., Harviainen, J. T. & Hamari, J. (2018). Enter Hogwarts: Gamified Education Lessons from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Proceedings of the 2nd International GamiFIN Conference (GamiFIN2018), (pp. 30-39). Pori, Finland.