this one (wrong, wrong, right! creating an academic digital storytelling program that works) was ace, and looked at a program at ohio state. they started off by sharing a digital story that a lecturer had created - which was a great way of getting people hooked in to the power of the medium.
they've had a digital storytelling program in operation for a while, and the focus of the session was on 6 revisions they've made to make it more successful. the 6 elements are:
- development of a 3-day intensive workshop
- a scriptwriting pre-workshop activity
- shift from personal stories to academic-focussed [pretty much a move from academics making stories, to academic stories created by academic and non-academic staff]
- outreach to new 'unexpected' participants [including those staff who have completed the course helping their colleagues to develop skills]
- application process [interested staff have to submit their ideas and give an idea of what they hope to achieve
- screenings of completed stories a couple of weeks after the course had finished
you can look at additional resources and examples of the stories here.
a few things (possibly) worth highlighting from the session:
- students from multimedia courses help with hands on teaching of techniques
- during the workshop, they maintain a check list of tasks - tracking activities that individual have completed, and still need to complete
- the selectivity/application process helps participants focus on their reasons for applying - eg, what story would you like to share?
- they set a 400 word limit for the summary of the story - one key point of the course is how to use images, sounds, etc, to convey meaning rather than relying on text
- academics are using the resources for teaching and learning as well as dissemination of research
- after couple of weeks break to allow fine tuning of the stories they hold a screening to show the end products - and they usually get 50/60 people attending to find out more
they did (rather cruelly) make us think during the session, and asked us to talk about existing groups on-campus who might find digital stories a useful way of sharing information. i thought maybe something like the integrated e-learning course would be interesting - so to embed some similar techniques into an extended version of the course, and get participants to tell stories about the things that have inspired them (if that's not too strong a word) to revisit their curriculum and/or take the course in the first place.
any more for any more?
