WRTG

Nancy Hightower: Using Narrative in Digital Storytelling

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 06:00:00 +0000

Nancy Hightower: Using Narrative in Digital Storytelling Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/14/2013 - 00:00

I would like to teach my visual art students how to use digital storytelling in order to 1) learn how to use narrative as a form of persuasion 2) how language is not “fixed” but always interacting with other media—sound and visuals 3) to have them discover a more powerful writing voice.

Teaching and Learning Challenge

Description of the problem:

Students have a very hard time connecting to an authentic voice. The “academic” voice they often assume is rather stilted, and uses too many prepositions and passive construction. Writing should be intriguing and creative; it should invite the audience to keep reading. I tell my students that they get an A on the essay if they make me forget that I am reading an essay. They do not have a hard time recognizing a lack of voice in their writing, but they are often afraid that they have no “voice” to discover.

Idea or opportunity:

Introducing digital storytelling to my visual artists as both a way to persuade their audience but also, to discover their narrative voice. Students have to create a five-seven minute digital story either 1) about their own artistic work or field of study 2) another artist’s work or 3) an issue of their choice (such as nutrition or how we need to make STEM into STEAM). Making a digital story requires the same critical revision skills as editing a paper—the project must be coherent, concise, clear, relevant and thoughtful.

Description of how it has changed over time:

The notion of “writing” has usually been limited to a 5-10 page research paper, turned in to the teacher. Often, students are only writing to the teacher, citing factual information that holds very little persuasion. However, a truly persuasive piece of writing operates on pathos, logos, and ethos, and while many students are certainly knowledgeable about how to set up the appeal to authority and logic, they have a hard time appealing to our emotions in a truly authentic way. Likewise, to prepare students for a work environment that is increasingly becoming digital, we need to make use of these new resources and think of “writing” more in terms of composing.”

Description of factors that make it compelling now:

Students are going onto a job market that calls for social and digital media skills. Many companies want students that know how to make videos, post articles to blogs and write for Twitter. Teaching students how to create a digital story 1) introduces students to the power of narrative 2) helps them discover their voice by creating a script instead of a normal essay and 3) allows them to “write” for a public audience. It also helps them get fluent in using technologies such iMovie, Move Maker, Audacity, and Garage band. While this generation of students are digital consumers, I would argue that very few are digital producers. This assignment will help them produce an effective message addressing the particular prompt. My end goal is that is can be used a sample to show future employers.

Plan for Implementation

Course details:

I wish to use the Digital Story assignment in my WRTG 3007, Writing in the Visual Arts and WRTG 1150, Writing and Rhetoric classes.

Scope:

To help students correct grammatical errors in their writing by learning to “hear” for them; to help students write in a more authentic voice for different audiences within academic and professional settings; to learn how visual elements, written text, and audio interact with each other in any given rhetorical situation, and change or create meaning; to encourage students to be more creative when composing a message while being aware of the needs of the audience.

Description:

I incorporate the digital story after their resume/cover letter or mission statement assignment and before the next analysis paper. This allows the students to have a baseline in terms of defining what their passions are or what course of study or field of expertise they wish to pursue. The Digital Story then, is a way to expand this framework, explaining in a more narrative structure their personal tie to the subject matter. By this point, we have gone over the rhetorical appeals of pathos, ethos, and logos in terms of the previous assignments and we examine how to incorporate ethos and logos in this narrative structure (that privileges pathos).

Students work both in-class and out of class on the project. After they have drafted and revised two pages, I have them read the “scripts” out loud to the class (I divide the class into two sections of 10 each). It’s important not to wait too long to begin this process, since some of the students have a hard time getting out of the “academic essay” mode, and reading it out loud helps them remember that the writing must be fluid. It also helps correct quite a bit of their passive voice, since they will trip up while reading awkwardly constructed sentences.

I allow a few days for students to bring their computers to class in case they need help with the technology—I have not given a tutorial on how to use iMovie or Movie Maker, and it has worked out well so far. I do give in-class assistance to students who have PCs and need to download Audacity, since it can be a bit tricky.

I am experimenting with having students showing drafts of their videos—about a two minute segment—to see if that is as helpful as reading the drafts out loud. I found this semester that students often miscalculate how long it will take to get out all the technical “kinks” (aligning pictures with words or music, uploading, etc.)

I am also giving students a chance to revise their Digital Story assignment before we watch them during the last week of class. Next semester, I will add a few reflective assignments to the work, where they have to describe the rhetorical choices they made in terms of script, visuals and audio.

Indicators of Success

How will you know if your students have achieved the intended outcome?

I plan on developing a basic rubric for the digital story in order to construct more concrete outcomes for my students. This will be especially useful since students are often curious about how much technical excellence is required in the project, or if the idea or creativity count more. The rubric will help them see the interconnectedness of the two.

Another way to measure the strength of this assignment is if the students were willing to use it as part of a professional portfolio, such as a website that branded their art. That would mean that they have seen some intrinsic value to the assignment that went beyond the classroom.

Lastly, I will be grading the assignment on fluidity, narrative strength, creativity, and persuasion, and will give them feedback. This gives them the opportunity to revise their digital story before the final presentation (where they will show the class their videos).

How will you know if the changes you made in your teaching made a difference?

The students will write a reflective paper describing how, exactly, they went about achieving the objectives of the rubric. I believe this will show me both the strengths and weaknesses of the first rubric used in class, and will allow me to see how students are connecting the guidelines of the assignment to their own objectives of the piece.

I have kept past digital stories made by students, and plan to do a comparison study, to see if the rubric has made a difference in the quality and creativity of the stories.

This semester, I have changed some of my teaching practices by having students read their scripts out loud, and this has helped significantly in developing their voice as they have been able to hear other the “voices” of other students when reading. They can also hear sparse narratives that are meant to more directly interact with the visuals. This kind of peer review also leads to better analysis of the final project, both for the students, and for the audience.

How will you identify/measure growth in your students or in your teaching?

The digital story is a formative assignment, since it comes before the final project. I hope to see a marked difference in the quality of their multi-modal final projects. One outcome I’ve already seen is that the student who wrote a digital story on nutrition now wants to work collaboratively with another student to create an online college cookbook. The collaborative nature of the digital storytelling workshop allowed students to see deeper connections they had that went outside the normal “visual arts” track. In that sense, the authentic voices they discovered led to a greater sense of collaboration.

I am also hoping to see this authentic writing voice be more apparent as they use social media such as Twitter and Facebook.

I might have them write a reflective piece at the end of the semester describing the strengths or weaknesses of the digital storytelling process as a scaffolding assignment. Did they see the value in creating such a piece in order to get them ready for the final, multimodal project.

Reflection

Brief description of project

I incorporated both digital storytelling and digital essays into my Writing for the Visual Arts and Writing and Rhetoric class, respectively. Students first brought in typed drafts of their papers, and learned how to turn them into “scripts”—writing with more fluidity with each draft. They then learned how to incorporate music, pictures, and videos to go along with the verbal message. My Writing and Rhetoric class had a longer project (10 minutes) since it was a final paper, and it did not have to have a personal anecdote incorporated into it.

What worked well?

In both classes reading the drafts out loud and creating more a script with them really helped quite a few of them get them out of the passive voice construction that usually plagues academic writing. Likewise, they were more confident in critiquing other people’s drafts after hearing them read—in part because they could “hear” the grammatical issues or repetition as opposed to trying to identify such issues in the hard copy. Also, in my Writing and Rhetoric class, we reviewed drafts of the digital essay itself (the first two minutes) and this helped quite a bit. First, it ensured that the students weren’t leaving the technical aspect to the last minute, and secondly, it helped the class see the different ways a digital essay could be created. We saw how an argument changes depending on visuals and use of music, etc. The only downside to this kind of workshop is that it takes two full days to get through just two minutes of everyone’s drafts. But I do think that it helped in terms of producing a final product.

What did not work well and what would I do differently in future implementations?

Many students had a hard time thinking about how to use narrative as an argument for the digital story, despite my showing them numerous examples. Next time I would have us read a few critical essays either on the importance of narrative in forming an argument, or on how digital storytelling is becoming the new mode of persuasion in many professional venues. Also, I think making the digital story a scaffolding sort of exercise, as opposed to the final assignment, might have been more a hindrance than a help. While I gave my Writing in the Visual Art students the opportunity to revise the digital story for a better grade, few took it. The first-year students, however, were able to move more quickly through the drafts, even though their digital essay was longer (by as much as ten minutes than the digital story). I believe they were more prepared to delve into their topics and less intimidated by the technological aspect since we had other kinds of assignments to get them ready for this kind of final draft.

I would also note that for some, the digital story is intimidating since one does have to tell a story (and some students automatically put this into the “creative writing” category). Also, some had a hard time talking about themselves or using their own experiences to create a sense of ethos. The first-year students didn’t experience this anxiety nearly as much, since the digital essay is more focused on an issue, and uses less storytelling techniques.

I also did not have a grading rubric ready for either assignment, but since a digital story/essay has so many components, I think a rubric is not only useful, but necessary. I am in the process of drafting one for each.

Samples

For the digital essays, students covered issues such as covering up concussions in high school football students, how men are starting to become more objectified in advertising and how this is affecting teenage males, and how students are abusing drugs on campus through their health centers. My visual art students wrote digital stories on their own art aesthetic, the rhetorical value of improve, why cake decorating should be considered art, and the importance of art therapy.

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Storytelling in a Digital World

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Storytelling in a Digital World Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/07/2013 - 00:00

The images are sometimes faded and the voiceovers are rarely crisp, but the stories they tell are real. She is the youngest of five sisters. He plays a perfect game of pool. A daughter struggles to care for her schizophrenic mother. A young woman finds solace at a Catholic church in Wales. Using scanned family photographs, recorded audio, and software like iMovie and Final Cut, students produce short video narratives that can be uploaded onto the internet and shared with a wide audience.

This is digital storytelling.

"Digital environments have fundamentally changed the way people read and communicate," says Amy Goodloe who served for two years as the Digital Composition Coordinator for CU's Writing and Rhetoric program. "So why are we teaching students to write to audiences that won't exist in the future, using mediums that are relics of the pre-digital world?" Amy Goodloe has integrated digital composition assignments into her writing courses for many years, and when she offered Digital Storytelling for the first time in Fall 2012, students clamored to take the course.

In recent years, Digital Storytelling has gained momentum in classrooms across the country. Often presented as an interdisciplinary project option that blends rhetoric and technology, students simultaneously learn how to use new digital tools and how to compose a compelling narrative. In the past several years, top universities including UC Berkley, The University of Maryland, and MIT have begun offering Digital Storytelling as an official course. But storytelling knows no age limits. In 2010, a kindergarten class in New Jersey used VoiceThread software to create a collaborative class narrative about polar bears.

On the whole, the classes have been successful, with students rushing to fill the available seats. Digital Storytelling is a particularly powerful tool when applied to service learning projects. CU students taking Dr. Beth Osnes' and Dr. Max Boykoff's Spring 2012 Inside the Greenhouse class created powerful videos about plastic waste, hunting, and climate change in an effort to raise awareness about pressing environmental issues.

So what is the pedagogical value of digital storytelling? "The goal is to... equip students with the writing skills of the future, which extend beyond the scope of text-based writing," Amy Goodloe explained in her notes from a presentation at the COLTT conference in August. "Stories hold our attention," she says. "They move us." She went on to explain the importance of the personal story, rather than a media-created one. "The concept of moving from consumers to producers is frequently used as a justification for teaching students to compose digital media," she says. "The digital story movement is powered by the rest of us."

"Why do we assign papers in the first place?" asks Goodloe. "What do students want to learn? Can that be learned through digital storytelling instead of a paper? Sustained inquiry or argument across multiple pages has educational value, but perhaps we should reserve paper assignments for the kinds of learning they're best suited to. Digital storytelling creates greater engagement, encourages seeing writing as a process, improves critical analysis and digital literacy skills and provides preparation for the future of writing."

Watching the student videos is often a moving experience. One student project contains grainy home video footage of three boys as they grow up. An eccentric patriarch behind the camera asks his children to spin in a circle as he films. The boys grow older. Entering their teenage years, they spin in front of the video camera again and again, their relative heights and personalities shifting as they near adulthood. Finally, the narrator of the story appears as a squalling baby in his father's arms. Together, the family spins as they welcome their new generation.

It is a small story, like most other stories that the students created. But its smallness strikes a chord. "Personal experience is a valid form of knowledge,” says Goodloe. “When we invite students to investigate an aspect of their own lives (instead of simply focusing on academic research) they not only become more deeply invested in what they're learning, they also become excited about being able to contribute to our larger understanding of the issue."

As a viewer, these personal narratives expand our understanding of our own experience. In a world where we are so often presented with a slick product, the amateur quality of these films is endearing and easy to relate to. These stories become our stories too.

Article Written by: Ashley E Williams

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