This session will explore the use of digital storytelling for assessment practices and share findings on the effectiveness of the practice. It will also cover practical methods for applying a narrative framework to establish online learners as “epic heroes” on a journey through their online course.
Anchoring online course design practices within a narrative framework serves as a powerful tool for creating an environment that supports experiential, student-centered learning. This session will discuss the findings of a research study conducted at the University of Arizona related to digital storytelling as an assessment practice for measuring academic learning outcomes. This research study focused upon ways students could effectively demonstrate their learning through digital engagement. The study explored if the method of digital storytelling through the use of multimodal tools was an effective way for students to accomplish this task.
The discussion in the session will revolve around the merging of educational practices to solve an academic assessment issue while engaging and teaching students digital literacy. The presenters will ask the audience to think deeper about the use of digital storytelling for assessment practices, as well as how students can be established as the "drivers" of the course in a constructivist learning environment.
The learning outcomes for this session include:
- Examining research and rationales for leveraging digital storytelling for assessment practices
- Defining and contextualizing a narrative framework within online course design for specific disciplines and applications.
- Viewing examples of narrative elements in online courses, to include a digital storytelling course where students journey through modules, achieving milestones and experiencing learning events that support the overarching student learning outcomes.
- Exploring the transformation of students from consumers to producers of digital stories as they write ethnographic field notes and conduct interviews with people from their everyday lives (i.e., everyday heroes).
- Investigating approaches for creating tangible experiential gains in courses through earned badges and micro-credentialing, to include prosocial actions such as mentoring or supporting peers.
The participants will be challenged to come up with other digital teaching methods that might engage students. They will be asked to share other technologies that could have been included in this research project. Finally, they will be solicited to come up with other teaching and learning environments that might benefit from this particular practice of digital engagement.
Slides from the presentation:
https://spark.adobe.com/page/V7kVLsXp8sU2A/ https://spark.adobe.com/page/6MsYUcypjJYrH/