Challenge

Since 2014, the First Australians and Social Justice teaching team within the School of Human Services and Social Work has grappled with how to provide students with experiential learning opportunities without over-burdening or objectifying Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations.

Team members Glenn Woods, Amber Seccombe, and Naomi Sunderland recognised that social justice oriented course convenors and teachers often observe significant "resistance" to course content from students. In order to break down a potential "us vs them" dynamic in the classroom, we wanted students to have a self-led learning experience that allowed them to develop their own insights and applications of the course material to their everyday lives.

Many of our students are mature age entry students who have significant work and family commitments. As a result, we needed a low cost and manageable experience that would be accessible for both on campus and external online students.

Approach

In 2015, under the leadership of Dr Naomi Sunderland, we implemented a digital storytelling assessment in 7047HSV First Australians and Social Justice (Advanced) that asked students to undertake an immersive experiential learning opportunity in their own local living environment. In this way, students were asked to look at familiar places in new ways using the course content to deepen their experience and analysis of their local area.

Drawing on sensory ethnography and Indigenous embodied and emplaced learning principles, students are asked to mindfully and critically engage with their local environment to answer the following questions: how visible and valued are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and country in your local living area? Why might this be the case?

Students were asked to engage mindfully with country, identify and acknowledge the local traditional custodians, and conduct their own critical analysis of how visible and valued Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and country are in their local living areas. Students then present their findings and reflections through a 3 minute 30 second digital story. Part of the students' mark for the assignment is to view and comment on each other's digital stories which creates both a sense of the diversity of Indigenous representation across Australia and a critical "audit" of the visibility and valuing of Indigenous cultures nationally.

Through a collaborative Teaching and Learning grant on Immersive Transformative Intercultural Learning with HSV staff Dr Pat Dorsett and Dr Steve Larmar we confirmed that the transformative learning outcomes from our digital storytelling assessment in students' home environments were comparable with those achieved by taking students to India on an immersive transformative learning experience.

Following this confirmation of learning impact, Dr Sunderland led a second Teaching and Learning grant involving HSV convenors from first, second and third year undergraduate courses and masters courses and Ashley Burgess from the Griffith Film School to develop and test a technical module to support students and convenors undertaking a digital storytelling assessment in any Griffith University discipline.

Outcomes

The digital storytelling technical module is now available for any Griffith course convenor to use within their Learning@Griffith site. The module includes a staged six week process for developing a digital story. It is designed to support absolute beginners and more experienced digital storytellers. Ashley Burgess prepared a series of mini lectures to accompany written instructions and tips in the module. The module also includes YouTube videos and links to free and easy to use software applications. The module has been extensively tested and evaluated with both on campus and external online undergraduate and masters level students in the School of Human Services and Social Work.

Our detailed research on the transformative immersive intercultural learning outcomes of the digital storytelling assessment is available in the full report from the Teaching and Learning grant led by Dr Pat Dorsett.

Implement

The Digital Story Module provides all of the necessary instruction for students to be able to complete a digital storytelling assessment.

Other top tips for convenors generated through our Teaching and Learning grant include:

• Actively introduce students to the technical module at least six weeks prior to the assessment due date;
• Check in with students on their progress regularly e.g. weekly in class or in online tutorials;
• Do the assessment yourself prior to the beginning of trimester so that you are aware of stress points in the process;
• Stress that the assignment is not about film making prowess - it is about the story and content;
• Have a plan to provide students with a camera if needed. This has never happened to us so far. Most students do their assignment on their smart phone;
• Provide sample digital stories;
• Emphasise that students will be developing technical skills that match contemporary work environments;
• Consider asking students to make a short film introduction of themselves early in the trimester to reduce nerves;
• Emphasise to anxious students that many students who were equally as anxious succeeded in this assessment in the past. This assessment may put them out of their comfort zone but that is where the magic happens in terms of learning!

Next Steps

If you would like to implement this in your course, please contact Chandra Rao (c.rao@griffith.edu.au) in Griffith Online to arrange access to the Digital Storytelling Module for your Learning@Griffith site.

Griffith Graduate Attributes

This learning activity clearly aligns with the following Griffith Graduate Attributes: - Culturally capable when working with First Australians - Effective in culturally diverse and international environments. Through having students critically engage with their own culture enhances their abilities to uncover their own unconscious bias and develop a greater cultural sensitivity.

Support Resources

• Partnership-Based Learning (P1). Getting Started with VLE tools and the Course Design Standards.

  Module

Contributed by

• Griffith Health
  School of Human Services and Social Work
  Naomi Sunderland
  (07) 338 21113
  n.sunderland@griffith.edu.au
  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6589-3968
  Griffith Experts profile

Preferred Citation

Sunderland, N. & Learning Futures (2020). Digital story assessments for immersive-transformative learning. Retrieved from https://app.secure.griffith.edu.au/exlnt/entry/4265/view