Perfecting the Interdisciplinary Storm: Immersive Narrative Development Workflows

Immersive narratives offer rich opportunities in education — but the interdisciplinary process of writing and developing effective storylines is largely undocumented. How does a team efficiently create an experience that immerses students in a hurricane narrative while meeting storm safety learning objectives?

This paper contributes a scalable, theory-based workflow developed through the creation of a three-part Introduction to Meteorology hurricane lab. We identify four critical roles in the process: content expert, instructional designer, narrative lead, and development lead — and outline a framework for their convergence.

The result is an evolution of the ADDIE and R2D2 frameworks, incorporating Bloom's taxonomy for higher-order learning. The paper focuses specifically on the Assess, Design, and Reflect stages as they apply to narrative development before technical assembly.

Student feedback demonstrated increased self-efficacy in relation to learning objectives. Our goal is to inspire and support the creation of immersive narratives across other courses and universities.