The Impact of Storytelling as Assessment Across the Disciplines: Developing Student Competencies at Coventry University

The use of storytelling as a learning tool in Higher Education (HE) is now common practice; however, it is still uncommon to use it for assessment purposes. With this in mind, a number of disciplines across Coventry University were invited to trial the short story as a complement or alternative to more traditional coursework modes, such as the essay, report or case study. In this article we explore the impact storytelling has had for both lecturers and students. We do this by providing statements from the lecturers involved, followed by coursework examples from their students. We argue that this very different approach has had a positive effect on learning; the nature of the creative process has led to increased subject knowledge through more careful research, motivated by the desire to produce a better story. The article contributes to the increasing move at university level to use varied assessment modes in order to accommodate different types of learning for a more diverse range of students. It also promotes the discipline of creative writing, not only as a viable subject in its own right, but as one that can be utilized to the benefit of teaching and learning across the curriculum