Why is digital storytelling important?

Digital storytelling for education in the 21st century

What is a digital story - back to basics

Why do educators utilise digital storytelling?

The most obvious sphere for digital storytelling is education, particularly for young people. It helps to build relationships and a greater understanding of the subject matter.

Digital learning tools are a great example of the power of stories. According to a study by the NewSchools Venture Fund in 2019, digital storytelling helps students to practice what they’ve learned, communicate better with teachers and collaborate with others to create and learn.

Similarly, digital storytelling can be used as an interactive and immersive medium to inspire young individuals and create transformational learning experiences for young people. While working in partnership with Nesta, Doncaster Children’s Services Trust, the Home Office and South Yorkshire Police, Peel X introduced GameChanger in 2020. The project aims to raise awareness for Child Criminal Exploitation (CCE) and help discourage young people from participating in acts of violence and crime through immersing individuals in the harsh realities of organised crime.

Using Virtual Reality, associated facilitator led workshops and an interactive online platform available for young people across the UK, the intervention program has had overwhelmingly positive student feedback with the initiative recently being nominated for two Children and Young People Now Awards in 2022.

Technology is the key to creating digital stories, of course, and at the most basic level ‘digital storytelling’ is defined as using computer-based tech to present ideas, tell stories and shape perspectives.

From video clips to AR - which elements make digital storytelling work?

What can digital storytelling workshops tell us?

How do students benefit from digital storytelling?

Furthermore, digital stories create new opportunities for student participation and interaction. At the same time, every digital story helps students gain new skills including evaluation, analysis and synthesis.

The benefits of digital storytelling in education, according to Dillon (2014), include:

• Digital stories create space for listening in a meaningful way. This means that, as an instructional strategy, both the author and the student can create storytelling that has multiple benefits.

• Digital storytelling also helps to tap into an emotional rhetoric, encouraging students to think differently and follow self-direction in expanding their knowledge.

• Digital storytelling also allows students to make their own. This requires creativity to create images to tell their own story. In this way, digital storytelling encourages students to learn the multimedia tools they need to allow them to share how they are exploring life, and to make a particular point if they wish.

Research backs up the importance of digital stories in education

Digital storytelling in other spheres

Digital stories within education have clear and measurable benefits, but what about in other areas?

At Peel X, we’ve found digital storytelling is essential to create the kinds of AR apps that add context to historical events and key archaeological sites. For example, in a ground-breaking project, we have collaborated with The University of the Highlands and Islands and the local council for the Outer Hebrides to develop a Virtual Archaeology Augmented Reality Trail App, which enabled users to view historically accurate 3D reconstructions of the seven important archaeological sites on North and South Uist islands.

Typically, videos and web-based stories are used to communicate information around a historical event, but we have expanded the digital world of storytelling to combine audio, sound effects and AR elements to apps.

Whether it’s traditional film making, video creation or short form narrative techniques, the focus of story telling is the same. To create the kind of story that imparts information, drives engagement and informs, digital stories have so much more potential.

Digital storytelling within public health

Digital storytelling refers to any form of narrative that utilises various tech elements. This covers all kinds of projects across multiple sectors. For example, while narrative computer games are an obvious channel for digital storytelling, public health may not be.

However, there are multiple apps and projects that utilise digital stories to share experiences, improve services and communicate between patients and healthcare providers. For example, the Patient Voices programme uses digital stories to share experiences and information between patients and healthcare providers.

Of course, there are also plenty of use cases for digital storytelling in the corporate environment. Most digital stories can be adapted for all kinds of purposes, whether to describe advertising aims or to raise awareness for non-profit enterprises.

As long as the story creator can find images (still images are still useful components for digital storytelling), choose music and find media to combine in order to get across their viewpoint, then the digital story has a part to play.

Digital storytelling in reconstructing the past

Creating impactful and engaging connections to the past has become easier due to the introduction of digital storytelling. Augmented reality, virtual reality, immersive and interactive technology have been great tools to enable people to turn back time and peek into times of historical significance. The advancement in XR technology have allowed us to virtually interact with ancient artefacts, structures and settlements from the past, inspiring visitors and creating impactful and engaging experiences.

In 2018, Peel X collaborated with the York Mansion House as it opened its doors permanently to the public for the first time since it’s creation in 1732. The £2.4 million heritage project enabled our multi-disciplinary team to develop new, unique and dynamic visitor experiences, designed to reveal the past and uncover the stories the house holds using a collection of interactive media.

From interacting with 3D reconstructions of historical structures to engaging with gesture-based immersive experiences, digital storytelling helps multi-generational users envision unfamiliar settings and develop a deeper understanding of a location’s history.

What makes a digital story effective?

It takes more than sound effects and voiceover gather to make a digital story work. Understanding how to use the requisite technology and how to create effective stories is all that’s needed.

However, every digital story does need a certain number of elements in order to make it compelling and useful.

Here are some of those elements:

• A relevant point of view
A digital story gives the creator a chance to use personal experience and expression. The best way to write and create a digital story then is to tell it from your own personal viewpoint.

You’ll often find digital stories told from the first rather than the third person for precisely this reason. Each part of the
story needs to move the audience or viewer towards a new realisation.

• The ability to hold viewer attention
Just because you have a point to make, it doesn’t necessarily follow that that’s all you need to create a compelling digital story.

All stories, including every digital story, needs a dramatic question at the centre to hold the attention of the audience. Digital stories need to be as rich and complex as those written down.

• The emotional connection
An effective digital story needs to have an emotional heart. In order to win over an audience, it needs to find or create an understanding based in the concept of being a human being.

• Opportunities for engagement
Sophisticated digital storytelling means giving viewers the chance to interact in different ways. These methods can be incorporated into a digital story and give viewers the chance to share it via social media, subscribing and listening to podcasts and potentially contributing their own content.

• Organised content and technical structure
Any good digital story needs a strong technical foundation. This could mean utilising an appropriately customised content management system, an analytics framework and collaboration tools.

• Visual design
A digital story has to look good and offer enough space for considered reading. By optimising it for every kind of device, a digital story can be read and understood by the widest audience possible.

Guidelines for creating a digital story that works

We’ve seen how a digital story can be used for different reasons across different environments. Whether the story incorporates video or any other element, there are certain concepts and ideas that need to be included.

Here are a few tips that could help to create the ideal story.

1. Get the idea and scope right
Start small when it comes to the story idea. Focus on one story type, for example and resist the urge to get over complicated. For example, if you are making a video to convey the essence of a person, you should concentrate on one personal truth, rather than trying to share too much. This will help the story remain tight and not get lost in too much information.

2. Instead of telling, try showing
Always keep this in mind if you are writing a video script or a story outline. Write the script with economy in mind and orientate it towards the inclusion of observations rather than inferences. For example, in a video this would mean having the actors or subject convey emotions through their body language rather than telling the audience.

3. Less is more
Again, if you are making a video or writing a digital story script, then any effects or additions need to enhance the story, rather than bury it. Resist the creative urge to use too many extra effects.

To find out more about Peel X and the way we choose to tell digital stories using VR and AR, click here.