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2011 Highlights:  Digital Storytelling at Mercy College - from Adoption to Integration

2010-11 was an exciting year at Mercy College with the introduction of a digital storytelling pilot as a reflective tool for capturing student learning and transformation.  A collaborative partnership betwen the Mercy Library and the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning has been the source and driving force behind the continuing growth of this model for learning and reflection.  Its success is evident in the increasing numbers of faculty and students using the tool.  By leveraging digital storytelling (DST) workshops given to the Faculty Learning Community cohort focused on the Freshman Seminar Program, we were able to generate a core of "first adopters" willing to integrate DST into their curriculum and expand its usage. The following represents a brief timeline of DST's diffusion into curriculum:

Faculty Timeline:  Digital Storytelling Growth at Mercy College

Student Growth:  Digital Storytelling

Student reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, encouraging  a deepening penetration of DST through word of mouth, exposure of faculty to digital stories at Faculty Seminar Days and other presentations, and through dissemination of information via the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning and the newly formed DST faculty learning community. As a result, the numbers of students creating digital stories has also increased:

Rubrics and Digital Storytelling Assessment:

Perhaps the most positive and critical development in DST in 2010-11 at Mercy has been in the development of tailored rubrics, designed to clearly communicate learning outcomes to students so that they are fully aware of what is expected of them.  In addition, rubrics have been essential in enabling faculty to understand how to assess and grade digital stories, which are often difficult to assess because of the subjective nature of evaluating personal stories.   A subteam of librarians and faculty in the DST learning community worked togethor to create a three tiered approach to evaluating digital stories based on the pre-develepment and planning stage, the story itself and a final post-reflection.  Togethor, the three componenet create a powerful and robust method of applying DST to almost any discipline that chooses to utilize the tool. Examples of the rubric are attached below.

Faculty Survey

To gauge the success of the digital storytelling initiative, we created an online survey for instructors integrating DST into their curriculum in the fall, 2011 semester. The findings demonstrated that the tool was highly engaging for both faculty and students.  Approximately half of the faculty utilizing DST responded to the survey.  The findings are available as attachment below.

2010 - 11 Highlights:  Digital Storytelling Pilot at Mercy College

The digital storytelling initiative at Mercy began in the spring of 2010 resulting from an informal environmental scan of Mercy's academic offerings and programming for students, especially in the first year.  Several needs were identifed:

• To engage students around aspects of their personal lives linked to the college identity and mission regarding multi-literacies, social values, personal growth and life long learning

• To ignite faculty interest and excitement around emerging technology, media scholarship and its application to pedagogy and learning in higher education

• To apply new assessment tools for analyzing and improving the undergrad education experience but not excluding application at the graduate level                                                                                                      

As a result of this scan it was determined that digital storytelling might provide an effective means of engaging students in their coursework and as an instrument for assessment.  Several assumptions informed the development plan for digital storytelling at Mercy:

• Early adopters would spread the excitement and value to a larger community

• Leveraging an already existing faculty learning community interested in new ideas - the Freshman Seminar faculty cohort - would help give structure and scope to a DS initiative

• The newly formed Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning would provide a nurturing environment for developing resources and synergy around DS 

Advantages of Digital Storytelling

The openness of the digital storytelling form as a pedagogical practice would enable it to work within a variety of Freshman Seminar instructional approaches, styles and content.  In addition, user-friendly software and resources would be selected to make digital storytelling inviting and accessible to students and instructors.  Other advantages include:

• Software that is freely available (Photostory 3)

• The tech skills developed are practical, widely applicable and life long

• The intellectual and technical demands on the student are realistic

• The focus on student personal lives ensures a degree of interest and engagement

• Mercy’s modest tech resources would support a pilot digital storytelling initiative 

A partnership between the Library and the Faculty Center for Teaching in Learning enabled the development of workshops, informal training, resources and tech support.  This continuing and growing synergy represents the beginning foundation of a DS practice at Mercy, summarized as follows:

• Presentation on digital storytelling was given to the Freshman Seminar Cohort in spring, 2010

• While the presentation was just an introduction, it created an immediate buzz that spread beyond the Cohort

• Modeling stories found on web proved to be highly effective method of marketing and teaching the new concept

• Health faculty immediately were engaged (seeing applications to their programs on many levels including service learning, internships, clinical documentations, etc)

Two summer workshops were developed as follow-ups to the spring introduction:

• Digital storytelling was introduced via e-mail to invitees who consulted a library Libguide to prepare their material

• Attendees were given introduction to digital storytelling with discussion by instructional designer and librarian on concepts and techniques

• Attendees constructed stories

• Final showcase was highly enjoyable and informative

• 2nd workshop introduced and emphasized rubrics and assessment

Continuing Development

Both an instructional designer and librarian participated in a formal training session in Toronto sponsored by the highly regarded Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) in September, 2010.  Armed with new ideas and approaches to storytelling instruction, instructional designers worked with selected faculty to develop stories for the fall, 2010 Faculty Seminar Day.  Highlights included:

• Inspirational digital stories reflecting themes of social justice and the college mission were integrated into the keynote address by Roxana Saberi, the CNN journalist imprisoned and later released from Iran

• A digital storytelling breakout session introduced CDS techniques such as the story circle

• A short, introductory CDS exercise called "Haircut" engaged users and created an immediate sense of community

• Digital storytelling was introduced to a wider, multidisciplinary audience at both the undergrad and graduate level

As a result of the DS initiative, five faculty member integrated digital storytelling assignments into their fall 2010 curriculum, including three Freshman Seminar instructors, one Honors English and one graduate education instructor.  To facilitate the success of these early adopters, the FCTL/Library partnership encouraged the following:

• Instructional Designer/Librarian worked with faculty through semester on guidance, tech training and assessment

• Tech support via Library Media Service staff provided hardware and assistance for students

• Feedback and assessment between the faculty and FCTL/Library team enabled a synergistic growth model for continuing development and improvement

• The formation of a DS or media scholarship-based faculty learning community is being proposed to strengthen and broaden the use of this tool at Mercy

Conclusion

The first semester of full-form digital storytelling at Mercy has proven to be stimulating, informative, fulfilling and highly engaging for students and faculty.  The goal of the library and Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning partnership will be to find ways to broaden the use of DS across the curriculum, to explore the development of individualized assessment rubrics and to promote media scholarship as a powerful and rigorous mode of learning that addresses critical, multiple literacies.