Bachelor of Arts (BA)

BA Education, Leadership and Culture

This course combines theory and practice, preparing you for innovative leadership roles across diverse cultural settings.

  • Duration: 3 Years
  • Year of entry: 2025
  • UCAS course code: X305 / Institution code: M20
  • Key features:
  • Industrial experience
  • Scholarships available
  • Field trips

Full entry requirementsHow to apply

Course unit details:
Digital Learning Design and Storytelling

Course unit fact file
Unit code EDUC26042
Credit rating 20
Unit level Level 5
Teaching period(s) Semester 2
Available as a free choice unit? No

Overview

In this unit, students will explore the rationale, development, and design of digital (and non-digital) storytelling for the purpose of engaging with educational challenges faced by individuals, and communities. The unit aims to foster an understanding of the importance of storytelling in human society by discussing its historical roots, forms and uses and examining how newer genre have emerged and impact popular culture. By exploring diverse educational narrative practices from around the world, students will develop an understanding of how stories can be used as a meaningful vehicle for engaging with social justice issues. Educational story design techniques such as visualising and planning key elements through storyboarding and scriptwriting will be introduced. The unit will encourage students to reflect on ethical considerations in digital storytelling design, including issues related to privacy, representation, cultural sensitivity, and the responsible use of various modalities to convey educational messages. A theoretical and conceptual foundation will be built by exploring multimedia design theory, neuroscience of stories and design principles related to various medium (visual, audio, audiovisual). By drawing on this theoretical understanding, students will be able to critically assess the effectiveness of educational digital (and non-digital) stories from cognitive, affective, and contextual perspectives. Through a range of digital workshops, the unit also aims to build practical skills necessary to create meaningful and engaging narratives using various digital media tools. Students will have the opportunity to further develop and apply their conceptual understanding and practical skills by creating digital stories over the semester and showcasing their work in a final Portfolio. Overall, by bringing together the head, the heart and the hand, this course aims to empower students to become proficient storytellers with the purpose of positively impacting the social fabric of the community.

Aims

  • Develop understanding of principles and elements of meaningful and engaging digital (and non-digital) storytelling as a vehicle for engaging with individual, or community level educational challenges.
  • Foster an understanding of how various medium (i.e., visual, audio, audiovisual etc) can be strategically employed to achieve educational purposes.
  • Expose students to diverse educational narrative traditions from around the world, encouraging them to critically reflect on how stories can be harnessed to convey educational content within varying cultural and global contexts.
  • Enable students to explore the opportunities and limits of digital and non-digital medium for educational storytelling.
  • Enable students to analyse and critique the effectiveness of educational digital stories from cognitive, affective, and cultural perspectives.
  • Enable students to develop an understanding of ethical considerations in digital storytelling, including issues related to privacy, representation, cultural sensitivity, and the responsible use of various modalities to convey educational messages.
  • Equip students with the technical skills required to effectively utilize diverse digital tools and platforms for storytelling.
  • Equip students with time management skills required to create a digital story effectively

 

Syllabus

Why tell stories?
History and role of stories in society: From oral to digital storytelling
Storytelling across contexts and cultures
Significance of stories for learning
Storytelling for social justice

How to tell stories?
Elements of a compelling narrative
Structuring and designing effective narratives: style, genre, visualising and planning key elements through storyboarding and scriptwriting
Ethics and legalities in digital storytelling
 

Modes and medium of storytelling: 
Cognitive theory of Multimedia learning
The Neuroscience of stories
Opportunities and challenges of digital and non-digital storytelling

Creating stories:
Interactive narrative experience and non-linearity
Visual design principles 
Audio design principles
Video design principles
 

Teaching and learning methods

Lectures (2 hours)

There will be weekly interactive lectures aiming to introduce the main concepts, theories, and frameworks. Part of the lectures will involve student centred activities. Students will be immersed in an interactive storyline embarking on different synchronous and asynchronous group quests across the week. Through a combination of lectures, storytelling, group discussions, and practical exercises, students will develop insights related to meaningful digital (and non-digital) storytelling.

Seminars (2 hours):

There will be two seminars. The first seminar aims to develop skills around peer assessment, which will be held at the beginning of the semester. Peer assessment skill is needed as students will be evaluating each other’s digital stories and providing constructive feedback. The second seminar aims to develop writing skills for justifying design decisions and reflecting on learning. This seminar aims to support writing the final critical reflection piece.

Story circles (1.5 hour)

Reflective story circles will be held every alternative week. In these sessions students will share stories of their learning journey and collaboratively reflect on their experiences. The aim is to develop reflective skills for the final critical reflection piece. There will also be group reflection exercises on time management. Most importantly the story circles will act as a space through which students can informally provide feedback on their learning experiences.

Digital workshops (2 hour):

Digital workshops will be held every alternative week. These will be hands on workshops through which students will learn to use various digital tools and platforms to create and edit digital stories. The digital workshops will help develop digital literacies.

 

 

 

Knowledge and understanding

  • Describe and reflect on the principles and elements of meaningful and engaging storytelling
  • Reflect on the role of interaction and non-linearity for engaging with various audiences

Intellectual skills

  • Justify the choice of medium/mode to address specific educational challenges by drawing on theories introduced in the course
  • Analyse and critique digital narratives across different media platforms by drawing on related literature

Practical skills

  • Apply story design and multimedia design principles to the development of meaningful and engaging digital stories
  •  Demonstrate digital proficiency in creating digital stories 

Transferable skills and personal qualities

  • Evidence time management skills 
  • Developing awareness and evaluation of own learning
  • Development of assessment literacy through providing constructive feedback on peer projects

Assessment methods

Method Weight
Written assignment (inc essay) 45%
Portfolio 55%

Feedback methods

Fifteen days after submission. Feedback will be provided in textual format

Recommended reading

Dunford, M., & Jenkins, T. (Eds.). (2018). Digital storytelling: Form and content. London: Palgrave.

Fernandes, S. (2017). Curated stories: The uses and misuses of storytelling. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gitner, S. (2015). Multimedia storytelling for digital communicators in a multiplatform world. Routledge.

Gottschall, J. (2012). The storytelling animal: How stories make us human. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Hartmut, k. (2023). Understanding Interactive Digital Narrative: Immersive Expressions for a Complex Time. Taylor & Francis.

Lambert, J. & Hessler, B. (2018). Digital storytelling: Capturing lives, creating community. Routledge.

Leinaweaver, J. (2017). Storytelling for sustainability: Deepening the case for change. Routledge.

Lupton, E. (2017). Design is Storytelling. Cooper Hewitt; Illustrated edition.

Mayer. R. (2020). Multimedia Learning. Cambridge University Press.

Rodgers, T. (2018). Approaching Sound. Routledge.

Towndrow, P. A., & Kogut, G. (2020). Digital Storytelling for Educative Purposes. Springer Singapore.

Vernalis, C., Herzog, A., & Richardson, J. (2013). The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media. New York: Oxford University Press.

Zeman, N. B. (2017). Storytelling for interactive digital media and video games. CRC Press.

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Lectures 20
Practical classes & workshops 8
Seminars 4
Supervised time in studio/wksp 6
Independent study hours
Independent study 162

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Taslima Ivy Unit coordinator

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