Does Digital Storytelling Have an Effect on Writing Outcomes?

Abstract

Writing has a significant role in students’ academic and lifelong learning. Therefore, educators constantly seek novel ways to develop students’ writing skills. This study aims to examine the effect of digital storytelling on secondary school students' creative writing skills and writing self-efficacy. The participants were 15 6th grade students in Turkey. The study was carried out using a one-group pretest-posttest model, which is one of the pre-experimental research designs. “Writing Self-Efficacy Scale” and “Creative Writing Evaluation Scale” for secondary school students were used as data collection tools. Following an instruction on how to use Wevideo tool, students created digital stories about given topics once a week, over a month period.The analysis showed that posttest scores for digital storytelling were significantly higher than pretest scores, but no significant difference was found for writing self-efficacy. These results indicated that the digital storytelling procedure applied in this study improved the participants’ creative writing skills. However, no significant variation was observed in the writing self-efficacy scores. In light of the study findings, some recommendations and implications were made to practitioners and researchers.