A Narrative Learning Environment (NLE) is a learning environment involving its user(s) in ICT-mediated activities where narratives (i.e., stories or narrations) related to the proposed cognitive task play a central role in facilitating learning.

In this definition, the emphasis on activity excludes from NLEs story-based tutorials which do not involve learners in any activity apart from reading. Analogously, the emphasis on the connection of narrative and cognitive task leads to exclude from NLEs all learning environments which only use stories as appealing backgrounds for unrelated problem solving activity, with the aim to raise extrinsic motivation but without exploiting the learning potential of narrative.

An Interactive NLE is an AI-based NLE which allows the joint construction of stories by the user and the system.