1. Digital storytelling in Nursing
Seminar: The use of digital storytelling across disciplines and
institutions. Cape Peninsula University of Technology:
Cape Town Campus
Penny Gill, Eunice Ivala, Daniela Gachago,
Linda Mkhize, Zubeida Petersen and Nazma Vajat
23rd August 2012

2. Outline of Presentation
 Introduction
 Digital Story-telling
- in Higher Education
- in Nursing
 Theoretical Framework
 Project Design
 Impact of the study for Teaching and Learning
 Challenges encountered in implementation of DST
 Strategies for enhancing meaningful use of DST
 Recommendations for future use.

3. STORYTELLING TRADITION
Storytelling tradition in San Rock art to illustrate
Africa their stories

4. Digital storytelling
Digital storytelling is the modern equivalent
of ancient story-telling
defined as a short first person
multi-media
video narrative
documents human life experience,
ideas or feelings through story-telling
(Center for Digital Story-telling, 2012).

5. Digital storytelling supports
learner-centred approaches,
COLLABORATIVE
LEARNING
EFFECTIVE INTEGRATION OF REFLECTION
TECHNOLOGY INTO TEACHING & FOR DEEP LEARNING
LEARNING
DIGITAL
STORYTELLING
PROJECT-BASED
DEVELOPMENT LEARNING
OF DIGITAL LITERACIES

6. DST in Higher Education
 educational technology
utilizes meaningful
activities to construct
meaning in different ways.
Trilling & Hood (1999)
 increase student’s
understanding of curricular
content. Sadik (2008)

7. DST in Higher Education
 assists students gain
literacy skills. Robin
(2006)
 addresses the needs of
students with different
learning styles.
Matthews-DeNatal (2008)
 utilizes almost all the
skills the student needs
in the 21st century
Jakes(2006); Bugan &
Robin (2008)

8. DST in Higher Education
- engenders student’s
creativity, creates critical
thinkers & critical viewers
of media
- improves research skills
& builds learning
communities

9. DST IN NURSING
 Many applications in under and
post graduate nursing
 Can be used to challenge negative
experiences in nursing

10. DST IN NURSING
 Exposes students to human
experience of being a patient and
encourage the development of
sensitive individualised and
compassionate practice. (Wood and
Wilson-Barnett, 1999; Costello and
Home, 2001; Repper and Breeze,
2004.

11. ECP NURSING CONTEXT
 acute shortage of nurses
 implemented in January 2008
 Government DoH bursary provided to
students/Faculty funding DoE

12. Background to the study
 Negative status
 Impact on self-esteem
 Low academic literacy skills (NBT)
 Mature students, many socio-economic
problems / poverty

13. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Tajfel and Turner(1979)
 The Social Identity Theory
 categorise themselves into one or more in-
groups,
 building a part of their identity on the basis of
membership of that group and
 enforcing boundaries with other groups

14. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Tajfel and Turner(1979
 3 elements
- categorisation
- identification
- comparison

15. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Tajfel and Turner(1979)
 Social identity theory : how does
belonging to a social group impact on
student engagement and success?
 Link between student’s social identities
and student engagement
 Peer groups engage in social creativity
realigning their value system away from
success in class in order to maintain a
positive social identity

16. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Tajfel and Turner(1979)
 Is Social identity : based on social
class / race or ethnicity / track
 there is high correlation between
tracking students and engagement
Kelly(2008)

17. TRACKING
 Tracking greatly polarizes the differences
in attitudes and behaviours between high
and low track students (differentiation –
polarization theory)
 Strategies for students:
 Individual mobility
 Social creativity
 Direct competition

18. Reasons for disengagement
 Consequences of disengagement much
less felt for students who already have
been labelled low-achievers than
students that are high achievers
 Little opportunity for upward mobility

19. PROJECT DESIGN
 Topic: Caring for people with disabilities,
linking personal experiences / stories
with care theory
 Influenced by Centre for DS workshop
model

20. PROJECT DESIGN
3 workshops over the course of 2 months
1st Workshop: introduction, community
map, mind map in groups
Self-study: development of script and
recording, 4 weeks service learning
2nd Workshop: Finalising of scripts,
recording, MovieMaker
3rd Workshop: Screening and debriefing
(focus groups

21. Centre for Digital Storytelling
 Origins from community theatre, strong
social change background
 Focus on collective sharing of stories,
story circle
 Focus on stories that are usually not
heard
 Everybody has a story to tell
 Silenced voices

22. Participation and Learning Techniques
Community map
Drawing a map of community
with resources and challenges
Link back to students’
communities and lived service
learning experiences among
students
Visual techniques to help
students with low academic
literacy
Improves meaningful learning,
transfer of theory and practice

23. Research design
 Qualitative study
 Focus groups with all 6 groups of
students (2 groups per focus group)
 Each approximately 1 hour
 Inductive method of analysis

24. Findings and discussion
Themes that arose:
 Developing a nursing
identity
 Empathizing with the
patient
 Link to communities
 Collaboration
 Acquisition of
knowledge/multimodality
 Challenges

25. Developing nursing identity
 Extending views of
what it means to be
a nurse
 Moving from self-
doubt to
achievement.
 Skills transfer

26. Empathizing with patient
 New insights
 Understanding and empathizing with
patient
 “What I got to learn about the
unconscious patient is that they need
people around them even if they don’t
feel anything.. I think I will change like
how I treat them

27. Link to communities
 Helps transferring knowledge and
experiences into community:
 Combining information from personal
experience and research:

28. Collaboration
 Group cohesion
 Development of individual identities
within groups
 Peer support, learning from each other
 Distribution of roles within the group

29. Acquisition of knowledge /
multimodality
 Different from normal assignments
 Active/deep learning
 Understanding the subject content
better with DS

30. Challenges in:
 Communication amongst group
members
 Access to computers and training
 Diverse computer skills in groups

31. Challenges continued
 Lack of time
 Lack of support from lecturers
 No mark for digital stories
 Technical problems disappointment
with recording of the sound.

32. Discussion: Digital Storytelling
 Exposes students to the human
experience of being a patient and
encourages the development of
sensitive individualised and
compassionate practice. (Wood and
Wilson-Barnett, 1999; Costello and
Home, 2001; Repper and Breeze,
2004)

33. Discussion: Digital Storytelling
 engages in “meaning making”
 helps build connections with prior
knowledge
 good stories are remembered longer
by students than lessons that lack
them

34. Discussion
 Social identity theory: comparison with
other groups, feeling of dissatisfaction
 But also pride and confidence in final
product
 Embodied learning, empathising with
patients

35. Discussion
 Unconscious / taken for granted roles (in
and out groups / more holistic perception
of identity as nurse
 Transferable skills
 Blurring boundaries between formal /
informal learning (Barrett 2006)

36. Recommendations
 Integration into curriculum and grading
 Extra workshop for MovieMaker
 Access to labs over period of time
 Make sure all students develop skills
 Include IT department and English
teacher in the project

37. Acknowledgements
 This project was partly funded by the
2011 Research on Innovation in
Teaching and Learning Fund
 Thanks to ECP lecturer Zubeida and
ECP2 2012 students
 Special word of thanks to Daniela,
Eunice, Linda and librarian Nazma

38. REFERENCES
 On request
 gillp@cput.ac.za