Digital storytelling provides students the opportunity to bring their lived experiences into the classroom as creators rather than consumers of knowledge. In this episode, Tom Mackey and Sheila Aird join us to discuss ways digital storytelling can be used to increase student information literacy, critical thinking skills, and to support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Tom is a Professor of Arts and Media and Program Coordinator for the BA and BS degrees in Digital Media Arts at SUNY Empire State University. He is the recipient of a 2022 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities and the recipient of several other awards for his teaching and mentoring work. Tom is also the co-author of several books and two MOOCs that focus on metaliteracy. Sheila is an Associate Professor and European Director of International Programs at SUNY’s Empire State University in Prague, in the Czech Republic. Her work broadly focuses on cultural history and public scholarship with a particular focus on public history, pop culture, children of colonial enslavement, and issues of race in the African Diaspora community. Sheila has presented her work in many domestic and international venues and has co-authored two papers with Tom. Sheila and Tom are the co-editors of the new book, Teaching Digital Storytelling: Inspiring Voices through Online Narratives, published in 2024 by Rowman and Littlefield. They also co-authored the framing chapter for this volume based on their collaborative development and teaching of Digital Storytelling as a virtual exchange between SUNY Empire students studying in Prague and the United States.
Show Notes
- Aird, Sheila Marie, and Thomas P,. Mackey, eds. (2024). Teaching Digital Storytelling: Inspiring Voices through Online Narratives. Rowman and Littlefield.
- Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson. (2018). Metaliteracy. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 52.
- Global Stories blog
- Virtual Museum
- Metaliteracy.org blog
- StoryCorps
- StoryCenter
- Animation Block Party
- OpenAI
- StoryCenter Ethical Practice (contains StoryTellers’ Bill of Rights on pages 7-8.)
Transcript
John: Digital storytelling provides students the opportunity to bring their lived experiences into the classroom as creators rather than consumers of knowledge. In this episode, we discuss ways digital storytelling can be used to increase student information literacy, critical thinking skills, and to support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
[MUSIC]
John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
[MUSIC]
John: Our guests today are Tom Mackey and Sheila Aird. Tom is a Professor of Arts and Media and Program Coordinator for the BA and BS degrees in Digital Media Arts at SUNY Empire State University. He is the recipient of a 2022 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities and the recipient of several other awards for his teaching and mentoring work. Tom is also the co-author of several books and two MOOCs that focus on metaliteracy. Sheila is an Associate Professor and European Director of International Programs at SUNY’s Empire State University in Prague, in the Czech Republic. Her work broadly focuses on cultural history and public scholarship with a particular focus on public history, pop culture, children of colonial enslavement, and issues of race in the African Diaspora community. Sheila has presented her work in many domestic and international venues and has co-authored two papers with Tom. Sheila and Tom are the co-editors of the new book, Teaching Digital Storytelling: Inspiring Voices through Online Narratives, published in 2024 by Rowman and Littlefield. They also co-authored the framing chapter for this volume based on their collaborative development and teaching of Digital Storytelling as a virtual exchange between SUNY Empire students studying in Prague and the United States. Welcome Sheila, and welcome back, Tom.
Sheila: Thank you.
Tom: Thanks so much. So happy to be here. Appreciate the interest in our new book.
Sheila: Absolutely.
Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Tom, are you drinking tea?
Tom: I sure am. So, I’m drinking Celestial Seasonings Tangerine Orange, Zinger.
Rebecca: Nice. And how about you, Sheila?
Sheila: I am drinking hibiscus tea in a Starbucks cup, but that’s okay.
John: And I am drinking lady gray tea in a SUNY- Oswego School of Education mug, which was given to us when we moved into this new recording space by the dean of the school.
Sheila: Nice.
Tom: Great.
Rebecca: We’re enjoying our nice space here, for sure, and I have a nice cup of Hunan jig, which I brewed this morning.
Sheila: Great.
Tom: That’s great.
John: We’ve invited you here to discuss your new book. But first, could you talk a little bit about what a digital story is? How would you define this?
Tom: Well, the idea of a digital story is that anyone with access to digital resources can really write, plan and produce their own personal narratives. So this is an idea that’s been around now for, I would say, a few decades, and there’s been a lot of interest in this, but it really is about being able to tell your story using digital technologies. And the idea, too, is that you don’t have to have the most expensive tools to do that, these could be freely available tools that are online, and, again, really empower people to tell their story.
Sheila: Absolutely, and as Tom said, today, since we’re so technologically connected, anyone with a cell phone, and we know that through some of the things that are coming through social media and people creating narratives and developing narratives, but in this particular instance, this is about teaching students how to not only use their cell phones, but introducing them to free and different editing software and going through steps in order to come out with a finished product.
Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about how your book, Teaching Digital Storytelling, came to be?
Sheila: The back story is Tom and I both were teaching digital storytelling in our own sections. While in Europe, we came up with the idea to bring the students that were in Europe into the learning environment with the students that were in the U.S. So that was how he and I started working together and creating an environment for the students to work together, which we thought was brilliant, because we just think that… you’re an academic, you just think like, “oh, that’s a brilliant idea.” [LAUGHTER] And so we worked it through both with the Executive Director of International Programs, Francesca Cichello, and she was very happy about our ideas. So Tom and I worked feverishly to create the course. And while doing the course, we were also writing some articles. And then one day, Tom really came up with the idea and said it would be good for us to put together scholars from all over the world in this book. And it was particularly perfect since we were working with students in Europe as well as the US, it made sense to have an international perspective. Tom can go a little further on how that worked, but that’s the initial way that we started the conversation to create the book.
Tom: And that’s perfectly stated. That’s really how it happened. And it is interesting that this idea of a collaboration between the two of us then really launched the idea of the book, which was also really supporting collaboration, focused on teaching digital storytelling. So this course we’ve both been excited about as Sheila mentioned. We’ve both taught it individually. It’s really a legacy course that’s been a part of the online program for many years at Empire State University. And I think having that experience of teaching it together and thinking about how to revise the course, or this virtual exchange between Prague and the United States, had a lot to do with how the ideas developed. It’s interesting that when we got together and we decided to do this, again, virtually, a fully online course, we really took a close look at it, and I know we’ll be talking about metaliteracy later on, probably, but I do want to point out that we really did a really full revision of the course for this particular exchange, so that the core of it is still there. But even though I’ve been doing all this work with metaliteracy. Sheila said, we really need to build more of those metaliteracy ideas into it. And the idea of a metaliteracy is that students are reflective. They see themselves as producers of information. So that alignment between metaliteracy and the course really worked out perfectly. So we revised several of the core assignments in the course to build more of the metaliteracy components in it so that students could, not only participate in this virtual exchange between Europe and the US, but they also were able to think about themselves as metaliterate learners through this experience. So that was a key point too in the book is that when we decided to do the book, it was building this collaboration. We were hoping really to get interest from authors from around the world, which is what we ended up with, which we’ll talk about too. So we’re very excited that it has that international component, which was key to our experience. But we also asked all of the authors to really look at their experience teaching digital storytelling from around the world through the lens of metaliteracy. So some of them may have already been familiar with meta literacy if they were not. This provided them with an opportunity to look at their own teaching through that particular perspective, which I think also contributes to really what we have here with this book, Teaching Digital Storytelling.
John: We’ve discussed metaliteracy on an earlier podcast with Tom and Trudi Jacobson, and we will share a link to that in the show notes. But could you redefine for those listeners who don’t remember that episode or missed that episode, what metaliteracy is?
Tom: Sure, so I’ve been developing this idea of metaliteracy. And as you noted, this was really a full collaboration between me and Trudi Jacobson from the University of Albany, and we had been working together, really, for decades. And the idea originally started as this idea of reframing information literacy, so thinking about information literacy in a new way, and trying to move beyond just skills development, that is finding, locating, using information, which was an older definition, to really thinking about a meta literacy that’s more of a holistic, overarching, comprehensive framework that really encourages students to think about themselves as knowledge producers, specifically in the kinds of new environments that we’re in. When we first advanced the idea, it was thinking about social media, in particular, online communities that’s now evolved to the kinds of AI environments that we’re in, and specifically generative AI, and thinking about how Gen AI impacts the production experience. So no matter what environment a student is in, the idea is that they develop a metaliteracy mindset that prepares them for that information environment. That’s really important, because we know that these environments are always changing. And the AI experience, of course, is a really, kind of a revolutionary change in how we understand the production, distribution of information. AI is having an impact on all aspects of our life right now. So the idea, then, is that students think about themselves as producers of digital content, both individually and in collaboration with their peers. So that works perfectly for a course about digital storytelling where that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Rebecca: So the publication is part of the series of books on innovations and information literacy by series editor Trudi Jacobson, who we just mentioned. Can you talk a little bit about how the digital storytelling assignments helped to develop the student information literacy and metaliteracy skills that you’ve been talking about?
Tom: Sure, well, let me first say I really appreciate you mentioning that this is part of the larger series. And when we first brought the idea to Trudi Jacobsen, who I’ve been working with all these years, she loved the idea, so we really had her support, and then she was able to support us as we proposed this to Rowman and Littlefield. I also had this great opportunity to work with Charles Harmon, who I had worked with on several of my edited books with Trudi earlier in my career, so it’s really exciting to have that collaboration and to have Trudi’s support for this idea and how we revised it to include metaliteracy components.
Sheila: The course is staggered and in a structured way, to take students from step one, step two, to get through the process. Now with meta literacy, we found it because I love the whole idea of it, because I think that it puts students in a position to think about who they are in terms of not only a production, but even their learning ability. Are they more upfront? Are they more behind the scenes? How do they work within these different environments? So some of the things in meta literacy, like, do you prefer to work singularly? Do you want to work in a group? Are you more of a leader type? And so it makes the students delve into who they are in terms of a learner. And I think that is extremely important, because I think that part of teaching students who they are is oftentimes skipped in the educational and the learning environment, so to bring them in slowly, because, as we know students think, “Oh, digital storytelling, this is going to be a walk in the park.[LAUGHTER] I’m just going to do a little thing.” And that is so not what this course is about. So the first thing we have them do is a selfie, and in that selfie they can do it any way they want. And we got some really great stuff, because some students did anime, s ome students just sat in front of the camera. They were more comfortable with that. Other students did voice overs, and so it gave them an opportunity to create a hello to everyone in the course in any way they wanted to. So that’s an interesting thing, because usually, sometimes, students want to be told exactly what to do, and that’s not the case here. There are certain requirements, but you kind of have free reign to develop these narratives and stories however you wish. And believe me, we’ve had some interesting stories. So the selfies begin to connect them to the meta literacy framework. And Tom and I talked about this, wanted it in the very beginning of the course, because then that would inform how they went forward.
Tom: Absolutely, it’s really a great way to talk about that. And I really like the way, too, you mentioned that it’s making students aware of themselves as a learner, sort of that broader perspective. So we get them to do that right from the very beginning. The idea of a selfie too is everyone is familiar with the idea of taking a selfie picture. So the idea of a selfie video, I think it places them in a situation that they’re a little bit more comfortable with, that they kind of get what that is. They know what that is. So that means sure that they have to be on camera. But if they want to use an avatar, because some students don’t want to appear in front of the camera, that’s okay, they can start with the avatar. That first assignment is important too, because it’s an introduction to the course. They introduce who they are, where they’re from, whether they’re from Prague or the US. And the other thing we ask them to do. With metaliteracy, there’s a visual model that kind of simplifies and explains what this is. So it shows that the core four domains of learning, including metacognitive, affective, behavioral, cognitive then it shows as a central ring that shows the characteristics of the metaliterate learners, such as being productive, civic minded, things like that. But then the outer ring is focused on the roles of the meta literate learner, such as being a producer, a researcher, a communicator. So with that first assignment, that visual model, we present the model to the students, and it really had a big impact, I think, on the assignment itself, because we asked them to do more than just introduce themselves. We also asked them to select one of the metaliterate learner roles that they identify with the most. So it’s interesting. Some students will say, “Yeah, I see myself as a producer.” Others say, “I see myself as a communicator or researcher,” and that allows them, too, to say a little bit more about themselves. So maybe at work they’re an effective communicator, or maybe in their own time, working with social media, that they’ve already produced video or images or things like that. So it really allows for an excellent introduction to the course, while they’re also starting to investigate this metaliteracy model. So we really bring them into the conversation. It’s not just applying a model to our teaching, it’s really inviting students to think about the model themselves and to start grappling with what meta literacy is. Also, Sheila, I think you’ve really made a great point in terms of how we envision this as a kind of scaffolding. Throughout the course of the assignments, we go from the selfie video to then an assignment about mobile learning, so that we ask students to produce a digital story with their mobile device, because so much of what we do today is with our cell phones, and that’s really fascinating, and that gets them out in their community. So it gets them beyond just working with their laptop. They really think about what they can do as a digital storyteller with that cell phone that they always have in their pocket. Then the next assignment, again, kind of scaffolding, goes to a theme of empowerment, which is core to metaliteracy, because the whole idea, if you become aware of yourself as a metaliterate learner, then you are empowered, because you can make decisions about your learning. So it’s not just gaining insights about who you are, that’s a key part of it, but it’s then being able to identify, perhaps, where you need to improve. And that is empowering for students, and that, I think, is probably one of my favorite parts of the course. Sheila, I don’t know what you think of that, but when they really talk about empowerment, of their own empowerment, people in their lives who have empowered them, your parents or friends, or maybe even celebrities that they look up to, or authors, musicians, things like that, that, to me, is a real turning point in the class where they’re producing really sophisticated work, and they’re working with one of the key themes of meta literacy, which is empowerment.
Sheila: Absolutely. With that empowerment piece, it gives them freedom to bring forward what empowerment means to them, and they take different routes, like nothing is the same. And as Tom noted, some of them might do personal things. It might be a family member or whatever. Others might talk about a movement, others talk about a moment in time when they felt empowered. And I think that this is the beginning of them opening up and feeling some sort of autonomy in what they will create moving forward and realizing that, this course, you have to work. You have to actually do the work. This is not about memorization. This is not about a test in terms of you must answer these questions properly or you fail. This is practical and giving them experience that they can use moving forward, whether it is to document an older family member’s stories, whether it’s to document your community, whether to look at what’s happening outside, in terms of the world around us, and what are those things that make you feel that you are empowered? So it’s a great exercise that puts them in place for what is yet to come.
Tom: And I just want to jump in too with one other point, because as you were talking about that, it made me realize too that here’s another key aspect of our teaching digital storytelling, that also influenced the book, because this idea of students introducing themselves through the selfie and then also the empowerment piece is also key to another core theme to the book, which is diversity, equity, and inclusion. We really see this course as opening up conversations about students, their identity, who they are, and that was something else that when we put the call out to all the authors, we were hoping for international perspectives, which we certainly gained. We were also hoping for a discussion about metaliteracy. But the other core part of this book is really every chapter author focuses how digital storytelling really promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Sheila: Exactly. Very important point, yes.
John: Certainly, by having students tell their own stories, it automatically brings their lived experiences into their course. So I could see how that would be very useful. How might digital storytelling connect to campus DEI initiatives?
Tom: I think that the idea of digital storytelling, it’s a course, but what we do in this course could certainly be utilized in courses that are not about digital storytelling, which is, I think what we have in the book. There’s some authors who utilize digital storytelling techniques to support these ideas. So I would think that, in terms of campus initiatives, this idea of getting students to really utilize these digital tools, which continue to change, and now with certainly the generative AI revolution, this would be a great way for students to think about the production of their stories. Sheila, what do you think about that?
Sheila: I would say that, how does it connect to campus initiatives? I think by creating a safe environment for students to create a story and to share, because sometimes it’s very personal, and so for them to feel comfortable and safe in this environment and to produce it and edit it, can definitely connect to campus DEI issues, because this is another approach. This is not just, “Oh, we’re going to read this.” This is what DEI is, we’re going to try and do these initiatives. Students are living those DEI experiences in real time. And as we saw, like, particularly around the COVID era, students were sharing what that was like for them, depending on who they were, where their cultural place is in society. And I think that this, as Tom said, is definitely as connected. And I think it would be very useful for students to be involved in these sort of narratives across campuses. I think it would weave a fantastic story on how DEI is useful, how it has impacted them, what their experiences are, and I think that puts them more in the conversation, other than, “Oh, this acronym, DEI, I don’t know, it doesn’t really affect me,” or “I don’t know about it,” but when you give people a camera, a pen, and a piece of paper, it shifts the paradigm, and it shifts kind of like in public history. So public history is a bottom-up approach, not a top- down approach. And connecting digital storytelling to this is that you’re empowering your students. You’re empowering the people that now, the way we use technology, are able to share their story across different venues and take different approaches to do that. So, yes, I think it can be connected very much so.
Tom: Yeah, I think it’s interesting too, because it allows students, as Sheila said, to really utilize these digital tools that they all have access to, and in many ways, to reclaim that space, because there’s so much misinformation out there. There’s so much disinformation, especially sort of where we are right now, and it allows students to be reflective, to be ethical producers of information, telling their authentic story. At the end of the day, that’s really what we’re doing in this course, and it’s what we’re trying to advance and encourage with our authors, and they just did an amazing work in that area. So again, it’s also kind of a democratization of technology, because we’re saying, as Sheila pointed out, we’ll give some parameters, we give some suggested ideas for digital tools. But we also like it when they find tools that are easily accessible to them. They don’t have to buy a very expensive product to produce digital stories. So I think making them aware of that environment, that they are really the ones doing this kind of research to find interesting tools and then to use those in a productive and ethical way to tell their authentic story. I mean, that’s what the course is all about, and that’s really what the book is about.
Rebecca: I think it’s really important to underscore that storytelling is such a powerful way to communicate, and data is a powerful way to communicate, but the literature just really describes this power, and that literature is really extensive. Can you talk a little bit about why storytelling is so powerful as a form of communication?
Sheila: Well, storytelling, as we know, is ancient history. No pun intended, right? But it is something that’s been going on for years and years and years, and I think that because, prior to this technology, there were people in control of whose story they told, how they told the story, what they wanted to tell in their story, who would be excluded from the story, who would be included in the story. And so digital storytelling is an absolutely powerful tool in that regular everyday folks can take back that power and inform and properly display and write and direct and do this script and this story board and create and weave a story that is important to them, important to their community, and it puts them, so to speak, in the game. It’s no longer the idea of, “Well, I can’t buy a $10,000 camera, I can’t even buy a $1,000 camera. I don’t have the editing tool.” That is now passe. All you need, is a cell phone. On the flip side, if you want to do a non visual, all you need is a recorder. You can do an audio podcast. So I think, and I know Tom and I agree with this, storytelling is powerful and in the hands of the right people, it can evolve and include many more people than it would without digital storytelling, because then they have to go the traditional way, and that was very difficult at one time, it’s no longer as difficult, which means that the market gets flooded with good, bad, and ugly and indifferent things. But teaching in the environment that we teach, we’re coming from an angle where ethics is extremely important, using the proper materials are important, and we teach that all the way along. And then you do you, you create your story using what you’ve learned thus far, and you can share it just with the class. You can share it if you have a YouTube, Instagram, whatever. And then there’s something we can talk about after. And we have a museum that we’re further developing. And the idea of the museum, which started years ago, was to have an environment to put students’ work, because I always felt that sometimes students do some really great project, and then what? Where is it? They put in all this work all semester, and in that moment when they present, okay, this is great, But then, where is it? Well, ask permission for students who wish to have their work put in the museum, then it becomes a living space. So if they want to connect their family to the museum, their friends. If they’re going for a job in marketing or whatever, and they say, let me show you a little something I did while I was in school. They can connect, and it’ll be there, hopefully forever and ever, and demonstrates the work that they do. And that is another way of empowering students and letting them know that their work is important, and we put it in this environment, and it’ll be there till whenever, because we’ve had some great submissions with the students’ permission to put in the museum, which we hope to further develop. Well, we will. I don’t even hope to, we shall further develop it. I don’t believe in “Well, we tried.” No, we’re going to do it. We’re going to develop it further, and invite others to put their students’ work in the museum as well. It has a lot of good reasons for having it and what we’re doing.
Tom: That’s a really great point. And this was really Sheila’s idea, because it was based on a virtual museum that we’re using in digital storytelling was based on Sheila’s experience in public history. And so she had a virtual public history museum, which we’ve since adapted to this particular course. And it is important to this idea of narrative, because students, again, with their permission, they get to share their stories, and we get to see this over a period of time, and we’re really gaining quite a collection of student work that is, in many ways, instructive. So a key aspect of metaliteracy, one of the roles is teacher. So that learner as teacher. And in many ways, they’re doing that through their collaborative work. And we make them aware of that in the course. But I think they’re also doing it through the sharing of their stories that they’ve produced. It allows others to see the kind of work that can be done. And again, it gets to this point of how important narrative is. And students, I think, as producers of digital stories, I think they become much more discerning of the kinds of narratives they see on a daily basis, which is really important. So it allows them to be more analytical. It allows them to be more of a critical thinker in terms of the content they are receiving on a daily basis, because there are all kinds of digital stories. An advertisement could be a digital story. The kinds of political ads we’re seeing now, those are narratives, and we want students to be really discerning and as they access and review that information, one way we do it, too, I just thought of is, in addition to having them as producers, we also share with them and ask them to analyze digital stories that are about personal narratives. So there’s some great resources out there, StoryCorps, StoryCenter, Animation Block, which is really focused on animation in particular. So we’ve done some curation of really effective digital stories that we ask students to analyze as part of the online discussions and as part of their engagement with the readings that we provide as well. And I think that also contributes to their ability to analyze the kinds of narratives they see on a daily basis, and also being able to produce in an effective, ethical way, their own personal narratives, which are important. And one last thing I’ll say about this too, is that in the course, the writing really is a key part of this. So digital tools are important, but Sheila mentioned the script. So script writing, we spend quite a bit of time on just the words and having students really think about what they’re going to say, how they’re going to map this out as a professional script. They also have to do a visual storyboard, which is another key part of planning. So before they even jump into the digital tools, we really want them to reflect on what they’re writing, what it’s going to look like visually, and how all the pieces really come together through the digital story.
John: One aspect of what you both mentioned is that when students create this work, it’s very different than the type of work they do in many of their classes, where they write something up, they submit it to the learning management system, and then at the end of the term, it goes away and they never see it again. David Wiley refers to that as a disposable assignment…
Tom: Yes.
John: …and having something that lasts beyond the term, that they can share with people, that they can put on their LinkedIn profiles or share with their friends, their family, and so forth, is a really valuable experience. One of the other things, though, you’ve been talking about, is that you mentioned the course that you’ve taught together, and also that’s the basis for the first chapter of this. Could you tell us a little bit more about how the class is structured and how students interact between the two countries.
Sheila: The course, from the very beginning, attempts to bring them in together in the selfie, in the introduction, tell us a little bit about yourself type of thing, which they do in the selfie video. And throughout the course, it’s broken down into different steps, we have discussions. And so with the discussions, a student is required to make a comment based on the topic and readings of the week. They then have to respond to minimally two or more students on their posting. And by that, we don’t mean, and we specifically say like that doesn’t mean, “Thumbs up. Great post, looking good. Thanks a lot.” We explain to them that it’s a conversation and your comment is a continuation of the initial comment, so you want to come in like, “Oh, whatever, like, I didn’t know that. Now I understand. But according to this reading, this is what happened.” Or according to this video I saw this. Or the video that the original poster might have used, a student will say, “You know what? I went back and looked at that, and that was really interesting,” or, “that was really different.” So from the very beginning of the course, we bring them together, because we talk about this all the time, community. We say our course is a community. We’re in this together, and so it’s interesting. When it comes time to give feedback, students are very cautious when they have to reply, very cautious. And they tend to want to say everything nice, which is great, but also we want them to be respectful and comment in a way that makes the original poster either rethink or think about what they may not have seen, what they may have said, and how it’s being interpreted by others. So Tom, you can further expound, but I think that’s it in a nutshell.
Tom: Yeah, I agree completely that the kind of cultural exchange happens from that very first assignment, because as students are talking about themselves and which of the metaliteracy roles they identify with, they’re sharing something about themselves and their place and where they are, where they live. And I think that that really opens up the eyes of the students in Europe and the United States. The mobile story too, I’ve noticed, again, because a lot of students will take their cell phone, they’ll go out and they’ll show themselves in Prague and walk around Prague. So I think that’s really enlightening for the students in the US to see that. And keep in mind, these are Empire State University students who are studying in Prague through a partnership program. They don’t always have a lot of interaction with the US students, and that was one of the problems we were trying to solve. And Sheila really wanted to initiate this, it was how can we get the Prague students and the U.S. students, who are all earning degrees from Empire State University together? So this virtual exchange really allows that to happen, because otherwise it’s not a traditional international exchange program. Students studying in Prague are earning our degree, and so this really brings them together. So that’s really where I think the cultural exchange starts to happen. The other piece I want to build on with the discussions that for every digital story that’s produced, there’s also a peer review that’s a part of that assignment. So students really have to look at the rubric that we use for evaluating and they’re supposed to use that to really evaluate the work of peers. And as Sheila noted, sometimes they might be a little shy in those kinds of conversations, but because they’re working with the criteria, that really helps them to do that. So that’s also a kind of exchange of ideas. Then I think the culminating project, the closing project, while these are all individual stories, that does have interaction through peer review, the final collaborative project, students work together as a team to explore a social cause. So it could be climate change, for instance, a lot of students are very interested in that, which is encouraging, and they’ll do research on climate change, and then they’ll work together as an international team. And we make sure that we definitely when we put the teams together, we make sure there’s always enough of that kind of exchange to happen, so that as they’re working together they learn about each other, they learn about who they are, they learn about where they live, their culture, which is really important. And of course, some of that, they have to face some challenges. Sometimes they’ll complain a little bit about the fact that there’s a time difference, a six-hour time difference, and we say, “Well, we would like you to work in teams for some of this. So that means you have to try and coordinate some time to do that. But also a lot of this can happen asynchronously.” But I think even working through those challenges, is really productive for them, because that’s the real world. If you’re going to have virtual collaboration around the world, that’s what you’re going to have to deal with. And they ultimately work through it really well. And I think, in many ways, those final projects are probably some of the best projects in the class, and it’s just so inspiring to see the kinds of social causes they take on and that they address in a rational research-based way, and then how creative they are. It’s also that key metaliteracy piece that I mentioned earlier, of learner as teacher. That’s one of the key roles you play in these kinds of environments. And they’re doing that. A student who might be highly skilled with the digital tool is explaining to other students how that works, or maybe a student who’s a very strong writer is kind of sharing that work as a writer, and they’re really helping each other out. It’s very much a teacher/learner, mentor/learner, I would even say, kind of experience which brings it all together to why the focus on metaliteracy is really key to this digital storytelling course.
Sheila: The other piece is that with the metaliteracy framework, when we break the students into groups, so there might be four to five in a group, and they are responsible for choosing what their position will be. So who’s going to be the editor, who’s going to do the filming, who’s going to do the narration, if they’re going to use music, how’s that going to work? And so everyone in that group is supposed to take on a job and then do their piece and bring their pieces together to work on a final project. As Tom mentioned a moment ago, sometimes there’s perceived issues. “Oh well, I’m in Prague, six-hour difference, or I’m in New York, I don’t know, I can‘t. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” And I always come back with “this is real world stuff that you’re doing. And so what would you do if the CEO of your company is on one continent and you’re on another, and you have work to do and you have to present. How are you going to do that? So this is a mini prep for you to learn how to adapt to different environments, because the traditional environment is slowly going away.” And so we have people working remotely all over the world, with people from different time zones, different regions. And so what do you say when there’s a 12-hour difference? Do you say, “Well, I’m sorry I’m sleeping or I don’t have time?” No, you’re going to find a way to work through it. So this is a mini exercise. This is your boot camp in learning how to adjust and work with eople that are not physically in front of you, that are not physically in your time zone, and are a part of your project. So there’s a lot of practical experience for them in this course as well. And as you noted, it’s not your traditional course. And students come in at first thinking, “Oh, I could do this in my sleep,” until they see, “uh oh, I actually have really do some things in here.” And that’s when it becomes interesting. And I love watching the changeover as they go through it. And they start learning, and they feel a little more safer in the course, and they start taking chances, and they’re creating different projects and different narratives is absolutely wonderful. And as Tom also mentioned, with that final project, it has to be on a social issue. So whether it be homelessness, mental health, drugs, climate change, they get in, and you can see the passion for the topic by the very final product they produce together. It’s absolutely wonderful. I love this course. I absolutely love it. I love working with Tom on this and this museum idea was thought of and developed many years ago. And a colleague of mine at Empire, Lisa Rappel, she was initially involved with me to get it done, and then life got in the way. So it was kind of just sitting there. And when Tom and I got together with this course, and I was so excited, I thought, “oh my god, we can use the museum,” and Tom and I got busy and started working with it. So we’re hoping to kick it up a notch, and you have to stay up on technology and so you never get a break, because soon as you learn something, it’s like, “oh, okay, great. Well, that’s passe.” Now we’ve got a new thing, so we’re going to work on making that museum even better than what it is right now, and it’s pretty good right now, but we want to kick it up a notch, and particularly with all this AI that’s going on, and this AI is developing as we speak, it’s important for us to create this environment that uses technology in a very responsible way, while teaching the students as well.
Rebecca: So you’ve both mentioned many aspects of ethics and AI, so maybe you can share a little bit about how you’ve incorporated that into your course.
Tom: When this openAI initiative brought so much attention to AI, the very first thing we did, in addition to the digital stories, there’s an assignment early in the course where they have to write about the ethics of digital storytelling. So that’s the assignment we first revised because we really wanted students to reflect on the ethics of AI, and there’s so much creative potential as well. So you can see how that’s also wrapped into this course, but that’s really the assignment we first revised, and we changed the questions and changed the resources, and really asked students to really think about what are the ethical implications of generative AI for producing digital stories. One of the resources for that assignment is something from StoryCenter. It’s the Digital Storytelling Bill of Rights. [LAUGHTER] So students get to think about the Bill of Rights of a digital storyteller and also the subject of digital stories. But I think revising that assignment was really important because they really have a chance to think about those ethical aspects which are so key. The other thing about this course is that we promote, in addition to freely available digital tools, it already had a very strong component about the use of materials that are openly licensed through Creative Commons. So we don’t want students using resources just by downloading things from the web. They have to be either public domain or Creative Commons. Now AI opens up much more potential. I think in our next revision, there’s more we actually want to do with the course, to really give them permission to use Dall-E, for instance, to create images. And also, of course, there’s now new generators for creating video, and that’s something we’re going to embrace and build into the course. Instead of telling students “don’t do it,” we’re going to ask them, “How can you do it in an ethical and responsible way?”
Sheila: Exactly, exactly, because it’s with us, it’s not going anywhere. So, we’ve got to figure out a way to incorporate it in a responsible way and make them ask the question, instead of being the sage on the stage, that’s not what we do with this course, we want to invoke their critical thinking and for them to think about what is happening around them in a way that makes sense, as opposed to us telling them, “ Oh, this is not good, you don’t need to do that.” Because they don’t listen anyway. So it’s better to let them learn how to discern and how to critically analyze and think on their own. I think that’s what we want from all our citizens.
John: We always end with the question: “What’s next?“
Sheila: Well, I think what’s next is… well, there’s several things the sky’s the limit, right? But I think that another revision to the course for next spring, as Tom said, to really input AI and figure out how we want to do that, and to hopefully get some grant money… anybody listening… to help us upgrade the museum, because we believe it’s a wonderful space for students, and I think that walking the road of life and seeing what narratives I could think about and get involved with, and more co-teaching with Tom, because I thoroughly enjoy it. We love it. We absolutely love it.
Tom: Yeah, we really do. You can tell. Sheila and I have known each other so long, and we just love working together in the teaching and the research. And I agree completely. I think that the revision to include more AI components is definitely what we want to do this year. I think continued research presentations, talking about the book. We’re really excited about the book. I’m really interested too… I think we both are… in continuing to engage with some of the book authors who contributed to this book. We were so excited that three of the authors or author teams are from South Africa. So when we put the call for hoping for these global perspectives that we’re able to reach that. The book itself covers, in addition to our perspectives, just looking at the table of contents, we have authors who write about meta-theater as digital storytelling, the metaliteracy of memes, digital book making as a form of digital storytelling, local history, story maps. There’s so many creative ideas out there that if we could continue to promote this idea of digital storytelling building it into the curriculum, helping campuses to advance their DEI initiatives, that would be amazing. So I think that’s what we’re really hoping for, and that’s the idea of the book too is that this gets the conversation going. It’s our experience, but then it’s also building on our experience to bring in other scholars and teachers and students.
Sheila: And this all evolved out of our engagement with students in the course, so they’re at the core of everything that Is transpired after that as a result of the course.
Rebecca: Well, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your book and all of your stories.
Sheila: [LAUGHTER] Thank you.
Tom: Thank you. We enjoyed it. [LAUGHTER]
Sheila: Absolutely. And may digital storytelling just keep on going and going and going. Thank you so much. This is wonderful.
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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