EdMedia 2017 - Washington, DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017
Examining Perceived Satisfaction Related to the Digital Storytelling Process1 Mustafa SARITEPECİ Ministry of Education TURKEY
[email protected] Hasan ÇAKIR Gazi Faculty of Education Gazi University TURKEY
[email protected] Abstract: This study investigated effects of the use of digital storytelling activities in 6th grade social studies course on perceived satisfaction of students related to the course. In this context, a 10-week case study was designed and implemented in the social studies course. The study data were collected via reflection reports prepared by the learners once every two weeks and semi-structured interviews and focus group sessions held after the implementation. The content analysis was used for data analysis. As a result of the content analysis, a total of 18 codes were encoded 296 times under three categories: “perceived satisfaction”, “perceived dissatisfaction”, and “perceived improvement in motivation”. According to the results of the study, the Social Studies course became more enjoyable for students and digital storytelling allowed students to be more productive and improved their satisfaction. However, one hour of the Social Studies course was carried out in the IT Laboratory and it was found that classroom management became more difficult for the teacher and therefore problems related to classroom management. Negative student behaviors arising from this situation were frequently emphasized under the perceived dissatisfaction category.
Introduction The important role of educational technologies in supporting learning and teaching activities in the Social Studies course has been pointed out in both the national (Altınışık & Orhan, 2002; Bakar, Tüzün, & Çağıltay, 2008; Saritepeci & Cakir, 2015) and international literature (Debele & Plevyak, 2012; Heafner, 2004; Heafner & Friedman, 2008; Lee, 2008; Swan & Hofer, 2008). However, some researchers suggest that the effectiveness of technology is limited in terms of ensuring or improving learning within a specific context (Fried, 2008; Leidner & Jarvenpaa, 1995; Swan & Hofer, 2008) It can be said that this is essentially due to use of technology solely as a presentation tool in learning-teaching processes and inadequate knowledge of teachers related to the field of technological pedagogy (Debele & Plevyak, 2012; Sarıtepeci & Durak, 2016a, 2016b). In this context, knowing how to use technological tools in question is not sufficient, but teachers ought to learn how to use these tools creatively depending on the content for an effective technology integration in education (Hughes, 2005; Mishra & Koehler, 2006). In other words, instead of using technology as a mere presentation tool, it is necessary to create an authentic learning environment where students find the opportunity to construct their own learning processes using these technologies (Debele & Plevyak, 2012). To this end, more interesting and meaningful real life situations may be created by integrating certain teaching methods and techniques with technology. One of these is the digital storytelling [DST] method which supports the traditional storytelling method with multimedia elements (Dupain & Maguire, 2007; Yuksel, Robin, & McNeil, 2011). Stories and storytelling, deemed to be a strong strategy in learning-teaching processes (Bruner, 1996; van Gils, 2005), is a frequently used method in social studies education. It can be suggested that storytelling is a strong method which allows students to associate their own lives with social studies content and embrace this association (Harris, 2007). One of the most significant limitations of the storytelling method is the use of a general story or a story prepared by the teacher in the course (Yoon, 2012). Supporting storytelling, which is generally regarded to support learning-teaching processes in social studies education, using multimedia elements may have important outcomes in terms of giving storytelling a more student-centered and cooperative structure. Regarding this subject, Robin (2008) notes that enriching storytelling with multimedia elements may improve interest and attention levels of 1 This work is derived from the doctoral dissertation of Sarıtepeci (2016).
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EdMedia 2017 - Washington, DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017 learners. Besides, it can be said that the use of digital storytelling in course processes provides convenience in creating real life situations with low cost (Swartout et al., 2006). In support of this argument, it is pointed out in the literature that digital storytelling is a student-centered method which allows students to combine their own experiences with learning content (Condy, Chigona, Gachago, & Ivala, 2012; Emert, 2013; Torres, Ponce, & Pastor, 2012). From this point, the purpose of this study is to investigate the use of the digital storytelling method in the social studies course within the framework of perceived satisfaction of learners. It is also aimed to find out how satisfied and pleased the students were with this particular teaching activity so that points to consider when designing the same activity for different student groups and different context can be revealed.
Method This study was performed as a designed case study. The participants followed the digital storytelling creation process and created stories regarding the subjects contained in the social studies curriculum. Field notes, semistructured interviews, focus group sessions and reflection reports were used for data collection. The data obtained from interviews and reflection reports were subjected to content analysis with a focus on student satisfaction. Work Group Among 12 classes in the school where the study was performed, 2 classes were selected for the study using the cluster sampling method. Thus, the study was performed with 66 middle school 7th grade students in these two classes. 2 students in the study group were excluded from the study due to irregular attendance, 1 student was excluded due to lack of sufficient reading-writing skills, and 3 students were excluded because they did not participate in the data collection process during and after the implementation. As a result, the study included a total of 60 participants, 29 females and 31 males. Data Collection and Data Analysis The qualitative data of the study were collected via reflection reports prepared once every two weeks, semistructured interviews held with the students after the implementation, focus group sessions and field notes kept by the researcher. Reflection reports prepared one every two weeks were collected on the website of the course (edmodo.com) and each student wrote five reflection reports throughout the implementation. Reflection reports were examined by the researcher using content analysis and it was found that the learners repeated themselves in the second reflection report. For this reason, only one of the statements made by the students was encoded in the content analysis in case of repetition. The reliability of the coding process was determined by testing the intercoder reliability. In this context, the draft code tree was examined by a second coder and then the study data were encoded by the second coder. The intercoder reliability was calculated using the formula suggested by Miles, Huberman, and Saldana (2013). The intercoder reliability was calculated to be 82.86% using this formula. Accordingly, we can say that there was a high level of agreement between the coders.
Findings and Discussion This section includes student opinions to reveal effects of the DST process on course motivation. Student opinions were collected under categories of “perceived satisfaction”, “perceived dissatisfaction”, and “perceived improvement in motivation” as shown in Table 1.
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EdMedia 2017 - Washington, DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017
Category
Perceived satisfaction
Perceived dissatisfaction
Perceived improvement in motivation
Codes Fun Productivity Enjoyable Classes going well New learnings Intraclass activities Use of stories in the course Difficulty in understanding and doing Negative student behaviors Boring Disliking Editing repeatedly Enthusiasm Interest in the course Confidence Curiosity Valuation Novelty effect
Number of Codings 46 46 28 18 14 12 12 28 25 9 6 5 16 16 5 4 3 3
Table 1. The Theme of Student Opinions on Change in Course Motivation Perceived Satisfaction The perceived satisfaction category contains 7 codes which were encoded 176 times. As shown in Table 1, fun and productivity codes stood out in the perceived satisfaction category related to DST activities and the Social Studies course. Some student opinions related to these codes are as follows: “The digital storytelling process was so fun for me and it was very tiring” (IS1) “It was more fun compared to other projects and I did not get bored.” (IS11) “What I liked about the course was preparing videos once again and learning new things.” (RS5) The students emphasized that use of DST made the course better and more fun. Some student opinions to this end are as follows: “I believe that the Social Studies is the best course for this activity. Digital storytelling goes very well with this course.” (IS9) “I do not really enjoy preparing homework with paper and cardboard. I find it boring. I liked digital storytelling using the computer more.” (FS1) In relation to perceived satisfaction, classes’ being more enjoyable and students’ assuming a more productive role stood out in student opinions. It can be suggested that the more productive role assumed by the students contributed to classes’ being more enjoyable. In support of this suggestion, Olney, Herrington, and Verenikina (2009) noted that students enjoyed sharing what they had produced after a successful production process with digital storytelling. Also, van Gils (2005) emphasized that DST was an effective method to combine educational processes with the element of fun. Studies in the relevant literature emphasized that DST allowed for creating an engaging learning environment (Eguchi, 2008; Smeda, Dakich, & Sharda, 2014) and supported learning while having fun (Bromberg, Techatassanasoontorn, & Andrade, 2013; Dogan, 2012; Gakhar, 2007; Hung, Hwang, & Huang, 2012; Wang & Zhan, 2010). As a natural result of enjoyable classes and perceived productivity, the students expressed that the course went well. Adopting a student-centered approach by ensuring a meaningful technological integration in the Social Studies course, which is usually carried out with presentations or a teacher-centered approach in practice, can be said to contribute to such perceptions of students.
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EdMedia 2017 - Washington, DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017 Perceived Dissatisfaction The students expressed perceived dissatisfaction due to problems that they experienced during the performance of activities in the DST process. The perceived satisfaction category, which negatively affected the course motivation, contains 5 codes which were encoded 73 times in total. As shown in Table 1, difficulties in understanding and doing stood out in student opinions related to perceived dissatisfaction. Also, the students mentioned negative student behaviors, which affected the classroom management negatively, and the course or activities being boring. Some student opinions related to these codes are as follows: “What I did not like about this course was that I was not able to do certain things during digital storytelling and could not understand some questions.” (RS5) “What I did not like about the course was answering assessment questions. Because I did not understand some of them.” (RS11) “What I did not enjoy during classes was that sometimes I got confused about the order of scenes, because it is very difficult to sort them out.” (RS35) “Too much noise during voice recording. We could not do the voice recording in a quiet environment.” (FS13) “What I disliked about the course was that my friends’ interrupting classes, because it prevents me from understanding the subject.” (IS14) It seems that having difficulties with understanding certain subjects or procedures and performing certain tasks during the DST process was commonly mentioned in opinions related to perceived dissatisfaction. The students often had difficulties with understanding certain concepts as well. Also, confusing the order of scenes while adding them to the video editing software during the digital storytelling process and having to edit the video after realizing the mistake might have led to perception of extra effort. The learners were not pleased with behaviors which affected the course negatively and expressed this as a reason for dissatisfaction. It can be said that some students’ disturbing their friends during classes and the loud environment led to this situation. Perceived improvement in motivation The perceived improvement in motivation category contains 7 codes which were encoded 55 times. The data given in Table 1 show that student opinions related to perceived improvement in motivation category concentrated on enthusiasm and interest in the course codes. Some relevant student opinions are as follows: “I came to the Social Studies class enthusiastically.” (IS6) “In the past, our teacher would lecture during the course and we would listen. Then our teacher would hold oral examinations. I did not like being asked questions. Then our teacher started to have us read stories during the class and asked questions about those stories. I raised my hand and volunteered to answer.” (FS5) “It was interesting to create storyboards where we visualized the stories that we had written.” (FS6) The perceptions which stood out were the students became more enthusiastic with the digital storytelling process and activities performed in this process were interesting for them. The field notes of the researcher related to this point include the following statement: “The parents mentioned that they had never heard anything from their children about activities performed in the Social Studies course before, but they explained what they did at each step of the DST process enthusiastically.” [Field notes-26 April 2015, Parent-teacher meeting] Another field note supporting the finding that the students were more enthusiastic in classes was as follows: “...after completing the second DST process, some students wanted to watch their first story once again and edit it and subsequently performed these edits.” [Field notes-21 May 2015] According to Yoon (2012), the use of DST in the course improved students’ interest in and motivation toward the course. Studies in the relevant literature emphasized that DST ensured improved motivation toward the course (Eguchi, 2008; Hathorn, 2005; Michalski, Hodges, & Banister, 2005) and increased the interest in the course ((Balaman, 2016; Dogan & Robin, 2008; Torres et al., 2012; van Gils, 2005; Yoon, 2012).
Conclusions
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EdMedia 2017 - Washington, DC, United States, June 20-23, 2017 The study results show that the use of digital storytelling in course processes allowed students to have fun during the Social Studies course, which is usually regarded as a dull and boring course. Also, the digital storytelling allowed students to be more productive, which contributed to the improvement of their satisfaction with the course. As a reflection of this, the findings of the study show that classes went better and more smoothly than before. Moreover, the students found digital storytelling activities interesting and became more enthusiastic about the course. These changes experienced during the course contributed to positive changes in attitudes of the students toward the course. One hour of the Social Studies course was carried out in the IT Laboratory and it was found that classroom management became more difficult for the teacher and therefore problems related to classroom management. In this respect, negative student behaviors were among the commonly mentioned aspects which led to perceived dissatisfaction.
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