Digital Storytelling and Implicated Scholarship in the Classroom

Abstract

This essay describes the development of digital storytelling as a popular multimedia work and how the authors have applied it in the university classroom. As a pedagogical tool, digital storytelling offers a unique learning experience for students. The authors explore student discourse about the learning and situate this experience within a framework of implicated scholarship, an ongoing engagement between the academy and society. Implicated scholarship is developed in the methodology and practice of the French visual ethnographer Jean Rouch and has a deep historical lineage running through Canadian applied anthropology. Digital storytelling in an implicated vein protects and illuminates social complexity.

Le Digital Storytelling

“…La courte durée de ces récits, l'équipement de base avec lequel ces histoires sont produites 10 ainsi que l'utilisation des expériences des personnes qui réalisent ces vidéos en font des « small-scale stories » (histoires à petites échelles, Hartley 2008 ; Lundby 2008), bien que ces histoires, sans l'envergure de production, diffusion et réception des médias de masse, puissent également provoquer des impacts au plan individuel, communautaire et sociétal. Ces mini-films autobiographiques permettent également aux réalisateurs de présenter leurs oeuvres sur diverses plateformes, principalement sur Internet 11 et à des publics différents au cours de leur vie sociale (Fletcher et Cambre 2009).…”

Critical Assessment of Video Production in Teacher Education: Can video production foster community-engaged scholarship?

“…In this regard, I pay attention to Fletcher and Cambre (2009), who suggested that media production is useful in promoting community engagement. To explain this, they presented the idea of implicated scholarship,…”

“…In this context, they examined digital storytelling as an example of innovative class activities. Digital storytelling refers to a form of story writing that uses various digital contents, such as digital still images, music, and voiceover narration (Center for Digital Storytelling, n.d.; Fletcher & Cambre, 2009). Fletcher and Cambre concluded that digital storytelling enabled university students to experience "complex intellectual engagement that is at once creative, socially oriented, and pedagogical" (p. 111) and to learn about social issues differently from traditional classroom activities.…”

Facilitating Self-Reflection: The Integration of Photovoice in Graduate Social Work Education

“…Some students also may gravitate towards visual learning and the use of images and diagrams, whereas more verbal learners rely on words (Seiler, 2011). In examining digital storytelling in the classroom, Fletcher and Cambre (2009) found that the integration of greater visual stimuli and processes fostered creativity among students, and increased their valuation of personal expertise, reflection, and expression. In her work with visual arts, Walton (2012) noted similar success in promotion of self-reflection and an emerging social work identity.…”