Background

The course strives to help participants conceptualize, plan, and develop digital stories for Digital Humanities scholarship and pedagogy. No particular platform or approach is emphasized, although participants are introduced to and encouraged to experiment with those that are introduced.

A fundamental approach is to consider first the story, and then what digital media/technologies will facilitate its telling. Participants are encouraged to conceptualize projects and use course time and resources to develop either a framework of prototype for their digital storytelling project. No previous experience with digital storytelling or specific digital technologies or platforms is required. Flexibility, experimentation, and self-direction are valuable.

Ideal course activities include collaborative discussion and learning. Rather than analysis and critique, this course leans toward praxis. This is not to suggest that digital storytelling is clear of nuance and/or tension, but rather to focus on practice-based research and/or creative expression, learning by making, in support of Digital Humanities scholarship and pedagogy.

DHSI participants are international Digital Humanities scholars—faculty and graduate students—aligned with research centers, libraries, and academic departments around the world who participate in intensive, collaborative, multi-disciplinary classes and seminars ranging in subject matter from text encoding basics to strategies for large project management. Digital Storytelling can facilitate these efforts.

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Resources

Course Pack
Available in open and portable electronic format. Read it online, print at your convenience, or use the print-on-demand service at the University of Victoria Bookstore and pick up when you arrive on campus.

Storytelling > Resources
I maintain a separate webpage with access to MANY digital storytelling resources. Have some to add? Please let me know.

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Framework

Storytelling is an important part of human endeavor and creative expression. The multiple disciplines of the Humanities focus on stories we tell about ourselves, our families, our nations, the things we create and build, because all these stories describe and define our humanity. Digital Humanities uses research and practice at the intersection of the Humanities and computing technologies to influence creation, dissemination, preservation, research, and teaching activities associated with our stories.

Digital storytelling, broadly defined, combines digital media features and affordances with storytelling techne to create and share stories. Where documentaries, essays, historical and/or eye witness accounts, memoirs, narratives, research findings and/or presentations, and more, each speaking to aspects of human culture and creative endeavor, might be told orally or in print, digital storytelling may use animation, audio, graphics, multiplayer games, music, narration, social media, video, Web publishing, writing, sound, and more to tell stories.

Combining computational technologies with storytelling techniques may extend the ability to share stories more easily and to a much broader audience. More specifically, digital storytelling may engage academic research with creative practice and promote critical thinking, communication, digital literacy, and civic engagement.

The affordances and features provided by digital technologies are not the story, however, but rather a tool for helping provide an engaging storytelling experience. With digital storytelling, the essential ingredients of a good narrative remain relevant, as does interest in telling and listening to good stories. This course explores opportunities. Select the "Projects" tab (above) to learn what digital stories past participants have undertaken.

The course framework considers literacy, fluency, and approach with regard to digital storytelling.

Literacy asks
◊ What is possible? What can be done with digital storytelling?
◊ What forms and/or genres exist?
◊ What are the prompts for experimentation and remix, creative practice?

Fluency considers
◊ What tools to use
◊ What skills to acquire
◊ How to put these resources, and your knowledge and skill into practice.

Approach can be either
◊ Individual
◊ Collaborative (perhaps required for more complex/ambitious projects.

Questions Regarding Digital Storytelling

We might consider these questions throughout the course, especially as we consider digital storytelling a resource and/or tool that promotes critical thinking, communication, literacy, and civic engagement.

• How might we use digital storytelling for creating and consuming Digital Humanities scholarship?
• How might digital storytelling promote teaching and learning?
• How might digital storytelling enrich the storytelling experience by promoting the telling of different stories, or telling stories in different ways?
• How might digital storytelling serve as a form of tinkering apparati for collaborative thinking and/or creating, as a mode of knowledge production?
• How might digital storytelling communicate its content effectively?
• How might digital storytelling facilitate the creation and consumption of knowledge that will engage, enlighten, and involve diverse readers/interactors/participants?

Approaches To Digital Storytelling

The broad definition and scope of digital storytelling fosters multiple approaches, and could require fluency with a number of different digital platforms. Because of limited time and resources, this course favors three accessible approaches to digital storytelling: oral history, podcasting, and multimedia. Participants are encouraged to conceptualize and develop small scale digital stories and/or prototypes for larger, more extended projects. Participants are encouraged to first determine what story they want to tell, and then what media and affordances will help tell that story.

Regarding these three approaches . . .
Oral history approach
Start with voice recordings. The storyteller's voice is the basis for all storytelling.
Podcast approach
A convenient and accessible method for packaging and distributing narratives and storytelling.
Multimedia approach
Combine video, images, text, voice, and other sounds. The original form of digital storytelling and still very effective.

Additionally, we can consider these other approaches, especially as they might overlay or augment our initial efforts.
Hypertext approach
Connect multiple lexis (screens of text or other information) via clickable links.
Location aware approach
The narrative is often based on a specific location.
Interactive approach
Interact / participate with the narrative.
Transmedia approach
Distribute aspects of the narrative across different media platforms in order to leverage particular features / affordances of the selected media to provide multiple, different yet connected narrative experiences focused on the same subject.
Augmented reality approach
Connect digital content to the physical world through augmented reality.

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Instuctor

My name is John Barber. I convene with the faculty of Creative Media & Digital Culture at Washington State University Vancouver, USA. Learn more about my teaching, research, scholarship, and creative practice.

I have facilitated the Sounds and Digital Humanities course at DHSI since 2014. I have facilitated, since 2016, another DHSI course, Digital Storytelling. Learn more.

My DHSI began in 2012 and 2013 when I helped facilitate a course on Mobile App Design and Development. Course goals were to
1). Conceptualize the space and special features of mobile devices.
2). Develop the architecture, design, and multimedia content production for a mobile project.
3). Understand the coding and programming requirements for mobile devices.

Comments from 2018 class

The instructor is the major strength of the course. John is very passionate about digital storytelling and a wealth of knowledge. At the same time, he is very encouraging of helping students with executing their own visions through the idea. Our class is very diverse in interests (from 19th century French literature to mass shootings - me), and he has seamlessly woven himself throughout to be able to help us all. I loved having time to create my own project under his guidance and am VERY pleased with how it turned out.

John was gracious with time, supportive, encouraging, enthusiastic about material and about student projects/learning.

An engaging instructor, with relevant experience and knowledge of many resources. There was a really great balance between instruction and workshopping/creation of projects with on-going feedback from the instructor.

We did not discuss the course pak readings at all. While I appreciate his platform agnostic approach, it think it would have been helpful for many in the class to see examples of a variety of platforms early on, and to discuss pros/cons. Some clearly benefited from lots of time to work on their individual projects; I would have benefited from some more structured investigations and interactions.

For students with clear sense of project, having two full days to work on it seemed great. For students who were less sure of specific project, and more looking for ideas, they/we might have appreciated more direct instruction and discussion. With a weeklong class, perhaps there could have been some discussion of theoretical or critical issues.

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Example Projects

These example projects are provided by the course participants who created them. They demonstrate the range of conceptual and experimental sound-based projects undertaken during this course.

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