An EdPsy317 Project
by Doe-Hyung Kim
I. Goals
As part of a real initiative, CITES wanted to implement a storytelling framework
that would help faculty members share their experiences in using educational
technology effectively. This would enable more faculty members to become actively
involved in the use of technology, to learn what worked and what did not work,
and to continue to use the website as a core resource for learning and sharing
the use of technology in classrooms.
II. Literature
There is much literature on why stories are ideal for transferring information.
Jonassen and Hernandez-Serrano (2002) state that "stories are the oldest
and most natural form of sense making" (p. 1). This seems to imply that
stories are not only the easiest ways to produce meaning but also to understand
meaning. Orr (1996) states that the knowledge obtained in these stories can
be stored and recycled (p. 126). Morgan(1997) suggests that various methods
for communication such as listserv, email, etc., can be ideal for storytelling.
Tao (2003) conducted a research on the effects of science stories on how students
can develop the notion of the "nature of science". The researcher
concluded that using stories in classes resulted in more understanding of the
nature of science by setting appropriate contexts for learning, and providing
students with knowledge that helped them discuss actively during peer collaboration
sessions.
There is also literature that suggest ways to go about analyzing these stories. Lee & Leets (2002) use the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) in analyzing the effectiveness of persuasive on-line storytelling by examining how structured the narratives were and how explicit or implicit the contents were. Applying important factors for memorable on-line experience from a variety of fields, McLellan (2000) suggests that the story structure is an important design element for constructing persuasive sites
III. Objectives
In realizing the aforementioned goals, Professor Lanny Arvan and two CITES consultants
Robert Baird and Alfreid Weiss (leaders hereafter) expressed the need of a website
that had the following 3 main features:
- Various Story Input Interfaces
- Ratings of Stories
- Attractability
IV. Approaches to Objectives
The following describes what was discussed, what actions were taken, and what
certain research or observations imply.
Various Story Input Interfaces
To control the quality and the content of the stories, the leaders suggested
that contributors should have an option of contributing a story with prompts
(questions that help writers focus on specific topics) or without them. They
also suggested a cut-and-paste mechanism for writers to use so that they could
freely write about their experience and highlight and paste only the necessary
components in the database. (An interface design has been developed for this.)
They all agreed that simplicity was a must in designing such authoring interfaces
because too complex designs would drive perspective contributors away.
The leaders suggested that contributors should be able to upload multimedia contents as well such as audio and video files. They even suggested that an audio-based story input method could also be desirable for those who wish to just talk about their experiences rather than typing them.
In searching for websites that share educators' experiences in using technology, I found Intel's Innovation Odyssey (http://www97.intel.com/odyssey/) an ideal website that lets educators around the world share their experiences using technology in K-12 classrooms. Whereas the Memorable Stories framework allows for users to directly upload and display their stories, Innovation Odyssey seems to mediate the publishing of their website by telling the contributor's projects in a summarized story. As stated in their directions, contributors need to describe the project, email pictures, and send signed permissions forms. Thus, Innovation Odyssey essentially edits the website and arranges the pictures for the contributors creating a consistent looking website design. Then they add a link to the contributor's website. Currently, the Memorable Stories framework has already been cleared by the College of Education to collect stories and contributors can submit their description of their experiences and the content can be accessible instantly. However, the use of multimedia is limited at this point and should be investigated in the future. The leaders did mention, though, that they were willing to edit any pictures or other material that was difficult to display immediately.
Ratings of Stories
Currently, the Memorable Stories framework provides a way of rating by letting
readers choose if the story is boring or exciting. Then the stories are displayed
in the order of the rating scores. Many website forums provide a variety of
information regarding a posting. For example, there are ways to display that
a story is new or recommended. Many websites show how many readers accessed
a story. Although a higher frequency of access to a story may arouse attention,
this does not necessarily guarantee the quality of the story. Leaders specifically
suggested that assigning levels to contributor according to his/her status may
provide a means to assert the quality of the story. Thus displaying the name
and position was suggested. But as Mei-li pointed out from her disappointing
experience in attending conferences, a well-known speaker does not guarantee
a high-quality presentation. Stories may be likewise. If the contributor and
the readers come from the same community, the rating based solely on the readers'
criteria can well be justified. As a matter of reality, Intel's Innovation Odyssey
does not provide ways for feedback or rating directly about each story (although
an on-line survey on a separate window was provided).
Attractability
Tao (2003) mentions that stories in science among adolescents are usually taken
as heroic stories. Orr (1996) also states that stories serve a social function
by letting storytellers achieve a certain respectable status (seniority) by
being a good storyteller. Thus, a main function to attract readers to become
contributors is to have a "Hall of Fame" feature so that they could
come back to see how they are rated and who is currently the best storyteller.
Structuring the content as described previously may also help readers return
to the website. On examining the components of a persuasive on-line hate story
websites, Lee & Leets (2002) found that while stories that include full
narrative components such as story, plot, and character, (high narrative) and
have explicit meanings usually arouse stronger reactions among readers, but
that low narrative stories with explicit meanings also have a lasting effect
on the readers as well. Thus, providing prompts (questions) asking for explicit
details of the story may help readers retain the content and urge them to return
to get more information from different stories.
(On another note, Orr (1996) found that war stories told by technicians were
in many instances "elliptical" or perhaps ill-structured. The more
experienced the tellers and hearers were, the less background knowledge they
needed. Thus a blank page without any prompts still may have its power.)
Other ways to attract readers and storytellers have been discussed as well. A feature that lets readers send stories by email was developed by Adam in his version of the Memorable Stories framework. Some graphics that add a positive storytelling atmosphere to the website was suggested by Professor Betsy Hearne in a brief meeting. Specific graphical details have not been added, but colors and fonts that matches the CITES website was incorporated for a consistent look. A "delete" feature was added to the editing interface so that readers could easily edit or delete stories without having to go through the website administrator. HTML tags were enabled at the request of some testers.
Students have suggested adding animated graphics. Although the content is somewhat different in nature, the Center for Digital Storytelling (http://www.storycenter.org) provides examples of stories told in audio-visual formats. Also, dealing with rather personal themes, FRAY (http://www.fray.com) provides interesting graphical-textual based stories about crime, hope, work, and drugs. They display a screen filled with parts of stories on one screen and lets readers click on a link. Each story is told using unique still graphics, and text that are broken down to several links (less need of scrolling), and finally provides readers the chance to respond to the story or read the follow-ups.
V. Conclusion
There are features that were discussed earlier that need to be added such as
an interface for uploading graphics or multimedia data. Also, there needs to
be a method for tracking user-behavior, such as which features are the most/the
least used, etc. These features are necessary for collecting data for future
research on analyzing not only the effectiveness of the stories but also the
effectiveness of the website itself.
VI. Challenge Self-Evaluation
One important experience I gained from this challenge was to have an opportunity
to talk to people who were planning and running actual websites. There were
so many ideas gathered from just one meeting that lasted me a semester (and
perhaps beyond) to work on. In being consistent with the CITES website, I learned
how to use cascade style sheets (CSS) to give colors and fonts a consistent
look throughout the page.
One disadvantage was that because the leaders were not programmers, I needed to resort to other resources for help when certain programming required some learning effort on my own such as creating interface for uploading multimedia files (this problem is still not solved yet).
One other area that I may have lacked was consistent communication. Because I was mostly alone in developing features for the framework, and because I tend to report progress when there's a notable progress going on, I tended to delay sending any reports. I think it would have been better to team up with other students and take part in the project together.
References
Bell, L. A. (2003). Telling tales: What stories can teach us about racism. Race Ethnicity and Education, 6, 3-28.
Edelson, D. C. (1993). Socrates, Aesops and the computer: Questioning and storytelling with multimedia.Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 2, 393-404.
Jonassen, D. H., & Hernandez-Serrano, J. (2002). Case-based reasoning and
instructional design: Using stories to support problem solving. Educational
Technology Research and Development, 50, 65-77.
McLellan, H. (2000). Experience Design. Cyberspsychology & Behavior,
3, 59-60.
Morgan, K. (1997). Tangled in the web: Storytelling, communication, and controversy.
In B. Hearne (Ed.), Story: From fireplace to cyberspace (pp. 11-19).
Urbana, IL: Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
Sims, R. (1999). Interactivity on stage: Strategies for learner-designer communication. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 15(3), pp. 257-272. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet15/sims.html
Tao, P. (2003). Eliciting and developing junior secondary students' understanding of the nature of science through a peer collaboration instruction in science stories. International Journal of Science Education, 25, 147-171.
http://www.bubbe.com/
Stories about family values and other themes.
Administrator gathers the submitted story and posts them. Not done automatically.
When you click submit a story, the directions are displayed first.
http://www.fray.com
Collections of stories are listed on one screen. The title, portion of the story,
and the contributor are all shown in one screen and indexed by themes.Keywords
are linked to connect to other stories. Interesting thing is that each story
is connected to a DHTML graphics oriented story page. The pictures and the graphics
seem to illustrate the mood of the story. At the end of each story, the authors
give a chance to contribute by saying "What do YOU think" or something
like that. Then, we can see other people's responses, etc.
http://www.dstory.com/dsfsedona/links.html
Link to digital story-telling conference.
Center for digital storytelling
http://www.storycenter.org/
Digital storytelling is kind of different. Mostly done in motion pictures and
such.