Digital Storytelling

 

By John MacLeod

Storytelling is a skill that helps people understand a situation and is integral to a presentation. Applying storytelling to presentations is a great way to captivate the audience from the start. Digital storytelling is what happens when you combine a digital presentation like a PowerPoint with audio and visuals and have an emphasis on storytelling (University of Guelph McLaughlin Library). According to “Digital Storytelling Project as a Way to Engage Students in Twenty-First Century Skills Learning” by Aleksandra Lazareva and Gibran Cruz-Martinez, students engaging in digital storytelling “had a positive impact on [their] cognitive engagement as they felt they could express their perspectives more confidently.” When presenting a story it is much easier to remember than to try and memorize all the bullet points on a slide. This makes the experience feel more natural which helps the audience engage with the presentation. A presentation that lacks digital storytelling is just slides with information the presenter is trying to convey but quickly leads to what people call “death by PowerPoint.”

Work Cited

Lazareva, Aleksandra, and Gibran Cruz-Martinez. “Digital Storytelling Project as a Way to Engage Students in Twenty-First Century Skills Learning.” International Studies Perspectives, vol. 22, no. 4, 2021, pp. 383–406, https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekaa017.


University of Guelph McLaughlin Library. (2019). What is Digital Storytelling. YouTube. Retrieved May 17, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIix-yVzheM.