Collaborative Digital Storytelling Research Articles

Responding to Children’s Semiotic Repertoires in Collaborative Digital Storytelling

Responding to Children’s Semiotic Repertoires in Collaborative Digital Storytelling

Scripted synergy: elevating EFL writing and creativity through collaborative digital storytelling

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study aimed to investigate the impact of incorporating a scripted collaborative learning strategy into digital storytelling (DST) on the vocabulary acquisition, creativity and writing skills of EFL college students. While DST has been previously utilised in English language education, it faces several challenges. To address these challenges, this study introduced a scripted collaborative strategy designed to enhance the digital storytelling creation process. An experimental comparison between scripted and non-scripted collaborative digital storytelling projects was conducted to assess their effects on students’ creativity and writing skills. The findings revealed that the scripted collaborative DST approach markedly improved students’ vocabulary acquisition, graphic creativity and writing skills compared to the non-scripted collaborative DST group. This research underscores the potential benefits of digital storytelling in advancing English language learning, offering valuable insights into its effective implementation.

“We all contributed to tell stories to the best of our abilities”: collaborative digital storytelling to promote students’ positive interdependence in an online course of Italian as a foreign language

Positive interdependence is defined as a mutual relationship between people who are driven to achieve the same task goals- Considered as the foundation of collaborative language learning, it can surface in group activities of digital content creation. Digital storytelling may enhance skills of positive interdependence as it enables digital narratives to be told through mixed media (Robin, 2016). However, prolonged exposure to technology might cause distraction, motivation loss, and fatigue among language students, hampering the establishment of positive interdependence. To encourage interdependent interactions in digital learning environments, this study presents the results of educational activities conducted using the ThingLink and StoryMaps platforms by learners of Italian as a foreign language during an online language course. The results stemming from online questionnaires, transcript analyses, and focus group interviews highlight how students’ positive interdependence can be boosted by telling stories through immersive technologies.

The effects of using collaborative digital storytelling on academic achievement and skill development in biology education

AbstractThe purpose of the study is to investigate the effect of the use of digital storytelling on academic achievement, critical thinking dispositions, co-regulation, and narrative skills of 10th grade students. To this end, the study was conducted using a semi-experimental design with a convenience sample. The participants consisted of 64 students (33 in experimental and 31 in control group) who were studying in a high school. After the groups were trained, a two-week pilot study was conducted by forming collaborative groups among the students. This was followed by eight weeks of main implementation, during which students presented their projects to the class every two weeks. Following the digital story presentations in the experimental group, feedback was provided by the course instructor and peers. In addition, rubric scores were generated by the researchers for each digital story. Academic achievement test, critical thinking disposition scale, co-regulatory skills scale, and digital story evaluation rubric were used as data collection tools at the end of the process. Independent samples t-test, repeated ANOVA, and regression analysis were performed on the collected data. According to the results, digital story activities had moderate positive effects on students’ academic achievement and critical thinking, and high positive effects on co-regulation. In addition, the narrative skills of the students in the experimental group increased significantly over the weeks with a difference of 27.44 points. There was also evidence that storytelling ability was a significant predictor of academic achievement and that this ability increased significantly over the weeks. The results showed that the collaborative creation of a digital story by the students had a positive effect on their academic achievement and the development of their skills.

Fostering sustainability competences through co-creation of digital storytelling: Effects of COVID-19 on higher education students’ reflective learning

During COVID-19, online collaboration became more accessible than before, enabling higher education students and teachers to organize virtual mobility experiments and run projects with stakeholders across cultures. In this paper, we focus on three blended intensive programs, two in Finland and one in Hungary, to explore how the pedagogical approach of project-based digital storytelling combined with reflective writing contributed to students’ sustainability competence development during the pandemic and after. In these programs, multicultural teams of students worked on real-life digital storytelling projects aimed at driving sustainable changes in people’s thinking, behaviour, and lifestyles. Digital storytelling has proved effective in fostering students’ 21st century skills through engagement and co-creation with the wider world. Based on qualitative content analysis of 67 semi-structured learning journals, we explore students' developments in values-thinking, collaborative, and self-awareness competences during their digital storytelling projects. With insights from student reflections on their virtual, online, and blended learning, we discuss challenges and successes of project-based, collaborative, and reflective learning and propose best practices for using collaborative digital storytelling as a transformative method to foster sustainability competences across cultures.

AI-Driven Digital Storytelling: A Strategy for Creating English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Materials

This study aimed to explore the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and digital storytelling in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education among pre-service teachers. Conducted with third-year college students enrolled in a teacher training program, the study focuses on three main objectives: assessing the participants' prior knowledge of AI tools for EFL material creation, examining their attitudes towards the use of AI in language education, and evaluating the impact of collaborative digital storytelling projects on their perspectives towards integrating AI tools in educational settings. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study engaged a convenience sample of 115 pre-service teachers, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative research instruments such as a pre-post-test based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and class discussion. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS, while qualitative insights were derived through QDA Miner to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the participants' experiences and viewpoints. The findings reveal a notable gap in the pre-service teachers' prior knowledge of AI tools designed for educational purposes, indicating a limited exposure to or engagement with such technologies in their training. Despite this low level of familiarity, the study uncovers a predominantly positive attitude towards the adoption and integration of AI tools in language education. This positive disposition suggests an openness among future educators to explore and incorporate innovative technologies that can enhance teaching and learning experiences in EFL contexts. The research highlights how the practical experience of creating collaborative digital storytelling narratives using AI tools can positively influence pre-service teachers' attitudes towards technology integration. This shift in perspective underscores the potential of hands-on, project-based learning experiences to enrich teacher training programs by fostering a more receptive and adaptive mindset towards the use of emerging technologies in educational settings. The study underscores the importance of integrating AI and digital storytelling into teacher education curricula to better prepare pre-service teachers for the evolving demands of the digital age, advocating for a more informed, and innovative approach to EFL material development and teaching strategies.

SLA Doctoral Students' Collaborative Digital Storytelling Experiences and Perceptions

SLA Doctoral Students' Collaborative Digital Storytelling Experiences and Perceptions

Designing an Augmented Experience for a Music Archive: What does the Audience Need Beyond the Sense of Hearing?

The ARIA project aims to create an engaging visitor experience for archives of music Cultural Heritage that targets the wider public. The challenge is to conceptualize an experience design where the intangible seamlessly meets the tangible, bridging the gap between obscure archival material and the direct and emotional experience of listening to music. The project will apply innovative technologies, such aseXtended Reality (XR)and collaborative digital storytelling, to augment the reception of the musical experience through establishing an affective connection of the visitor with the music composer. In this work we present the results of a user study with 198 participants, designed to assess user expectations and identify concrete needs to inform a multimodal experience design about the composer N. Skalkottas, The results of this study guided the design of an experience which combines a single user immersive VR application to promote reflection on the music piece, with a group participatory digital storytelling mobile app to establish an affective connection with the composer. We conclude the paper with our insights on the effectiveness of the approach as well as how the experience design could contribute to further studying and understanding in a holistic way the factors that play a role in feeling moved by or connected with a composer and his work.

Challenging intercultural discomforts: Intercultural communicative competence through digital storytelling

Discomfort perceived by speakers in intercultural situations becomes one of the main psychological factors which makes speakers give up attempts at communication and may result in frustration or inefficient communication. The article discusses the pedagogical potential of digital storytelling, understood as multimodal pedagogy that encourages creative expression and self-representation, as a tool for challenging and mitigating perceived communicational and intercultural discomfort within the context of intercultural competence development and training. The authors argue that collaborative digital storytelling in multicultural teams raises intercultural awareness by creating a safe, structured, and facilitated (virtual) space for students to develop their ability to interact with people from another country and culture in a foreign language and represents a viable tool of challenging and overcoming intercultural discomfort by providing an opportunity for repeated intercultural interaction through negotiation of meaning and intersubjective construction of knowledge as well as by providing motivating real-life context for students’ work. In supporting dialogic and constructivist approaches to educational practice, digital storytelling is fully equipped to provide a viable alternative to direct instruction and transmissive models of teaching. In addition to this, by providing a digital element, digital storytelling allows students to reflect on the culturally as well as technologically mediated nature of communication.

Finding Common Ground

Abstract: This article assesses a collaborative digital storytelling project between Chief Leschi Schools, a Puyallup Tribal K-12 school, and University of Washington students, teachers, and institutional leaders. This assessment emphasizes the importance of and examines how to build trust and facilitate co-planning in digital storytelling workshops centering Indigenous voices. Collaboration between Indigenous and non-indigenous students and teachers offered unconventional learning experiences and community celebrations of Indigenous youth. Inductive, qualitative research drawing from personal memos, interviews, focus groups, and surveys revealed the significance of co-planning and trust-building between participants of distinct social and formal education backgrounds. This analysis showcases how these different factors shaped and sustained the project, resulting in what the authors hope will be an enduring commitment. Recommendations include: (1) Emphasis on consistent and ongoing participation to cultivate trust and facilitate continuous communication; (2) purposeful engagement of students’ fundamental skills, presenting digital narratives that align with their interests and competencies; and (3) adopting an approach for non-indigenous academics and academic institutions of prioritizing and actively engaging in collaborative partnerships with Indigenous communities. The article underscores the significance of recognizing and resolving complex power and cultural dynamics between universities and tribes for successful project co-planning and implementation.

Targeting Creativity Through a Learner-Generated Digital Storytelling Project

One of the most emphasized skills for social, educational and workplace settings is creativity in the present decade. This study aims to understand whether a collaborative digital storytelling production project improves the creativity of undergraduate students. 109 students engaged in group work and employed a range of digital tools (i.e. wikis, storyboard creation tools, video editing programs) for creating digital stories about the 21stcentury problems they think relevant. Students were able to review and comment on each other’s scenarios and pres ent their digital stories to their classmates at the end of the project. The adapted version of ‘How Creative Are You?’ scale (Whetten & Cameron, 2011) was used for measuring the students’ creativity scores before and after the implementation. Whereas resu lts indicated that creativity scores were increased by the digital storytelling production project, this effect was not significant. However, observation of the production process revealed some components of creative thinking skills of students.

Raising Awareness of Stereotyping Through Collaborative Digital Storytelling: Design for Change with and for Children

The purpose of our research is to use design as a mean to support children becoming more aware of stereotypes in their own artefacts. We have been facing this challenge leveraging on Digital StoryTelling (DST) as a powerful instrument to detect children's beliefs and values including those connecting to gender. In addition, considering the role of social interactions in creating and reproducing gender stereotypes in children we have been focusing on the collaborative creation of digital stories to investigate stereotypes as a cultural product. The goal of the paper is to give an account of our process of digging into this topic and our design pathway in developing and assess a DST prototype directed to raise children's awareness. Our work main contribution is to spread insight on our approach and support the HCI community to replicate it to challenge the negative effect of stereotypes, and to provide new knowledge on how gender stereotype awareness could be raised among children through the collaborative creation of DST. As a final research contribution we provide a set of design recommendations to address the design of a collaborative DST tool for raising stereotype awareness.

“Come and share a story with me”: Promoting engagement between Ethiopian and Non-Ethiopian Israelis via joint digital narratives

Does building a collaborative digital story lead to reduction of intergroup tension? Studies show that joint storytelling can help reach deeper levels of understanding through exposure to another group's narrative. We hypothesized that engagement in a collaborative digital storytelling task would lead to reductions of negative emotions and attitudes. In our study, dyads of Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian Israelis interacted via a unique digital platform that supports storytelling in a comics-like format aiming to reduce intergroup tension. Their responses to this task were measured before and after the joint activity. Findings showed a decrease in negative emotional states in intergroup contexts (STAI) between pre-and post-intervention for members of both groups, and a slight decrease in negative attitudes toward the out-group. In other words, joint-digital storytelling sessions lead groups in complex relations to be more likely to support engagement. This study has implications for the effect of contact on intergroup tension.

Improving Primary School Students’ Creative Writing and Social-Emotional Learning Skills through Collaborative Digital Storytelling

Improving Primary School Students’ Creative Writing and Social-Emotional Learning Skills through Collaborative Digital Storytelling

Students’ perceptions about the effects of collaborative digital storytelling on writing skills

This study aims to identify the students’ perceptions about how collaborative digital storytelling use in writing class affects their writing skills. Having a qualitative research design, the research has utilized an action research model. The research was conducted in two different classes with first-year university students studying at the Department of Turkish Education (N = 61). Students have produced two different digital stories (DSTs) throughout the course. The first DST was created individually, and the second collaboratively. Students actively participated in producing and criticizing the phases of digital stories. The researcher and students’ diaries and focus group interviews were used as data collection tools. Data were analyzed through the Nvivo 12 qualitative data analysis program. During the analysis process, data were first converted into codes, and the obtained codes were divided into themes and sub-themes. Findings indicated that students have a perception that collaborative DST improves their writing skills. It is reflected in the student views that collaborative DST positively affects the internal and external structure of the text. The multimedia feature and the script have positive effect on writing and help to harmonize technology and writing.

A pedagogical framework of cross-cultural online collaborative projects in English as Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms

Many researchers have focused on online collaborative learning, cross-cultural communication, project-based learning, digital literacy, and digital storytelling but there is no pedagogical framework that incorporates these elements for English as Foreign Language (EFL) teaching. This study based on the qualitative design established a pedagogical framework from three different types of cross-cultural collaborative projects with the collected data including students’ artifacts and project structures. We have found that the pedagogical framework proposed here serves as a guide to facilitate different types of cross-cultural projects in their classrooms. The multiple cases of cross-cultural online collaborative projects in an EFL class were taught according to the theories of project-based learning and content language integrated learning alike, proved to follow this pedagogical framework. Implementation is also described to give more details on how the projects were conducted. In the end, opportunities and challenges are provided for future implementation of online collaborative EFL projects.

Digital Storytelling Project as a Way to Engage Students in Twenty-First Century Skills Learning

Abstract This paper is focused on the implications of a collaborative digital storytelling project on student engagement in the higher education context. The empirical study is conducted with an interdisciplinary group of bachelor students in a Nordic University (N = 22) and a university in Southern Europe (N = 21), and the data are collected through an online student survey. The results demonstrate that the digital storytelling project supported students’ behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. In general, the students had positive emotional experiences with the project. This assignment format was found less stressful than a frontal presentation in the classroom, allowing the students to express their perspectives more freely and confidently. The digital storytelling format also opened up for more creative ways to approach the task. It was important for the participants to have the project assignment split up in several checkpoints with feedback from the instructor. At the same time, the students suggested several areas for further improvement. Those are mainly related to the guidance on the use of technology and scripting the learning process within the small groups. Based on the results of the study, a range of practical implications for teaching practice is formulated.

Towards Emancipatory L2 Instruction: Exploring Significant Learning Outcomes from Collaborative Digital Storytelling

<p style="text-align:justify">Digital storytelling has undergone extensive study in different content-areas, but its naturally-combined use with collaborative writing for skills development, and reflective practice remains underresearched in pre-service EFL teacher education. This study undertook joint tech-enhanced retelling of L2 texts by 56 Turkish EFL teacher candidates, rubric-based peer and teacher assessment of final products, comparative analysis of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) between outliers, and process evaluation using the significant learning taxonomy to explore impacts on L2 writing performance, academic learning, and personal growth. Despite assigning lower scores than the teacher-assessors, especially to the top-performers, the majority of peers successfully fulfilled the job, effectively performed the future reviewer role, and positively reacted to co-construction, and technology integration. CAF and reflection analyses indicated that the biggest difference between the highest- and lowest-scoring groups lay in grammatical accuracy, and lack of mutual interaction could account for the less cooperative group’s poorer performance. The classification of their post-task responses into six kinds of learning gains (foundational knowledge, application, integration, human dimension, caring, and learning how to learn) also revealed that their collaborative digital storytelling experience (CDS) elicited more procedural, critical, creative and practical thinking on the academic learning front, while disciplinary and integrative thinking may have declined due to more immediate preoccupation with task achievement. Their critical thinking was mainly organised around consensus-reaching, fluctuating membership, and logistical challenges, and most demonstrated a clear understanding of the role of positive group dynamics in group outcomes. Despite heightened awareness of the performance-boosting, character-forming, and motivational benefits of collective scaffolding and multimodal meaning-making, a minority could also discern the instrumentality of innovative teaching techniques in their future classroom practices.</p>

A longitudinal analysis of student participation in a digital collaborative storytelling activity

Despite the positive potential of the online social networking platforms, the longitudinal studies regarding how children participate in digital storytelling communities is still scant in the literature. This study investigated how 26 elementary students participated in a 2-year digital storytelling community mediated by a social network application. By analyzing the students’ weekly responses, social networks, and their language learning performance, the results suggested that their oral reading proficiency improved along with their participation in the long-term activity. It was also found that the community features impacted the students’ sense of engagement in the activity. The feature of the learning community that allows students to team up with partners to complete a story improved their engagement and motivation. The social network analysis found that multiple literacies including multimedia processing, language, and collaboration were all considered by students as important criteria for the partnership to complete the collaborative digital storytelling work. However, such a prolonged collaborative digital storytelling activity also introduced new challenges for those students demonstrating unfavorable collaboration profiles as they needed to learn how to collaborate in order to team up with others. The implications of the findings for educational practice are discussed.

Cultural educating of Palestinian youth through collaborative digital storytelling

Youth reliance on social media platforms as their main source of media consumption presents an opportunity to increase their cultural knowledge through engaging them in digital storytelling of their village oral history. This paper examines the results of a pilot study conducted in Palestinian villages with youth who were trained on local interviewing village elders to create digital stories. The process was designed in a collaborative game-like environment to obtain maximum engagement, thus creating a state of flow as stipulated by Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory. The surveys conducted at the beginning and end of the project, combined with ethnographic action research, demonstrate that it is possible for the youths’ level of interest in the creation of the digital stories attains a state of flow when the process can be immersive and engaging such that a multi-phase plan that includes skilling then challenges at each phase – not unlike a game.