Keywords

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Boyer describes the scholarship of discovery as “the first and most familiar element in our model, the one that (…) comes closest to what is meant when academics speak of ‘research’” (Boyer 1990, p. 17). According to Boyer, “discovery” implies more than research as an activity isolated from teaching and other academic work. It can be conceived as a transgression which “at its best, contributes not only to the stock of human knowledge but also to the intellectual climate of a college or university. Not just the outcomes, but the process and especially the passion, give meaning to the efforts”. Discovery, then, has to do with the quest for new and significant knowledge relevant to the professional sphere, informing the relationship between practice and theory, research and teaching.

While Boyer was looking to broaden the definition of scholarship in a scholarly setting, he also embraced wider models of research, from the empiricist/positivist tradition to less restrictive and hypothesis-driven models (such as the case study) which were primarily qualitative (Stever 2011).

In spite of the established use of digital storytelling as a way of hearing untold stories (CDS, Capture Wales, Silence Speaks), we find that digital storytelling as a research approach or a methodology in the context of higher education is a relatively new endeavour. The aim of this section of the book is to discuss the opportunities and challenges connected to digital storytelling in relation to research primarily in two contexts: as a mode of collecting and analysing data and as a form for communicating results and sharing knowledge. Other areas of discovery, such as research on how digital storytelling affects teaching and learning and digital storytelling as a resource in community-based research, as in the scholarship of engaged collaboration, are discussed in other sections of this book.

Digital Storytelling: Process and Product—as Rich Data

The qualities of digital storytelling, primarily the first-person voice and the multimodal presentation, offer an opportunity for rich data and for hearing the voices of research subjects in a way that is less likely to happen in traditional research approaches such as questionnaires and interviews. Three chapters in this section discuss aspects of digital storytelling as an approach to collecting, analysing and using data.

In Chap. 9, Carol Haigh discusses the evolving role of digital storytelling in health-care research, both as a research method and as a methodology. She speculates upon the ideological shift this evolving role has brought about. Her chapter explores how digital stories can be viewed as a qualitative response to the “big data” approach to research. By introducing the concept of “fuzzy logic”, the author discusses the transition of digital stories from learning tool to data collection method and then onto a research methodology in their own right. She argues that digital storytelling can act as a catalyst for change in the established research paradigm and compares the qualities of digital storytelling to main qualities described in the stages of scientific revolution précised by Pajares (1998). Two cases are introduced, one to illustrate the analysis of digital stories as a fine-grained system (Pedrycz 1998), and one to illustrate the qualities of digital stories in overcoming consequences of epistemic injustice on research validity and reliability.

Inger-Kjersti Lindvig, in Chap. 10, addresses the concern for democratic societies when research does not give voice to ethnic minorities, in this case in relation to child welfare services. Lindvig discusses the scientific and methodological potential of digital storytelling to overcome such challenges. Building on Skjervheim’s discussion of the relationship between participant and observer positions in research (1996), the author explores whether such an approach meets scientific and methodological requirements. From a theoretical point of departure, and based on a case study involving minority groups, she describes how digital storytelling contributes to dialogic bridge-building between researcher and subject. Her claim is that, when used properly, digital storytelling can function as a methodological approach to qualitative data collection and the dissemination of research in the broadest sense.

In Chap. 11, Satu Hakanurmi builds on a case study where adult workers in a complex organisation share knowledge and build identity through a digital storytelling workshop. These experiences are discussed in light of narrative theory and socio-cultural learning theory in which the construction of the story is a central element of narrative learning in which we can learn from our lives. By analysing the data from interviews with participants, Hakanurmi found the individualistic approach of the interview insufficient to understand the social learning process and the co-construction of knowledge that she had observed. Introducing the dialogue in the story circle as an additional source of ethnographical data enabled her to analyse the storytelling process and its social co-authoring elements. The dialogue was analysed in terms of how participants’ contributions and communication in the story circle affected the development of the finished stories in terms of open or closed narratives or ante-narratives, all concepts that are introduced and discussed in the chapter.

Research Dissemination

In accordance with a general focus on digitised media in all aspects of higher education, and a renewed interest in a narrative approach to knowledge, there is an increasing interest in digital storytelling as a way to communicate research questions, outcomes and new knowledge. In 2012, I was invited to address the annual conference of journalists and research communicators in Norway. The given heading was optimistic: Digital storytelling—research communication in its own right and a door opener for further reading. I added a question mark then, and the conclusion is still open. The answer depends on several dimensions, including aim, content and context. There are still few examples of the use of traditional DS workshops where researchers complete digital stories on their own. One is the Ohio State University where the OSU Digital Storytelling Program has conducted workshops with researchers since 2005. At the University of Nottingham, Christine Gratton, with the support of Chris Thomson of JISC Netskills, works with researchers making their own stories. Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (HiOA) invite researchers to produce their own stories in a distributed workshop model building on the traditional CDS workshop.

In a focus group interview, researchers at HiOA describe the qualities of digital storytelling for research communication. They focus, for example, on the short form that supports an effort to get to the essence of the research question or outcome. They also report that the use of several modes of communication contributes to making research findings and issues more easily accessible.

However, they also raise a number of issues and describe the largest challenge as one of “language and voice”. Using the personal voice is demanding for researchers who are immersed in the academic tradition of objectivity, in which words such as I and me are considered signs of a lack of necessary analytic distance.

In this book, we discuss DS as a medium for dissemination of research results from two points of departure: digital stories resembling professional videos produced for researchers and stories produced by the researchers themselves. In Chap. 12, Ragnhild Larsson, a professional research journalist, describes and discusses the experiences of producing digital stories on behalf of, and in collaboration with, researchers. The data underpinning her discussion come from producing stories on behalf of 11 researchers across a multitude of research fields and interviewing 8 of them. Larsson describes the process of producing the stories, and discusses the potential and issues of personalised digital stories for research communication. Her findings confirmed that digital stories produced by a professional can complement traditional ways of communicating in a positive way. Researchers find that digital stories not only capture the driving force behind their research but reach larger audiences, thereby creating new opportunities.

Ida Hydle, in Chap. 13, discusses her experience as a researcher involved in the institutional effort at HiOA and her experiences of developing a digital story to communicate findings and perspectives from research-based evaluation of a Norwegian prison for youth aged 15–18 years. The author introduces perspectives and concepts from visual anthropology to explain the power of the visual. In particular, Hydle discusses the quality of this dimension in communicating new knowledge about how architectural and environmental elements such as buildings and colours can support the aim of prison, that is, reconciliation and rehabilitation. The author describes the digital storytelling workshop as a community of learners. Building on the impact of the story in various contexts, nationally and internationally, she concludes that this method of visualising research serves its purpose.