What's the Plan? Teaching Digital Storytelling as a Project Process
2014; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2160-6579
Autores Tópico(s)Digital Games and Media
ResumoIntroduction: Multimedia Story CreationWe need to better prepare our Communication students for their capstone course in the major.''These words, spoken by my department chairperson and colleague, acknowledged a gap in our convergence curriculum at Cabrini College. As seniors, Communication majors at the college enroll in Senior Convergence: Media for Social Justice. This capstone course requires them to create multimedia stories on an important social justice topic. Students arrive in this capstone course with hands-on experience in multiple media; however, many have never been asked to tell a compelling story by combining these media into one story package. We needed a course preceding the capstone to teach students the fundamentals of multimedia storytelling.To address this need, I was asked to develop a new course called Multimedia Story Creation.Course DesignThe goal of this course is to introduce students to the elements of effective multimedia storytelling. I have structured the course so that students gain an appreciation for digital storytelling as a project process and come to understand their role in this process. Students learn how to research story ideas, interview sources, design compelling stories, and produce narrative journalism stories in multiple media formats. Students also learn Final Cut Pro X and WordPress, which serves as the platform upon which they publish and share their multimedia stories.For many students, this is the first course they have taken in the Communication major that requires narrative nonfiction storytelling, as well as storytelling through a combination of media. Many students are new to FCPX and WordPress as well. The course is offered every semester to 15 sophomores and juniors who must have already completed-or be currently enrolled in-at least one hands-on, media-specific course (e.g., Video Production, Radio Broadcasting, Journalism, Photography) in the Communication major. Students who meet this prerequisite arrive in the course with a varied skill set and technological competence, which adds a layer of complexity to the instruction.In this course, students use their smartphones to capture audio and video. They sign out a Mobile Smart Pack from our department to use with their phones. This pack includes an iRig microphone, a Slingshot tabletop tripod to cradle their smartphone, and a tripod mount for securing the detachable top of the Slingshot to a tall camera tripod. Students use the free iRig Recorder app for audio gathering and their smartphone camera for photo and video gathering. I emphasize to students that their focus needs to be on storytelling; the technology is an enabler of that outcome. For this reason, I deliberately use mobile technologies to make multimedia storytelling more accessible and less threatening to them.Observations from the First Course DeliveryWhen I was initially approached to teach Multimedia Story Creation, I had already been teaching the Senior Convergence capstone course for two semesters. Thus, I was well aware of the knowledge and skills students needed to succeed in the capstone. I intentionally designed Multimedia Story Creation to close the gaps I observed in my students' understanding of narrative journalism, media production, and project management. I delivered the course for the first time in Fall 2012. It was a learning experience.Specifically, I observed students negotiating the following:* Moving from Topic to Story: Students had difficulty finding their story focus. If presented with a topic (e.g., food insecurity), they needed a good bit of coaching to generate potential story ideas and decide on a single one (e.g., residents' reliance on a local food co-op in West Philadelphia).Initially, it surprised me that students struggled to identify their story focus. However, as I stepped back to consider students' experiences both inside and outside the Communication major to-date, they were accustomed to having story assignments given to them. …
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