For Faculty

Enhancing Social Presence by Using Digital Storytelling

By Shelley Kemp, Instructional Designer

Stories are a powerful tool to promote learning and engagement since they speak to both reason and emotion. "Storytelling helps people connect to others by disclosing personal information and relating to each other's common experiences." (Lowenthal, 2008) Sharing stories is the oldest form of teaching known to man. In the online learning environment, digital storytelling gives us the ability to return to these roots of education and bring a human connection to online education.

Social presence is now considered an important part of online learning and a way to break down the barriers of physical distance that the online course represents.

According to Deborah A. Raines, Ph.D., "The steps in creating a digital story as a teaching-learning activity are:

• Determine the purpose and focus of the story. Will it explain, illustrate, narrate, or persuade?
• Research the purpose and collect and evaluate the information.
• Choose the words/facts, visuals/images and audio/sounds.
• Create the storyboard to organize materials and to communicate the objective.
• Write the narrative.
• Put it all together.
• Determine the pace, tone, and emotion.
• Share the digital story with others.

Creating and watching digital stories has the potential to increase the informational literacy among the learners." (Raines, 2010)

In addition to the sources available through the mash-ups in Blackboard, some of the technological tools you can use to create your stories are:
Adobe Spark: Create stories on the web using magazine style themes and other photo layouts
Piktochart: Create infographics, reports, and presentations using templates
Visme: Create infographics and presentations

So why incorporate digital storytelling into your online content? As online learning continues to grow worldwide and face-to-face meetings are not possible, faculty must find ways to increase their social presence in their online courses, and digital stories can be one of the ways to increase and enhance personal connections especially at the beginning of the courses. Digital storytelling will be another key aspect of a quality online course to provide real-life context of your knowledge and experiences for your students.

References

• Lowenthal, P.R. (2008). Online faculty development and storytelling: An unlikely solution to improving teacher quality. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 4(3) Retrieved from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol4no3/lowenthal_0908.pdf
• Raines, D.A. (2010) Digital storytelling brings a human connection to online education. Faculty Focus/Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. Retrieved from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/course-design-ideas/digital-storytelling-brings-a-human- connection-to-online-education/