Monica Tubbesing EDU 5333 Week 7 Reflection

Reflection

Discuss implications of findings reported or practices discussed in the article on digital storytelling in your community.

Grant & Bolin (2016) used a sample of 96 graduate students enrolled in a semester of Digital Story Telling (DST) course to work in groups to tell a story of diversity. A 12-item survey reported positive feedback on the DST project. The authors concluded that DST enhances a student-center environment, student engagement, students' perceptions, students' development, and cultural competency.

Grant & Bolin (2016) is relevant to me because DST engaged students. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is about the awareness of personal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. If digital story telling can help them, then that is what I need to provide for my audience, which are individuals dealing with depression. I want my learning audience to engage in their own learning, study their perceptions, and empower themselves to change their negative thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors (National Library of Medicine, n.d.).

Gursoy (2020) presented a parallel design of a quantitative study (survey collected data) of 50 pre-service teachers and a quantitative one (interview collected data) of 16 pre-service teachers in their views of DST. Both designs reported a positive effect on their “21st century skills.” These pre-service teachers report that DST provided meaningful and permanent learning, which was fun and motivational.

Luschen (2014) experimented and asked his students to use DST in his Educational Histories/Educational Hopes (EHEH) project. In this project, the students shared their educational histories. Students reflected in their behaviors, formed small communities, engaged, and participated in their learning community. DST gave a voice to students with disabilities and empowered their stories.

The disadvantages of DST were reported as time-consuming and technical knowledge requirements. Other reports were difficult scriptwriting and finding images/videos/photographs, and finalizing the recording (Gursoy, 2020). I totally agree with Gursoy (2020) findings since I found my project time consuming. I think I know the content, and I know what I want to share with my audience, but my script and videos were not helpful. I re-did them and deleted them to get a small and to the point project.

I consider myself not fluent in English. I got the opportunity to tell my story about depression by using the Storybook-That application. It was a great experience using the power point presentation to add voice and then make it into a YouTube video to be available to others in any part of the world. I believe DST gave me a voice (Luschen, 2014).

Address the question: “How does your experience in this course prepare you to support others to create digital stories that are personally meaningful and relevant?”

I don't consider myself a visionary leader but have been empowered with innovative, technology-based digital communications, knowledge, and skills to help people with depression in their digital divide during this semester of EDUC5333 Digital story telling class (Shannon, 2025). This class offered me a theoretical and practical foundation to get started on a website to provide education about CBT and depression to my patients, and designing a Padlet to help those with depression that may not be able to afford a counselor or therapist.

The workload and time spent was heavy compared to other classes. The instructor had specified in her syllabus that the time required for this EDU533 course was supposed to vary according to prior education and experience of the student. (Shannon, 2025). With little technology and a pedagogic background, it took me to read all the articles and assignments several times to get what was expected and get a finished product in 7 weeks. I thought I would have Thanksgiving week as additional days, but those days were occupied by visitors from out of town, work schedule, and family sickness.

This course prepared me to have a script for creating a story, designing my characters, and selecting the type of story I needed. Lamber (2010) describes the seven steps to DST which are a) owning your insights, b) owning your emotions, c) finding the moment, d) seeing your story, e) hearing your story, f) assembling your story, g) sharing your story. All the articles provided helped me complete my project.

In addition to the materials provided, I gained great experience by attending other students’ presentations. I have lots of ideas for my future. I know there are different types of learners and as a future educator I must be updated for the younger generation that comes to the classroom with advanced technology knowledge. I even had to upgrade my computer to access some of the software.