Learning through Narratives: The Impact of Digital Storytelling on Intergenerational Relationships

ABSTRACTNarrative theory and narrative performance theory is often used as a theoretical framework for exploring and understanding how intergenerational storytelling builds relationships within a family unit. Multimedia digital storytelling (DST) is increasingly used as a means to capture and reproduce community and family stories while engaging students through various learning styles and modalities. However, the story is frequently only a small part of the total learning from this process. The totality of learning, or the "narrative of knowing" (McAdams, 2006), is created through a participatory exchange between narrator and listener. The narrative of knowing encompasses technical and storytelling skill transfer between participants during the process and building relationship between participants. By discussing DST projects from an undergraduate Family Communication course, this article highlights the process of relationship building and the pedagogical concerns of training students to carry out research using the narrative approach in conjunction with DST in an intergenerational context. The author discusses students' projects and how intergenerational relationships were strengthened through the use of DST.INTRODUCTIONScholars have studied the impact storytelling has on community involvement (Davis, 2011), family connectedness for young children (Aarsand, 2007), cultural awareness (Lambert, 2006) and the role narrative plays in the construction of our self-identity (Hull & Katz, 2006). Educational perspectives involve the pedagogical elements involved in the teaching and learning process and how digital storytelling (DST) may be used to promote learning (Porter, 2012; Roby, 2010). To further understand the impact digital storytelling has on college student's perspectives of family and the relationships in the family unit, the following research questions were proposed:RQ1 : How does the process of digital storytelling impact family interaction ?RQ2: What are undergraduate student 's perceptions of the digital storytelling process?Background of Digital StorytellingDigital storytelling (DST) is a multimodal approach that brings the ancient art of telling stories to life using technology. While the art of oral history has been around for thousands of years, the incorporation of multimedia has added another layer of understanding to the narrative voice. The ability to personalize stories with pictures, personal narration, video, animation, artifacts and music, supports a deeper level of understanding and meaning of the story for the listener and audience. At its core, the DST process of creating narrative is completed to create or support community building (Fields, 2008).The original motivation for DST providing a voice for community groups came from the early 1990s at the University of California at Berkeley's Center for Digital Storytelling (Lambert, 2007). Since then, a stream of work has developed in community-based DST around intergenerational storytelling environments where student researchers work with older storytellers (Davis, 201 1). In many contexts, these efforts of intergenerational storytelling center on the mediated construction of identity and community and articulation for collective history within those communities (Allan, 2004). DST emphasizes a participatory nature in the process of emerging stories, which builds the relationship between the storyteller and listener. The outcomes of DST can create new opportunities for dialogue by mediating the different communicative practices among intergenerational participants. According to Burgess (2006), this mediation of vernacular creativity, "is a productive articulation of consumer practices and knowledge (of, say, television genre codes) with older popular traditions and communicative practices (storytelling, family photography, scrapbooking, collecting)" (p. 207). The relationship that is built may be a critical piece to the success or failure of the specific DST project, but it has implications for the personal relationship between the participants. …