Developing Students’ Digital Literacy with Digital Storytelling Projects in Design and Media Arts

Abstract

Digital media literacy is essential in today’s world, where media in the form of interfaces, images, words, and sounds is omnipresent. Within this context, educators are tasked with equipping students with the ability to critically analyse and effectively create digital content. This paper explores the role of digital storytelling projects in fostering digital literacy among students, particularly in design and media art disciplines. Grounded in design-based research, the study highlights key pedagogical strategies like project-based learning to support the development of students’ skills, like critical thinking, creative communication, collaboration, networking, and technological proficiency.

We propose a digital storytelling project framework for professors and students to convey personal experiences, engage with complex issues, and develop a deeper understanding of the media they consume, share, and produce. The framework includes guidelines to set the learning environment and to support several phases of student’s projects, from initial ideation to online sharing. We present a literature review to scaffold the proposed framework and case studies of different kinds of personal stories created by students using diverse media formats like video, interactive video prototypes, and virtual and augmented reality projects. We highlight several positive outcomes of the framework including resilience and sustainability, as it has been used in several different classes and could be implemented within different modalities.