The Impact of Digital Storytelling on Social Agency: Early Experience at an Online University

Abstract

‘Digital Storytelling’ is a term often used to refer to a number of different types of digital narrative including web-based stories, hypertexts, videoblogs and computer games. This emergent form of creative work has found an outlet in a wide variety of different domains ranging from community social history, to cookbooks, to the classroom. It is the latter domain that provides the focus for this paper, specifically the online classroom at the tertiary level...Early feedback from students suggests that listening to and telling ‘true stories’ was a compelling and emotionally-engaging experience, providing an opportunity for ‘transformative reflection’ (Lambert 2000). By including multimedia, learners were able to build upon the fundamentals, presenting content in an easy-to-absorb and compelling way. In terms of team assignments students learned to become more effective actors in collaborative work environments.

Keywords: Digital storytelling, Learning pedagogy, Online education, U21Global