Although I experimented with different options to present back to my peers, I settled on a chronological presentation of my work using a 7-point storytelling format (Wells, 2010). This structure allows me to best illustrate my research journey, while also being reflective of the theme of storytelling. I also wanted to keep my presentation accessible and given that this includes a number of visuals I wanted to keep the underlying format clean and without any major distractions.
I added an interactive element to my presentation by enabling by allowing listeners or readers to scan a QR code (slide 28) and explore some of the storytelling elements and stories in more detail online.
The presentation includes an appendix (slides 30 – 50) for anyone interested in exploring some of the full questionnaire data and more detailed findings.
As Student Experience Lead at UAL Online, I continuously look at ways of improving the student experience, and a focus of my work is creating opportunities for student voice to support creative education online. For example, in 2023 I designed and launched UAL Online’s team of student partners, who support the co-design of online education at UAL and who have directly supported this action research project.
Therefore, part of the environment within which my research takes place is a specific online learning context that is aligned to the UAL Online Learning Framework (see below). It highlights six guiding values for the design, build and delivery of online learning and student experience, and forefronts flexibility, access and inclusion. It is important to recognise that I designed my research to align with this framework.
In addition, the UAL Online model structures online learning into three distinct categories: guided (45%), independent (40%), and live (15%). The focus of guided learning within this model made it interesting for me to spotlight it within my own research, shining a light on structured, self-paced learning that students are required to complete; although my wider work touches on all three categories.
I am also interested in some of the opportunities provided by guided learning to scale an offer of online learning, such as providing access to a larger and more diverse global cohort of students; compared with some residential offers that rely on predominant live delivery of creative education.
The project also brings together my own background in communications, the creative arts, and storytelling. I am particularly interested in how storytelling supports communities of creative students and enhances their experience. Copeland and de Moor (2018), for example, say that “digital stories carry the currency of authentic voice across networks when brokered effectively”. I am interested and how I can enable students to use their authentic voice and lived experiences within their studies.
In the previous PgCert unit, I looked at developing opportunities for students to explore their personal identities within classroom activities. In a way, my action research project is a continuation of this work but also goes further. Whereas the previous activity (or artefact) that I had designed enabled students to better understand their identities, the activity that I developed as part of the action research project enables students to express themselves much more freely, engage with their learning in a much more creative and more personal way, which supports the idea that their personal identities truly sit at the heart of what they do.
McNiff and Whitehead (2010, p.59) state that “What action research stands for is the realisation of human needs towards autonomy, loving relationships and productive work; the urge towards freedom, creativity and self-recreation.” As I previously wrote, through empowering storytelling activities in the classroom, I can empower different voices and hand over the reins to our students in a more meaningful way.
This isn’t to say that my own positionality doesn’t have a direct impact on how activities are run and supported. As Maisha Islam (2023) rightly says, “positionality influences every decision when you conduct research.” Nevertheless, through giving students agency to direct their own learning, we can open up learning activities to be more inclusive and socially just.
Bibliography
Copeland, S. and de Moor, A. (2018). Community Digital Storytelling for Collective Intelligence: towards a Storytelling Cycle of Trust. AI & SOCIETY, [online] 33(1), pp.101–111. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s0014601707441.
Maisha Islam: Rethinking academic research culture and decolonial approaches to student-staff partnerships, (2023). [Podcast] Spotify: Pedagogies for Social Justice, Student Partnership. 23 Sep. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/show/1BhrbuKdFOIBmlzGYAZyui?si=0402efe096f14a1e [Accessed 16 Nov. 2023].
McNiff, J. and Whitehead, J. (2010). You and Your Action Research Project. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.
The preliminary feedback I received on my ethics form during a group tutorial was positive. Changes I made before submitting my final form included making my research question more reflective of my own agency as a practitioner. I also reviewed my preliminary set of questions and rephrased a number of questions to make the overall set more critical and less leading. For example, I rephrased one of the questions from how students might feel connected, to how they might feel disconnected during the exercise. By not presuming that student partners would feel connected and by flipping the question, this then gave me an opportunity to double-check students’ understanding of the question and their response. It also then allowed for students to give a more ‘negative’ response if they so wished. I reviewed the remaining questions with this in mind, making some further changes. I then added additional opportunities for student partners to expand on their responses to likert questions on page 2 of the questionnaire and made my request for open-ended responses at the end of the survey more explicit. In the instructions, I also highlighted to students to read questions carefully, as I did not want them to skim over questions and misunderstand them.
I have included here my signed off (via Moodle) Ethical Enquiry Form.
Following on from the formal and final feedback I received on my ethical enquiry form, I revisited the order of questions once more and reviewed some of the phrasing of my questions to eliminate any ambiguity and clarify specific questions.
For example, I was asked about the notion of an activity ‘making’ someone feel a specific way, which made me think about the agency of my participants in the process. I rephrased my final set of questions to reflect this.
I also had a closer look at the idea of ‘trigger warnings’, which are commonly used but can also evoke negative feelings for students. The feedback I received made me reconsider the use of an explicit ‘trigger warning’, review project risks, and decide to take a softer approach. The final draft of my project information took this into account by explicitly talking about the possibly of strong feelings and emotions arising in the project, however I did no longer label these messages with a specific ‘trigger warning’. I also included a more explicit project etiquette and forms of support, including support with studying online, within the project invitation and documentation.
I wanted to make sure that the research would take place in a supportive environment, even though the learning activities themselves were designed to creatively challenge student partners. Macfarlane (2003, p.59) writes that while we want to make students into critical thinkers, “it is important to establish a clear, stable and supportive environment in which this enquiry can take place”.
Bibliography
Macfarlane, B. (2003). Teaching with Integrity : The Ethics of Higher Education Practice. [online] London: Taylor & Francis Group. Available at: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=182731.
It’s been an incredibly useful exercise to think about my action research project as a spiral of continuous activity, rather than a project with a distinct start and finish. This has helped me position my work with the wider context of my work, considering how I came to investigate digital storytelling and how I might want to develop this further.
PgCert slide, Workshop 2, Group, Friday, October 2023
Looking at O’Leary’s cycles of action research specifically, and mapping different parts of my action research to this spiral, unearthed a range of additional elements or steps that are already part of my research and that are worth documentation. For example, noticing that digital storytelling might have an impact on students’ learning through activities of play and their link to connectedness can be grouped within the initial ‘observe’ stage of O’Leary’s cycle. Coupled with my research within this area, my personal reflections on the subject then form the following ‘reflect’ stage of the cycle.
Personal sketch, classroom exercise ‘Mapping your Project to the Action Research Cycle/Spiral’
The exercise also allowed me to reflect on additional ‘observe’, ‘reflect’, and ‘plan’ stages, which could include coming up with possible solutions, making recommendations, and planning next steps. In a way, there is a possibility for this spiral to continue, with new experiences, observations and research feeding into further stages as I develop my work in digital storytelling.
