As my action research project developed, several changes took place. At the beginning the project scope seemed fairly vast, and a lot of my initial work focused on narrowing the scope of the project to ensure that I would be able to deliver it within the boundaries of the course. Some of the exercises I undertook were useful and narrowed the project in a helpful way. At the same time, this opened opportunities for me to explore adjoining areas of research, for example I explored the idea of collective consciousness (Bache, 2008) and I explored a variety of research methods including embodied data analysis (Kara, 2022); although I ultimately discounted the latter due to the digital nature of my project.
Through some of the discussions I was able to have with peers, as well as some of the feedback I received, I made useful changes to the project. For example, I changed the central exercise from student partners writing complete stories to them being able to continue existing stories and being able to contribute smaller story elements to other students’ story elements; create a more collective approach and making the exercise itself more dynamic as well as more collective in nature. Some of the feedback around gathering and sharing storytelling elements and techniques, also led me to develop the Padlet activity to give students a more comprehensive insight into storytelling, supporting them better for the core activity on Miro, which asked them to develop a story more or less independently.
I believe the strength of my storytelling project was the design of the learning activity at its centre and me having developed it using storytelling insights and elements of play specifically with a creative cohort of students in mind. I think that the application of design thinking during the development of the exercise helped me develop something much more agile and much more interesting than taking any existing or previously used exercise and applying it to a new group of students.
My initial work in this area was inspired by a project by Sheffield Hallam University, where listening rooms (Sheffield Hallam University, 2003) had been set up to listen in on conversations between students, giving the university a better understanding of students’ experiences and allowing students, usually two at a time, to have discursive conversations with each other. (The Sheffield Hallam University project had been inspired by BBC Radio 4’s The Listening Project (BBC Radio 4, 2023)).
Thinking about the idea of listening rooms, I began to wonder what a project like this could look like online, i.e. without physical listening rooms or boxes on campus. I started to sketch out ideas of what this might look like in a virtual space, how information could be captured, and so on.
One aspect that was missing for me, however, was how such a project could more directly benefit students. It is obvious that there are huge benefits for me, as an academic, gaining a better understanding of my students through something like a listening project and then in turn being able to better support my students. Other academics, support services and some students might be interested in an analysis of relevant project findings, too.
Nevertheless, it bothered me that there was no immediate feedback or contribution to students from the activity itself. And a virtual listening rooms project also raised a question around why students would share their personal stories with the university without much in return. What would their incentive be, and would the project ultimately exclude some students over others?
Lastly, I thought that the idea of ‘someone’ listening in on a conversation clashed with my wish to create a safe and caring environment for my students. As Condorelli (2009, p.188) states, “As people involved in the making of culture, how do we want to go there and what with?” I wanted to ensure to create an environment and a community, but in a space that felt safe. I began to think about other ways to capture students’ stories.
I also decided that a brief for students to share a piece of themselves should be much more open, and that students shouldn’t need to answer a question that was too specific. I wanted to create an activity that places students at the center of it, gives them agency to decide, something that would connect students through the collective nature of the activity. I also wanted to see if by empowering my students I could remove at least some of my own biased influence, as an academic, from the activity. As more and more students would feed into the activity, and it became more of a collective experience would my own influence over their experience reduce? I began to wonder if this could then create more space for students to express their own identities and express themselves more freely, and the content creation aspect of the activity would be become more and more based on co-design, self-creation and a self-run, sustainable activity.
Lastly, I liked the idea of having an activity that would allow students to use different formats and that the activity could include more than two students at a time, something inherently more collective than two students having a private conversion with each other.
One of the most interesting and possibly more positive elements of the storytelling project also became one of the biggest blockers, namely the asynchronous nature of the activity. There was a clear challenge of having to compete with student partners’ other responsibilities, such as other academic activities, and I had to put in additional efforts to follow up with students, collectively and individually, reflect on my communications, and stretch the boundaries of the project. For example, I extended my deadlines for students to contribute to the project by an entire month, giving me less time to analyse their data, but allowing for a larger number of contributors.
I’m very pleased with the difference the project has made so far in getting my department to reconsider the way students are able to contribute to their teaching and learning, incorporating storytelling at the core of some of our activities.
I’m excited to consider how this project can be embedded as a foundational exercise within the student partners group moving forward, e.g. as new student partners join us, and how this project might be used with other aspects of online education. It has been brilliant to look at how I can nurture a community of students and develop opportunities of connectedness among them.
I monitored and noted feedback received throughout the project, either implementing changes directly, or logging this for later use, for example within my research mind map, and a list of ideas and references to return to at another time.
I tried to be consequent and stick to my original plan, giving each stage of the project sufficient time, but also not allowing too much scope creep. I probably spent more time on running the actual activities, simply due to the fact that I tweaked activities and expanded on them, which required more time. I would have liked to explore other methodologies and areas of research further but was also conscious of sticking to my overall plan and needing to decide on one specific route through the project.
I was very inspired by the collective nature of the activity, which I hope to explore more in the future. I think that I gained new skills in terms of activity design, surveying students, and analysing data. The way that I drew raw data out of the activity and feedback, and then used thematic and narrative analysis tools to work through the raw data was new and exciting to me. I would also like to explore narrative analysis further.
Final project considerations
The learning activity I ultimately developed was a rich, three-hour long exercise that sat outside students’ curriculum. The flexibility to complete the exercise as and when students wanted, provided them with a more accessible way to engage with the activity as if it had been scheduled to take place live, also reducing some of the overall intensity of the work involved.
It is also worth noting that student partners’ participation in this project was entirely voluntary, prioritising students’ needs outside their roles of student partners. Their contributions could also be made anonymously. Both of these elements highlight my own values around the importance of embedding ethics of care into our work with students, looking to support students in a caring way, rather than students being in any way, even unintentionally, harmed. All contributing student partners were compensated for their time via Arts Temps.
Bibliography
Bache, C.M. (2008). The Living Classroom: Teaching and Collective Consciousness. Albany, USA: SUNY Press.
BBC Radio 4 (2023). BBC Radio 4 – The Listening Project. [online] The listening project: It’s surprising what you hear when you listen. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cqx3b [Accessed 14 Dec. 2023].
Condorelli, C. and De Baere, B. (2009). Support for Culture. In: Support Structures. Berlin: Sternberg Press, pp.187–201.
Kara, H. (2022). Embodied Data Analysis. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k79AWH59JpQ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2023].
Sheffield Hallam University (2003). Listening Rooms at Sheffield Hallam University. [online] Listening Rooms. Available at: https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/listeningrooms/ [Accessed 14 Dec. 2023].