Introducing Digital Storytelling Across the University

"Digital stories" is a method that makes students capable of reflecting thoroughly on practice lessons, on previously learned material, and communicating insights to fellow students and other stakeholders in formal and informal contexts.

What is digital storytelling?

Digital storytelling (DS) emerged as a style of community theatre/street exhibition/video art performance in San Francisco 30 years ago. With technological development, the three founders Dana Achley, Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen expanded the idea to a community based documentary film production effort, and established the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, in collaboration with the University of California, at Berkeley. Over the years they have covered the globe with workshops and filmfests spreading the idea and method to a vast number of both academic and social support groups with the aim of empowering people by making them telling their story, finding their voice and visual expression. Pedagogically the ideas rely on inspiration from Paolo Freire, Augusto Boal and a critical adult education tradition. Audiovisually they rely on community media and democratic media distribution influences.

Typically, a workshop of digital storytelling runs for three days. On day one an ideal group of 12 participants are gathered and the primary task for the day is to develop a story. Writing the story and reading it in creative writing groups, rewriting and gradually figuring out a plot that works is the main task. On day two the finalising of the story ends with recording the voiceover, which ideally is based on no more than a 300 word manuscript. Overlacing with this process the making of a storyboard that includes images, videos and drawings, sometimes texts and faximiles starts. On day three, the voiceover, images, other audiovisual elements, including music are imported to the filmmaking software – and the screening starts…..

Where does Digital Storytelling fit in?

In Ernest Boyer’s model of the four scholarships we can see how DS may be used differently through the scholarships:

The scholarship of teaching and learning

Students can produce learning objects for teaching other students
Students may use stories for discovering and reflecting on their learning experiences
Teachers may produce reflective or didactical pieces for particular purposes

The scholarship of discovery

Students provide vital material for analysing student learning in multimodal conditions
Making persons and groups produce digital stories to explore their positions and experiences
Research communities need to communicate more precisely to each other
Research dissemination from projects

The scholarship of integration

DS is eminent for students to express interdisciplinary insights
Project work across different subjects
Finding the personal voice in disciplinary studies as well as professional studies

The scholarship of engagement and collaborative practice

DS is highly relevant for working with community support or collecting data in participatory actions research
Extension units may use DS for involving underrepresented groups in Higher education

How do we produce a digital story? (Innafor)

The beginning

The participants have been recruited by inspiration from colleagues. Personal friendships, joint engagement with the digital experience in higher education, a belief in the ideas of Digital Storytelling as a rejuvenating force, and a focus on how digital storytelling could add value to the education of students are common denominators.

Risk taking has been a common feature of the members of the group. They express a great deal of having guts, accepting uncertainty, relying on the good spirit and willingness of their students to embark on an educational development project.

Two members have yet to find time and room for their experiments, but are planning for a workshop in mid-March. Other members of the group are instructors for the workshop. They are still in want of creating the good story that might show colleagues how eminent digital stories might be. They feel that they need to prove how useful and (relatively) simple it is to work with DS, to make the method less threatening and demanding.

The continuation

Innovators are often working on their own before recruiting a broader base of “early adopters”. Typically if an innovator moves to a different station or position, there are few guarantees that digital storytelling continues. At the present stage the initiative depends on a prime group of innovators forming a certain “critical mass” (Rogers, 2003). We think that the following processes are steps toward the next phase of “early majority”. However, we have little hope for reaching a level of adoption that will encompass all faculties. On the other hand, two faculties are already working very professionally with digital storytelling: Film, gaming and television schools.

Gaining confidence

It appears that it is important to develop Digital Storytelling among (at least) two colleagues. Support for the pedagogical ideas seems significant. Second the importance of feeling confident with the technology. In important phases, the prevalence of physical and intellectual support from the IT-department is crucial. Having a consistent backing from the department head or dean is also important.

A vital factor for achieving confidence is the result of the screening of the stories. An overwhelming experience is that students are, generally amazed that they are allowed to, and actually masters the art of making a digital story. At HINN most workshops are fulfilled with students reflecting on their story according to their initial plan, their experiences with making it, and getting respons from the group. The experience is deemed to be very fruitful for most students. We have yet to experience that students are unable to deliver. Students also express that they finally have produced a result their parents show great interest for. They are proud and amazed of their ability to express something that is worth watching and hearing for a group of spectators. Compared to writing an essay for the tutor/assessor to read this is a much more interesting exercise.

Constructing a subject

When the felt expertise is growing, new complications arise. Concerns about how digital storytelling can be used in more than one context, and for more audiences and participators. It is not an easy task to “sell” to academic colleagues. Digital Storytelling relies on a number of presumptions that are not necessarily well reputed: using the personal voice, telling using voice and images, by means of technologies considered way to modern for mature academics.

Digital Storytelling is clearly a disruptive element in the ordinary university teaching and learning scenario.

The trivial problem is often to a) find space in a crowded curriculum, b) convince colleagues that the efforts are worthwhile, c) find courage and spirit to gain experiences. The basic question is – “Is this the right thing for me –when I can get away with less efforts”?

Subjects are complex matters. In teaching they start with the elementary and end with the refined. In most disciplines student tasks follow a similar line of learning to write, or to do lab experiments or excursions, excavations, botanizing or simulations. The national framework for qualifications offer a taxonomy of intellectual and professional growth that is taken in to use in all elements – single modules, programs and professional schools. Subordinating an approach like this into such fixed schemes is a challenge. With growing experience – and experimentation – testing out schemes for time and room, different technologies, different tasks and different perspectives for the stories made, developing rubrics for how a successful story can be assessed in contrast to a lesser story etc. are tasks that demand a didactical reflection solution. All the didactical issues are coming up:

who are the learners (age, discipline, profession, theory, practice, etc.)
how do we teach (how much explaining, how much hands on)
how is the content laid out (family therapy, entrepreneurship, personal development, geriatric studies?)
what are the aims (learning the method, finding a topic for further studies, demonstrating a project)
what are the frame factors (basement or top-floor, screen and speakers, one/two/three days)
how do we assess the students (according to where they are or according to a fixed rubric)

All these matters are thrown into the tumbler of making a new subject. In order to fit in DS into a cramped curricula we are often invited to present the method with a minimum of time, and that might compromise the whole approach.

Certain topics are much referred to: what are the resources needed? How much for teaching, how much for tutoring, how much technical support, how much space….. We are on the beginning of making a handbook of what is needed, what is smart, what is not useful etc. One series of experiences were useful: stories made by groups are more suited for didactical purposes: students teaching each other. Stories made on areas where “the answer” is deemed to be the obvious adult or mature answer you get what you ask for. More open tasks produce more creative solutions.

And, finally, working harder on the storycircle as an element of the method is important to make students work more seriously. Giving critical and constructive response is another element students need to develop. They are too easy on each other….”That’s fine” is a way too common statement. On the other hand can some students become defensive and rigid in the assessment phase. The misunderstanding that offering critique is an attempt to hurt or destroy the students attempts to make a heartfelt expression is not unusual (Jamissen, Hardy, Nordkvelle, & Pleasants, 2017).

The Visual Bildung

The participants express that students are confident in presenting their ideas using PowerPoints. This medium has become well established in upper secondary school. They sense that Higher Education needs to take them further. DS might fill that need to become more fluent in expressing ideas in new media, and communicate in new settings. Digital skills and confidence in becoming digital producers is important in present higher education (Fossland, 2015). On the other hand, in the business school, the impression is that our students are too modest in their personal appearance. They sense that “our” students need a boost in self-esteem and confidence. Becoming more diligent and proactive in promoting their personal careers is a dire need for some students. They see DS as a possible tool to expand their personal development. Using a multimedial approach will also make them more broadly qualified to relate to marketing and do organizational development/entrepreneurial tasks in business settings. Naturally, PhD students are able to express their subject and the intentions they have more precisely than a beginning student, but the latter might have a better story to contribute. Less domesticized academic voices can come closer to the matter than well behaving academic. The learning profile and –style of a person more audiovisually inclined might find a different path to wisdom than the traditional academic student.

When students are encouraged to discover and uncover their personal insights, ethical concerns are raised. Creative writing always involves complex psychological processes that might invoke unknown sources of knowledge and emotions. Some student experiences from practicum might cause an unrest and a need to confess or reveal conditions that are sensitive for individuals or persons involved. Handling such situations in an ethical way must be developed as an element of the handbook. Fair use of images, music and other elements have been well covered in the literature on digital material, about GDPR etc. and needs to be constant monitored. It is a loss for the genre if good films are unable to show because they violate the obvious rules for using artistic material created without securing publishing rights.

Plug –and pray?

Over the years the technological context has changed. For Windows XP a delightful Movie Maker was designed that handled the task beautifully. On the Mac iMovie and Final Cut express worked beautifully. We experienced that iPads and other notebook-providers – and the android and Apple smartphones also could be used with ease from about 2011, and the standard software was more automated. For a long time the XP-version was cherished because it was easy to manage and numerous instructional videos on YouTube delivered practical advice course instructors could rely on. It was easy to recruit specific expertise from the IT-department. Photo Story and the liberal practice of letting students handle the software themselves produced a situation in a state of heavy frustration. The change of Learning Management System, and the introduction of a Cloud-based video editing system (WeVideo) was supposed to both simplify and increase the ease of use. In practice this has been difficult. WeVideo has not been thoroughly supported by the IT-section, and the integration with Canvas, the new LMS, has been insufficiently catered for. The need for a clear cut technological solution that covers the whole university with support is deemed necessary for a possible future solution.

Conclusions and the way forward

Working in this project has created a seedbed for conversation about the qualities of Digital Stories. We have run a series of seminars, discussed crucial matters, developed a resource for practitioners, offered seminars for colleagues and developed digital stories for demonstration. We have a shared vision and see alternatives for advancing the idea to more colleagues and areas of study. We can see the contours of being a hub from where the ideas will be translated and will carry on by themselves (Røvik, 2016).

References

Fossland, T. (2015) Digitale læringsformer i høyere utdanning. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Jamissen, G., Hardy, P., Nordkvelle, Y., & Pleasants, H.(eds): Digital Storytelling in Higher Education. International perspectives. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan

Rogers, E.M. (2003) Diffusion of innovations (5 ed.). New York: Free Press.

Røvik, K. (2016). Knowledge Transfer as Translation: Review and Elements of an Instrumental Theory. International Journal of Management Reviews, 18(3), 290-310.

About us

What are our aims? Over the last 10 years influences from other universities and significant institutions, such as the Center for Digital Storytelling, have inspired the participants to engage in Digital Storytelling. In 2010, we published a special issue on DS with the Center for Digital Storytelling, with Seminar.net a journal published by the group. In 2011 we organized the 4th World conference on digital storytelling at the Campus Lillehammer, gathering 200 enthusiasts to a an academic fest. Being convinced of the value of making students tell stories digitally we set forth to try to engage more colleagues in using the technologies and methods of digital storytelling in various ways in the university.

Since 2016 “Seed money” has been used to stimulate entrepreneurs to research and develop promising and innovative teaching experiments. This group was established after the merger of two university colleges in 2017 to the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. The “Seed money” project aims at finding strategies for making more programs use digital stories in their teaching at all levels and purposes across the university, from BA to MA and PhD, from extension and outreach programs to internal training and research dissemination.

Why is Digital Storytelling an important dimension for teaching? Education in the college needs to expand its repertoire of modalities for teaching and learning. Students need to develop an audiovisual language in addition to the textual and enable them to create and interpret the media's expression. Audiovisual expressions open up ways to learn and develop studies that open up opportunities for students who have a learning set-up that is different from conventional. Digital stories is a method that makes students capable of reflecting thoroughly on practice lessons, on previously learned material, and communicating insights to fellow students and other stakeholders in formal and informal contexts. In order to develop and adapt digital storytelling, the method must be practiced, analyzed and consolidated among the college's practitioners. A common set of concepts is needed to identify problems, developmental obstacles and areas for practical and theoretical development. Collegial criticism, idea exchange and dissemination are important aspects of creating a breakthrough for a teaching method.

Digital stories is a method that all new employees in the university who attend the post graduate course in higher education, as a part of ICT in teaching. As one of many methods, it can inspire to start and do some trials. In order to further develop the use of digital stories, there is a need for a specialization and professionalization that extends these experiences and goes deeper. It can be used at many levels and places in curricula throughout the college. For each study subject, the method should find a place, which means that the method is practically applicable, developed as normal practice and develops the capacities ("affordances") it has the potential for. In this work, criteria for assessing students 'work on the method must also be established, as well as how feedback procedures should be used to develop the students' audiovisual education. It must also be harmonized with the qualification framework and be put into a framework for academic progression in relation to study programs, individual subjects and the degree system.