"My first-year students benefit from putting new knowledge back into context, so I implemented digital storytelling as a motivational and authentic means for them to express new ideas in context." - Alan Russell

Context

I attended a workshop about visual learning where we investigated the power of digital storytelling. My main teaching load involves first-year students through general statistics and the global experience. Even though the digital storytelling examples we were discussing were used in junior/senior courses, I felt the medium had something to offer my students. So, I provided more structure and added a strong layer of support to help new students through the project.

In the global experience, my students spend quite a bit of time pulling out the six large themes from several different contexts or different facets of the theme. I realized that it was important to have the students create their own context as a wrap up activity. In past semesters I’d asked students to create a chapter for our own book. The book we produced represented what the class meant to us and revealed how we investigated the themes. It was an easy transformation us to move to digital storytelling as a means to record our view of the six themes.

In general statistics, the students are asked to carry out a simple research project where they collect data and report their findings. After spending a semester learning how to correctly perform calculations, it is not surprising that they focus on the results of these calculations to the detriment of the “big picture”. The weakest point is pulling their findings back into context. Adding the digital storytelling requirement at the end of the project forces them to focus on the context of the research. They once again see the forest instead of the individual trees.