Digital Storytelling is a creative method, which can can utilized in university courses. I learned this method on one online course years ago. The digital stories on my course Psychology in Human-Technology, are supposed to describe some striking learning from the whole course, packed up with some personal story or for example how to apply the gained knowledge in design case. The idea is to produce a 5 min. (or less) video, which is not like a traditional educational video, but more like a story.
I have had this method in Psychology course already for several years. Also this year the outcome was great! At first, some students might think they are not creative or cannot tell stories and this is too much, but often after the assignment (and the related movie night in small teams) is done, I can hear from many of them that this assignment was actually fun, engaging and meaningful for them. It is good to be able to use creativity on this assignment, and also reveal one’s inner creativity if one feels it does not exist. It is also nice to have the movie night, i.e. the course’s final presentation session, in small teams, and watch the team members’ stories. It really gives and idea about how others have perceived the things, what topics they find important for their lives, etc. For the teacher, these short stories are like windows to students’ minds and lives, because it might be that especially in online mode I haven’t had much interaction with some of them. But through the story, I can hear what they think about at least some course topic.
As every year, also now I have asked for permission from some of the students from the course to share their stories in this blog post. This year, themes such as creativity, emotions, motivation and nature-based recovery inspired students a lot! So, have a look and enjoy 🙂
Cheers, Aino, the teacher of Psychology in Human-Tech Interaction course (HTI program)
