Tell Me Your Story: Building Engagement and Inclusion in Online and Hybrid Courses with Digital Storytelling Methods

 Member-Only Resource: If you’d like to view this webinar recording, please visit the OLC Webinar On-Demand Resources page.
Please note: you will need to log in with your Professional or Institutional Membership in order to access these resources.

**This webinar is part of the OLC Innovate 2023 Best-in-Track webinar series!**

Stories are powerful educational tools. Digital storytelling is a creative and meaningful way to build engagement and inclusion in online and hybrid courses through the use of computer-based tools, including digital media essays, photography exhibits, story-based mapping, and podcasts, to tell stories. Digital storytelling allows learners to connect on a personal level and cognition skills are improved through writing narratives that are enhanced with the use of digital media methods. The student of the future is a maker and it is imperative to have knowledge, skills, and capabilities around content creation and communication. Digital storytelling assignments give students transferable skills that are applied to a 21st-century job market.

In this webinar, the presenters will demonstrate various digital storytelling techniques and projects along with templates, rubrics, and media applications that have been applied to online and hybrid courses that have included students from diverse learning communities made of multilingual, intergenerational, and neurodivergent participants. These strategies have proven to contribute to an overall inclusive learning environment in which all students perceive to be valued and continue successfully in their process of life-long learning. Session attendees will join in a digital storytelling activity to sample how to facilitate similar assignments and projects for easy adoption into their courses. 

Intended Audience:

Faculty and instructors, instructional designers, instructional technologists

Speaker Bio
Sonia Chaidez

Senior Instructional Technologist – Whittier College

Sonia is the Senior Instructional Technologist at Whittier College and works as part of faculty and staff development to drive and inspire the effective and ethical integration of educational technology. She provides specialized instruction, advice, and guidance in the application of educational tools and techniques, as well as builds programming and projects that focus on digital pedagogy, media & digital literacy, and blended learning. Her specialty is teaching digital storytelling to engage students in higher order thinking, deep learning, and to build digital literacy skills. In 2020, she contributed to a chapter in the book Digital Storytelling: Story Work for Urgent Times on digital storytelling in higher education. Sonia also works on a series of multilingual PhotoStory projects and produces and hosts a podcast called, Teaching at Whittier. Her research and teaching interests include partnering with community-based groups to create learning spaces (physical and virtual) that provide opportunities for diverse populations to participate in digital media making projects like digital photo archives, story maps, multimodal storytelling & podcasts, and augmented reality tools. Website: soniachaidez.com Twitter: @soniachaidez
Stephanie Carmona

Program Manager, Community Education Program Initiative (CEPI) – Whittier College

Bio coming soon