Digital Storytelling: A New Way to Engage | St. Cloud State University Online & Distance Learning

Within a school setting, students are considered the learners, and instructors are the teachers, but that dynamic can limit the potential for students to take on a teaching role and for instructors to take on a learning role. Of course, the student may not be able to teach the foundational knowledge of the course to the instructor, but they can provide a unique perspective on it by applying it to their personal experience. This is the basis for Digital Storytelling, a concept that utilizes modern technology to tell stories, and it can be a significant aid in engaging students in course content.

What is Digital Storytelling?

Using multimedia tools, students can tell a story related to the topic given by the instructor. Students can use a subject they are experts on – themselves – to explore new topics outside of a purely lecture- or text-based perspective. It encourages multiple areas of learning by having students self-reflect and apply foundational knowledge while simultaneously refining media-making skills through the creation of videos, audios, animation, and graphics that tell their story.

Why Should Digital Storytelling be Used in the Classroom?

Not only does Digital Storytelling teach information and digital literacy, but it also teaches media-making skills like succinct scriptwriting and professional development (Smeda et al., 2014). It is also an inclusive, multimodal, non-text-based structure that works for online, hybrid, and hyflex courses (Chaidez & Carmona, 2023). Students experience an overwhelming amount of lecture-driven content with the expectation of reciting the information back through homework or quizzes. Digital storytelling allows them to have a hands-on experience that does not require sitting quietly in a classroom for an hour. Rather, that time can be spent sharing their perspective and engaging with other students’ work, which can be far more memorable. In this way, it ties into Universal Design for Learning by engaging students to become self-motivated and self-reflective, represent themselves through their unique symbols and language, and express themselves with a mix of media tools.

Some examples of assignments that make use of Digital Storytelling include video essays, “pocket documentaries” with the audio/video recorded on a cell phone, podcasts, video resumes, StoryMaps (stories/videos that begin with an individual and moves to include a broader region), and PhotoVoice (participants take a picture of their community and then have a conversation with the class about it) (Chaidez & Carmona, 2023). Students can also be tasked to create instructional material to demonstrate their understanding of the foundational content as well as their ability to organize and deliver that knowledge to an audience.

Tools at SCSU That Can Help with Digital Storytelling

Microsoft 365 & Sway

Students should be aware that their student email is a Microsoft Outlook account, but what they may not realize is that Microsoft 365 offers a suite of applications that they can utilize to tell their story. They may be familiar with Word and PowerPoint and their capabilities, but an application they may not have heard of is Sway. Sway is an application that is perfect for most story-telling needs. It provides a handful of templates ranging from blogs, photo collages, portfolios, resumes, and reports, but students can build a project from scratch that caters to their unique vision. Students can combine text, visuals (photos, videos, or graphics), audio, and their presentation skills in one place. Projects are able to be shared out to classmates, and the instructor for easy access. As a bonus, expertise with Microsoft 365 products can be put on a student’s resume.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Once students have created their raw video or audio, they may want to edit their material. Perhaps they want to create illustrations or graphics to express their perspective instead. Maybe their creative vision requires more in-depth work that free software cannot handle. Adobe Creative Cloud is an all-in-one platform that students can utilize. SCSU has the software available for students to use on campus lab computers. Students have access to the following Adobe applications: Express, Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and over twenty others. The full list of available applications can be found on the official Adobe website. Much like Microsoft 365, expertise with Adobe products is a helpful resume-builder, so encouraging students to utilize this resource while they have free access may also help them once they begin looking into jobs in their career field.

D2L Media Library Tool and Kaltura MediaSpace

As of 2023, a new tool called Media Library was made available in D2L, which allows for short-form media (less than 30 minutes) to easily be created within the platform. Instructors and students can use this tool to create and store videos and audio for various learning activities and materials. For assignments that only require the student to briefly record themselves speaking, instructors can direct students to either use the ‘Record Video’ or ‘Record Audio’ buttons. Instructors can also encourage students to upload any of the videos (SWF, MPG, MPEG, RM, MP3, MP4, M4V, M4A, AVI, WAV, RAM, ASF, MOV, RA formats only) they create to the Media Library. This will allow students to keep an archive of their work, they can go back once the assignment closes and the semester ends.

For long-form media (over 30 minutes) and screen recording, students can use their Kaltura MediaSpace account. There are two types of recording options that students can choose from for recordings, based on their needs. Students can either use Express Capture for facial or voice-only recordings, or they can use Kaltura Capture to record their screen. These videos are saved and stored on MediaSpace, so that students can edit, and caption, then embed them in D2L.

Equipment Checkout at the Miller Learning Resource Center

If students are required to use a video camera to record, or to take photographs, they can directed to the campus library to check out such equipment. View the list of what they have available. This way, students are allowed to experience new technology, without the commitment of buying their own for a possible one time usage.

Implementing digital storytelling exercises within a course is a rewarding experience. By giving students the opportunity to tell their story, not only will instructors give them a chance to explore their unique perspectives of the same topic, but it gives instructors the opportunity to learn from their students’ experiences. These opportunities are all too rare in a college setting where instructors rely on lectures and text-based lessons that are often quickly forgotten after the semester ends. Stories are not only memorable, but they demonstrate how applicable the lessons learned in the classroom can be in a real-world scenario. Students will look back on those lessons long after they have finished the course, not because they were lectured to about it or had to read a chapter in a textbook, but because they had a chance to apply it to their lived experience.

If you are interested in learning more about helping students tell their stories through multimedia or if you want to know more about the digital tools available at SCSU, please let us know. The SCSU Online and Distance Learning team is available via email or through the Bookings. We can demo any of the tools and provide further uses in the course.

Additional Reading:

For more information on any of the following topics, please check out our previous blog articles.

References:

Chaidez, S. & Carmona, S. (2023, August 24). Tell me your story: Building engagement and inclusion in online and hybrid courses with digital storytelling methods. Online Learning Consortium. https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/webinar/tell-me-your-story-building-engagement-and-inclusion-in-online-and-hybrid-courses-with-digital-storytelling-methods/

Robin, B. R. (2016). The power of digital storytelling to support teaching and learning. Digital Education Review, 30, 17-29. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1125504

Smeda, N., Dakich, E., & Sharda, N. (2014, December 3). The effectiveness of digital storytelling in the classrooms: A comprehensive study – smart learning environments. SpringerOpen. https://slejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40561-014-0006-3

Souza, R. (2019). Photo of a man sitting in front of a camera [Photograph]. Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-a-man-sitting-in-front-of-a-camera-2531552/

CJ Laudenbach is a student of the Mass Communication – Strategic Media Communications program at SCSU. She has past experience as a writer and editor for the University Chronicle.