By Dr. Hyung Yu Park Associate Professor, Tourism Studies, Department of Marketing, Enterprise and Tourism (Middlesex University, UK)
/TEACHING EXPERIENCES
Digital Storytelling – Individual Meaning-making for Heritage Tourism
Introduction
Experiential learning emphasises student-centred, collaborative and inclusive methods that are often difficult to implement in traditional teaching environments. In order to maximise the benefits of experiential learning, there needs to be a critical focus on developing creative pedagogies and innovative approaches. Student-led projects offer opportunities for students to engage in experiential learning (McGovern, 2018). Heritage, a complex and multi-dimensional concept, is often difficult for students to conceptualise and contextualise. Heritage evolves over time, is open to different interpretations and involves different stakeholders in its conservation and tourism development. The integration of digital stories as a summative assessment helps to enrich students’ critical understanding of the intricate dynamics involved in utilising and promoting heritage in tourism, compared to more conventional assessment methods such as reports and essays. Through the use of digital storytelling students are encouraged to personalise and contextualise key concepts related to heritage, thereby enhancing their independent and reflective approaches to knowledge construction and co-construction.
The process of creating and sharing digital stories requires students to construct, reconstruct, and evaluate their experiences, often incorporating their emotions and inviting deeper reflection. Additionally, digital storytelling challenges students to consider how they produce, explore, and promote their narratives, thereby enhancing problem-solving skills applicable to real-world contexts and contributing to their employability. While digital storytelling has been widely adopted in healthcare and nursing education (Gazarian, 2010; McGovern, 2018; Keune and Salter, 2022), its broader application across disciplines, such as social sciences and management studies, needs to be further improved. This paper highlights the use of digital storytelling as a creative and innovative pedagogical tool that facilitates and integrates student reflections and experiences to enhance a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of heritage tourism.
Digital storytelling as a critical and creative pedagogical tool
Central to experiential learning is greater emphasis on learning through educational experiences, which focus on students’ role in facilitating their own experiences (Priest et al, 2000; Coulson and Harvey, 2013; Chiu et al, 2023). Experiential learning places focus on the student-centred and student-led knowledge construction and development, by ‘actively engaged in posing questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative, and constructing meanings’ (Association for Experiential Education). Estes (2004) draws attention to student-centred facilitation methods which could provide students with more opportunities to take meaningful roles in their own learning. To engage students in active and autonomous learning, tutors are encouraged to develop a new experiential paradigm that prioritises creativity over traditional teaching methods, with the use of technology enhanced learning tools.
Given that films and specific forms of visual imagery used in a learning environment stimulate students’ active participation and critical engagement with the content being taught, the practice of digital storytelling is expected to further enhance student-led and creative learning development. By visualising, recontextualising, and critically engaging with learning content through the process of digital storytelling, students are able to cultivate a qualitative approach to both critical thinking and reflective practice (Hibbert & Cunliffe, 2015). Digital storytelling can be a powerful tool for promoting critical thinking and creating a pedagogical space where students’ perspectives and experiences contribute to the meaning-making of key concepts (see Ayikoru and Park, 2019). Through this process, students are able to broaden, challenge, and transform their personal perspectives and understandings of past and present, as well as society and the world- an essential goal of higher education.
Digital stories comprise of photography, audio, video and narration in a digital portfolio form. Digital stories enhance oral story-telling with images, music and text and have a potential to produce numerous educational benefits (Leopold, 2010). The UK higher education sector has become increasingly multinational and multicultural, making the embrace of diversity one of the major challenges in teaching practice. More varied and innovative learning methods are essential to effectively address challenges such as language barriers, cultural sensitivity and the different learning styles of individual students. Here, digital stories prove effective as a learning and assessment tool for non-native English speaking students, with a greater emphasis on assessing their academic understanding in a more creative and less didactic way.
In my experience, digital stories could minimise the involvement of the teacher as an authority, even in the context of experiential learning. There is a concern that experiential learning may still remain teacher-centred, as teachers can potentially exert an authoritative influence on students’ reflective approach to experiential learning (see Brown, 2002). Therefore, digital storytelling is of great importance in empowering students in the process of critical and reflective learning, where the focus is on how students, as active creators of knowledge, understand, (re)construct and (re)interpret the meaning and context of the learning involved. By using images, sounds, and narratives, students are encouraged to take initiative, make decisions, and intentionally create stories that are both accessible and engaging. It is evident that students are likely to benefit from the formative and qualitative nature of digital stories. Digital stories also enable students to undertake more extensive research, thereby developing relevant research skills that are transferable to employability. Importantly, students are able to experiment, think and challenge beyond the confines of existing paradigms and traditional practices, often leading to formulating their own original ideas and viewpoints of the major theoretical debates and issues concerned.
Digital storytelling in practice- opportunities and challenges
Following Ohler’s (2008) suggestion that digital stories should be integrated within the goals of the curriculum rather than treated as isolated exercises, digital storytelling has been employed as a summative assessment for three heritage tourism modules I have developed and led- TOU3922 Cultural and Heritage Tourism (2007-2015), TOU3914 Heritage Tourism (2016-2022) and TOU3923 Heritage, Tourism and Digital Media (2024- present). When considering the creation of a new assessment method that accommodates the diverse cultural backgrounds and varied learning styles of individual students, I was drawn to the concept of using storytelling in different media formats. I was the first to introduce digital storytelling as a summative assessment at MDX in 2011.
This is the final year optional module which aims to develop a critical awareness and understanding of the contemporary development of heritage tourism, combining perspectives from both the social sciences and management studies. Heritage is both a complex, muti-dimensional and contested concept which students often struggle to clearly understand and discursively develop. Developing a clear conceptual understanding of heritage is essential in achieving the main learning objectives of the module. Students often choose this module without realising the complexity of the conceptual understanding of key academic concepts and issues surrounding heritage tourism such as authenticity, commodification, dissonance and globalisation. Through digital storytelling students can personalise and contextualise their understanding of heritage by creating stories that primarily link theoretical concepts with personal narratives.
In particular, it is important to encourage students to understand the ‘multiple constructions of the past’ that are ‘endlessly revised from our present positions’ (Crang, 1994: 341) in utilising and promoting heritage for touristic consumption. My teaching and research paradigms and practices have been grounded in challenging existing norms and values of society by including less dominant, alternative and individual perspectives. In contrast to positioning heritage as a symbol of power, authority and privilege, I focus on individual meaning-making of heritage through tourism. I believe that this coherent focus has encouraged me to develop an assessment method that can facilitate and enhance students’ individual meaning-making of heritage and tourism. This link between my research and teaching has been a consistent element in my pedagogical approach. To establish an alignment between pedagogical approach and assessment I was eager to develop an assessment method incorporating individual meaning-making through reflection and critical engagement, and the use of up-to-date technology. The process of evaluating digital stories reveals a fascinating contrast between students’ personal constructions and diverse interpretations of heritage and identity, and the more rigid, essentialist and state-driven heritage narratives (Park, 2010; Park, 2016; Park and Su, 2024). Students often bring their unique perspectives, influenced by their personal experiences, cultural or ethnic backgrounds and creative approaches, which challenge the dominant narratives promoted by governments or institutionalised heritage discourses. These top-down frameworks tend to present heritage as fixed, homogeneous and often political, whereas students’ narratives emphasise the fluid, nuanced and diverse nature of heritage. With a greater emphasis on the reflective and reflexive nature of digital stories, the themes given have been ‘What does heritage mean to you?’, ‘The changing perceptions of heritage over the course of the module’, ‘London’s unknown heritage’, ‘whose heritage is it’ and ‘Develop a new tourism itinerary with unique heritage experiences in London’, with some variation in each year.
The first workshop, held at the beginning of the module, provides a broad overview of digital storytelling and experiential learning, along with guidance on group selection and assessment criteria. The project spans one full class and five seminar sessions (1.5 hours each) out of the 24 sessions, culminating in an open class viewing of digital stories and individual reflective presentations in sessions 23 and 24. Students are required to produce a digital story of four to five minutes in length, using a first-person perspective. Individual presentations have recently been introduced to encourage students to critically analyse their own learning experiences in depth, while also reflecting on their participation in group work and their specific contributions. These presentations also provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate their conceptual understanding through a brief literature review, connecting it to their digital stories. Students are usually allowed to form their own groups, which also serves as a mechanism to ensure their responsibility and commitment to the group work.
Once the group chooses a topic, they are encouraged to develop a storyboard with visual metaphors and images captured through their smartphones or painted by themselves, which I provide the first feedback on. One seminar session is dedicated to offering comprehensive workshops and tutorials on relevant technology, software, and resources, including training on editing software and incorporating music inserts. This session is usually run by members of E-learning support team who can address specific questions regarding the use of different software, apps and tools. The entire process of developing digital stories has helped to shape my role as a mediator and facilitator, rather than an authority figure, in students’ knowledge development journeys. Engaging with students throughout the preparation, production and review of their digital stories allows tutors to better understand and appreciate students’ roles and positions as creators of their own knowledge and experiences.
Practical tips for enhancing digital storytelling as a learning tool
Use of digital technology is crucial in digital storytelling, but students need to be encouraged to prioritise the story itself rather than relying too heavily on the technology. An over-reliance on these digital tools can overshadow the substance of impactful storytelling, such as the development of character, narrative depth, and emotional and affective engagement. It is important to encourage students to first develop a strong storyline and draft scripts at the beginning of the project. The first workshop should focus on helping students identify the main focus and direction of their story, using critical and creative thinking. Once this storytelling foundation is established, a workshop on digital technology can be introduced to support and enhance their work. Depending on students’ progress, tutors can take a flexible approach to determine when digital tools should be introduced to elevate the storytelling process.
Effective collaboration with the technology support team, such as E-learning support, enables both students and staff to keep up to date with the latest technology and make efficient use of different platforms and tools. Creating a resource hub within a virtual learning space, such as a university learning portal, can greatly support students throughout the duration of their project. This hub could include general guidelines, frequently asked questions (FAQs), sample projects, and additional materials that students can refer to at any stage of their work. Centralising these learning resources can provide students with quick and easy access to essential information and support materials for their independent learning.
Conclusion
Teaching and learning are both elusive and complicated concepts and activities. Digital storytelling, which leverages emerging technologies, can foster student-led, creative, and independent learning within an experiential framework. The use of digital stories, constructed and interpreted from a first-person point of view, proves effective to facilitate students’ critical understanding of the interdisciplinary and qualitative approaches to heritage and tourism in an individual and autonomous way, thus fulfilling the specific learning outcomes of the module. Digital stories, unlike traditional learning methods, encourage students to visually and emotively portray and narrate the issues in their own voices. They thus contribute to enhancing student-led learning, with a focus on recognising students as the main actors of knowledge development and communicative learning interactions. The potential of digital stories as a reflective assessment tool needs to be further explored in order to better develop students’ critical and self-directed learning skills, to strengthen the links between theory and practice, and to promote learning through experience.
References
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Biography:
Hyung yu Park, is an Associate Professor in Tourism Studies at Middlesex University has contributed to establishing heritage tourism as a significant interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research area, leading the construction of new knowledge in the field through publishing in top journals and writing a textbook- Heritage Tourism by Routledge (2014), which has been adopted worldwide as a core text for heritage and tourism programmes. Her main research area is heritage tourism, identity and social memory, sustainable heritage tourism development, heritage in peacebuilding and wellbeing. She is devoted to discovering stories of the past through individual actors and (re)positioning the potential of heritage as a source of resilience. She has worked as key advisor and expert panel for sustainable heritage tourism with national governments and international organisations including UNESCO, Organization of World Heritage Cities (OWHC), OWHC-AP (Asia-Pacific) and International Council of Organizations of Folklore Festivals and Folk Arts (CIOFF). She has made substantial contributions to policy development and implementations in sustainable heritage tourism in South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
