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Introduction

Societal changes have pushed the long-established boundaries of higher education (HE). Despite the changes, teachers still hold in their hands the power in learning, not as a bound book of scientific knowledge but as facilitators and instigators of life-long learning and ultimately human development. Promoting active student involvement in the teaching and learning process, improving the communication through responsible interaction has advantages for all stakeholders in education. Admitting that it is through interpersonal relationships and social interaction that meaning is made and that emotions are part of each individual and cannot be dissociated from the learning process will lead to unchartered, yet necessary paths.

As technology and media merge with education in a continuous complex social process with human consequences and effects, teachers aspire to understand and interpret this volatile context that is being redesigned at the same time society itself is being reshaped as a result of the technological evolution. Thus, we sustain that education is about learning to competently and responsibly be in society, where each person is unique albeit part of a larger social community. We acknowledge the prominent role of technology in this fast-paced, evolving society and the need for personal development to meet the unforeseen challenges.

By establishing an intrinsic and unbreakable connection between reflection and twenty-first-century skills, Digital Storytelling (DS) has gained momentum in HE. While emphasising twenty-first-century skills, it also forges a controversial path in academia. DS is capable of linking HE and emotion, encouraging self-direction and personal initiative, for overall learning and engagement. In practice, however, while reflection is acceptable and even desirable within the HE community, personal or emotional aspects create barriers that are more difficult to overcome.

We argue “Digital Storytelling” is a process which foments positive student development in HE, enhancing interpersonal relationships and self-knowledge while improving overall digital literacy.

Education in a Fragmented Society

Within an educational setting, but specifically for teachers, especially unsettling is Roger Shank’s webpage logo that reads: “There are only two things wrong with the education system: 1. What we teach; and 2. How we teach it.” Education is a myriad of interlacing threads, multifaceted and complex that educators have for centuries tried to comprehend, in order to piece together and obtain a clearer understanding of the overall puzzle. More understanding will lead to the advocated coherent articulation and integration.

Societal changes bring forth changes in education. Witnessing these changes and recognising that education and society are intertwined and interdependent, as each influences and is in turn influenced by the other, the literature regarding HE has, over the last several decades, attempted to contemplate the changing landscape so as to make sense of these evolving needs.

Boyer’s special report, “Scholarship Reconsidered”, published in 1990, advocates this need for an integrated view of education. In line with Bruner (1986), Boyer alerted to the shift in the hierarchy of knowledge, claiming that given that the “boundaries of human knowledge are being dramatically reshaped” (p. 21), the need for “integration” to address intellectual questions and human problems was paramount. Indeed, a quarter of a century ago Boyer confronted higher education institutions (HEIs) by stating that the educational paradigm had to be reconsidered so as to include in their mission “an integrated learning approach”, to foster students’ personal development. That is to say, HEIs mission should be to prepare their students for a life as responsible citizens of the world, capable of “arrang(ing) relevant bits of knowledge and insight from different disciplines into broader patterns that reflect the actual interconnectedness of the world” (p. 19).

Later, Delors (1996) published a report in Europe, insisting that education needed to be viewed in the broader context of its interaction with society, also proposing a humanistic and integrated vision of education. Despite the time lapse, Boyer’s “Scholarship Reconsidered” and the Delors Report remain a timely and challenging agenda for shaping education. Indeed, these authors viewed education as all-encompassing, arguing that education is based upon four pillars: “learning to know”, “learning to do”, “learning to live together” and “learning to be”. These four pillars may be regarded a relevant guiding framework for education development in today’s world: learn and know in order to interact within a social context, with direct influence on the individual self, that is, “on being”.

Hence, education should be regarded first and foremost as a means to endow a person’s ability to guide and adjust his/her own development. Education is not just about educational institutions but also about life in general, and more specifically each individual life in a search for meaning, so as to make sense of a person’s own life, to integrate the self, context and subject matter into a meaningful, personal learning experience (Baldacchino 2009). This is not a solitary process. It is a relational dialogue, where teachers and students, within a specific context, construct meaning about themselves as well as about their social and cultural context. Lave and Packer (2008) sustain that learning uncovers, describes and fosters human relations. Consequently, learning is not about transferring well-defined knowledge packages, but rather about social/contextual adaptability that derives from personal interpretation and critical reflection. Thus, learning is identity development.

The Particular Case of Higher Education

In a fragmented, postmodern society, where people are faced with, “a noxious, painful and sickening feeling of perpetual uncertainty in everything regarding the future” (Bauman 1997, p. 193), specific content knowledge and technical skills are considered to be no longer sufficient. HE needs to enable students to successfully manage uncertainty to act in society and to cope with the unbounded, exponential knowledge and information, so as to expand the understanding of the world and their own self-understanding, in a reflexive practice (Giddens 1991). Within fragile and shifting boundaries, which Bauman coined as “liquid”, the labour market creates new demands. Employers seek new skills and qualities: forgotten seems to be the need for book-bounded knowledge, to be replaced with personal and interpersonal skills coupled with digital and media literacy, creativity and imagination in order to create and adapt to new ideas, as well as readapt old ones and apply them to unfamiliar contexts (Boyer 1990). HEIs are therefore compelled to provide flexible programmes and teachers are asked to redesign curricula and develop practice-based pedagogical approaches, while students are asked to assume a more active and responsible stance in their own learning. Institutions and teachers need to challenge students to develop critical reflective appraisals regarding themselves, their interactions and that of the world around them. Deeply and intrinsically rooted in the individual, education is more than instructing, it is about being.

Twenty-first century skills postulated across the globe identify the need for an interconnected learning process. Literature on HE reflects this movement, arguing in favour of “rethinking” (Laurillard 1993), “re-envisioning” (Lin et al. 2013), “transforming” (Mayes et al. 2009) or even “revolutionising” (Altbach, Reisberg and Rumbley 2009) HE. The need to probe “established boundaries” (McMahon and Claes 2005) and “renew” (Palmer et al, 2010) HE, in a world that is unpredictable and where knowledge is supplanted by “being” (Barnett 2004), with focus on future technological trends (see, e.g., The Higher Education edition of the Horizon Reports) is clear, direct and well documented.

These trends are built on the premise that the student is pivotal in all educational activities and that the role of HEIs is to help students establish and develop emotional connections to learning. This educational framework derives from a humanistic vision of education, from educators such as Dewey, Freinet and Freire, and that of Piaget and Vygotsky’s constructivist perspectives and collaborative learning approaches. The problem perhaps lies in the gap between thinking, expectations, pedagogical approaches and what is done in practice in each HEI. Elmore (1991) argues:

The aim of teaching is not only to transmit information, but also to transform students from passive recipients of other people’s knowledge into active constructors of their own and others’ knowledge. The teacher cannot transform without the student’s active participation, of course. Teaching is fundamentally about creating the pedagogical, social, and ethical conditions under which students agree to take charge of their own learning, individually and collectively. (pp. xvi–xvii)

Student-centred approaches imply establishing closer interpersonal relationships as opposed to sitting in the classroom filtering rendered information. Through dialogue, teachers and students express and discuss their needs and interests, as well as learning material and experiences, creating a continuous feedback loop, through teacher–student interactions, as well as student–student interactions, allowing for the construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of meaning.

These approaches to teaching and learning also acknowledge that despite the massification of HE, each student is unique, with unique personality and experiences. Learning is about personal development in interaction; it is about the self—that of teacher and students—embedded in a social context. Higher educational contexts are rich in challenges and development opportunities, in terms of autonomy, identity construction, development of interpersonal relationships, the development of ideas and developing integrity (Chickering and Reisser 1993). Academically, students need to adapt new teaching, learning and assessment strategies. Socially, challenges emerge in establishing and developing relationships with teachers and colleagues, as well as coping with nest leaving and the restructuring of family relations. The personal domain encompasses identity development, greater self-awareness and that of the world around. Lastly, the vocational domain relates to the development of a project and a professional identity. Within this perspective, HE extends well beyond specific content knowledge and cannot be dissociated from learning to be.

Illeris (2008) draws on the work developed by Vygotsky and describes learning as a three-dimensional interplay—meaning, personal and contextual. Ideally, it integrates two processes—an external interaction process between the learner and his or her social, cultural or material environment, and an internal psychological process of acquisition and elaboration—and three dimensions—the content dimension, usually described as knowledge and skills, but also many other things such as opinions, insight, meaning, attitudes, values, ways of behaviour, methods, strategies and so on; the incentive dimension, which comprises elements such as feelings, emotions, motivation and volition and whose function is to secure the continuous mental balance of the student; and the interaction dimension, which serves the personal integration in communities and society and thereby also builds up the student’s social dimension.

While cognition is embraced and nurtured in HE, emotion and close interpersonal relationships are aspects that, despite the literature advocating their relevance, still tend to be disregarded in favour of more traditional approaches to teaching and learning, as these are considered private and beyond the scope of HE. Thus, regardless of the current emphasis on student-centred learning approaches, considerable effort is made to maintain the established boundaries and the distance deemed necessary.

Situating Emotion and Interpersonal Relationships in Higher Education

Emotions are essential for human survival and adaptation as they affect the way we see, interpret, interact and react to the world that surrounds us. However, they are underexplored in education.

Emotions are embodied and situated, in part sensational and physiological, consisting of actual feeling—increased heartbeat, adrenaline—as well as cognitive and conceptual, shaped by beliefs and perceptions. Over time, they have been conceived as private experiences that people are taught not to express publicly; they are a natural phenomenon people must learn to control; and are an individual (intimate) experience. Emotion has been excluded from the HE’s pursuit of truth, reason and knowledge because they have been associated with “‘soft’ scholarship, pollution of truth and bias” (Boler 1999, p. 109), despite the proliferation of findings from the neurosciences advocating that emotions are natural and universal, and intimately connected to cognition and the process of meaning making, or learning (Damasio 2000).

Emotions are part of the interpersonal dynamics, which comprise any learning context. Interpersonal relationships within educational contexts, whether they are teacher–student or student–student relationships, are complex and rooted in social perceptions of teaching and learning. Humans are social beings, thus, learning to be implies the development of interpersonal competencies. Within this scenario, emotions, interpersonal relationships and learning cannot be disassociated, nor can we disregard any one of these aspects as they are intertwined. There is incontestable evidence among the literature that states that interpersonal relationships are vital for persistence learning and overall success in HE.

In the field of neurosciences, Cozolino and Sprokay (2006) emphasise the need for a close link between learning and interpersonal relationships in educational settings, arguing that human brain needs social interaction to make meaning, to shape and reshape its connections, to adapt and readapt to an ever-changing world. The brain is thus a social organ, designed to learn through shared experiences. At a time when roles are shifting in HE, it is important to be aware of the boundaries in these interpersonal relationships that seem to be getting closer due to the frenetic use of social networks, especially between teachers and students. Teachers need to find a sustainable personal and professional balance, to understand when and how to rim the boundaries to serve the student and their relationship.

In HEIs where traditional teaching and learning approaches predominate, interpersonal relationships may be devalued. However, as we have been postulating, HE is about learning and student overall development is the work of HE. If science has proven and validated the connections, establishing the framework for teachers to work with, the option lies in their hands. Closer interpersonal relations, whether between students or between students and teachers, step beyond the confines of what has traditionally been deemed as appropriate for HE. Personal or emotional aspects are met with mental resistance that needs to be managed.

Personal Storytelling in Higher Education

Stories as a means of making sense of experience have proliferated across many different subject fields. If education is the re-contextualisation of what has been learned in a continuous process of meaning making, that is, to learn how to use the knowledge and skills in different contexts throughout life, then storytelling is, by far, the best tool humans possess.

Indeed, the art of telling stories, whether orally or in the form of artwork, is one of the oldest methods of communicating ideas and learning. As Ricoeur states a narrative “construes significant wholes out of scattered events” (as cited by Walker 1994, p. 296). Stories evoke in all engaging participants unexpected emotions, ideas and ultimately unexpected selves, shifting perspectives on experience, constructing and deconstructing knowledge. It is through stories that experiences gain meaning and, through reflection and interpretation, is then transformed into knowledge. Storytelling derives from the recollection and interpretation of an experience that has been significant otherwise it is not remembered. It is this dialogic activity in the storytelling process that enables learning and thus human development. Learning occurs when reflection on experience is transformed into a logical, meaningful story that is shared with others. This frames leaning as a social, experiential, reflective process the cognitive, emotional and social dimensions that Illeris (2008) identifies as essential to learning.

Personal stories motivate and engage the author in the act of creation. To create a coherent and effective story, the author must reflect, select, prioritise and organise what he/she wants to say and how this can be conveyed. As the story is told, the audience interprets, reflects and connects to their own personal experience, construing new (mental) stories or reinterpreting older stories, in order to construe new ones. Furthermore, if interaction is possible between author and audience, or among the audience this (social) interaction fosters discussion and further reflection. The entire process is mediated by the intervenient’s prior knowledge, his/her feelings in addition to the social and cultural context

The advantages of storytelling are often associated to a particular timeframe—childhood. Stories are subjective and emotional. However, whereas some regard the emotion in storytelling as powerful, others deem emotion as a weakness, particularly in HE. While the value of story writing is uncontested, the academy often devalues narrative.

It is in this duality that recent perspectives in HE have forged a new, if somewhat still fragile path. We argue that reflection is key in HE. The emergence of the reflective paradigm in this specific context has advanced storytelling as a learning tool (McDrury and Alterio 2003; Mezirow 1990; Walker and Nixon 2004). Bruner (1986) and Damasio (1994), for example, argue that cognition and emotion is united in story. Storytelling in HE draws on this to forge and establish a solid path as this contrasts to the reasoning that is traditionally valued in this context. This requires that we look at education from a different perspective not only for knowledge acquisition, but knowledge construction through interpersonal connections, affection and dialogue. This view is grounded in story and storytelling as a primary structure for making meaning and as a metaphor for the developing self. Time constraints impose deep reflection on what to say and how to say it, hinting at metaphorical and creative escapes. Storytelling could then be regarded as a process which fosters personal, professional and academic development, encouraging self-awareness, self-identity and self-authoring. Engaging in the storytelling process, students are guided through the stages of learning, ultimately reaching the last stage where deeper level of critical reflection, as is envisioned in HE, is required. At the same time, current technological trends have put a new spin on storytelling.

Integrating Digital Storytelling in Higher Education: A Case Study

The idea that technology is critical in educating the twenty-first-century student has aroused the interest of many researchers around storying skills, as an essential requirement for effective communicating in new technological media. Storytelling coupled with media and digital literacy skills, coined as Digital Storytelling, addresses most, if not all, of the twenty-first-century student outcomes identified. The fact that stories can be created using today’s technology enables teachers and students to, together, strive towards better information, media and technology skills, namely in terms of information literacy, media literacy and Information and Communications Technology literacy (Ribeiro 2015).

Digital Storytelling is an umbrella, a global concept to refer to any type of media that facilitates the act of telling stories. Despite the widespread use of the concept, not all Digital Storytelling tells stories the way and with the intent of the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS). Nonetheless, we feel this Californian model (CDS model) best fits our approach and intentions as its emphasis is on personal voice and workshop-based teaching method, although we recognise it is not the preference in the field of education. Many of the studies in this field refer to its origins and founders (CDS and Joe Lambert and Dana Atchley and Nina Mullen) but in practice the more personal elements are, more often than not, disregarded. The model chosen implies a process that, despite not being strict, has a set of recommended elements that are considered essential.

Exploring the intersection of identity and DS, we analysed student self-perception and self-representation in HE contexts, which we intersected with teachers’ own perceptions of their students. We considered both teachers’ and students’ perspectives, in an exploratory case study through the analysis of data collected throughout the DS process—Story Circle, Story Creation and Story Show—and crossed that information with the students’ personal reflections and teacher perceptions. Finally, we questioned the influence of DS on teachers’ perceptions of students.

Grounded on an interpretative/constructivist paradigm, we chose to implement a qualitative case study to explore DS in HE. In three successive and cumulative attempts to collect student data, we were able to gather detailed observation notes from two Story Circles: 12 written student reflections pertaining to the creation process; 14 Digital Stories and detailed observation notes from one Story Show. We carried out three focus groups with the participants, a total of 16 teachers, where we discussed their perceptions of each student prior to and after watching the Digital Stories. We also asked them about their opinion of DS in HE as a teaching and learning method, as well as their opinion on the influence of DS on interpersonal relationships in HE. Given the vast amount of data collected, we began with an inductive content analysis. Additionally, we also analysed the intent of their discourse and tried to figure out the reasoning behind their choice of words. The multimodal nature of the Digital Stories also impelled us towards a multimodal analysis in an attempt to comprehend the semiotics underpinnings of the modes used to create the story.

Finding Interconnected Threads

We were able to identify a continuum throughout the DS process implemented, that is to say, student self-perception almost always coincides with teacher perception of the student, indicating that perhaps everyday teacher–student interaction is enough to obtain the adequate insights into who our students are. Teachers admit they were able to identify traces of their perception of the students in all the stories and, in this regard, we might be fooled to believe DS does not add value to the interpersonal relationships in the educational context. Nonetheless, all participants admitted that DS had a significant impact on them (author and audience), essential to fill in the blanks, to provide the missing pieces. After one of the focus groups, one teacher claimed,

Lets say … we had separate pieces of the puzzle and now they came together. Everything became clear. We had fragments. We have many students and we have to pay attention to all and cannot dedicate ourselves to one person. But if we had been aware of some of the details revealed here. 1

The teachers admitted that watching the Digital Stories influence the teacher–student relationship. In a particular story, a student discloses a serious health problem, which shocked the teachers, as was evident by their physical reactions. After watching this story, one of the teachers admits “This story has greatly influenced me. From the moment X decided to disclose her problem, I am here for her.”

Teachers and students professed having undergone a deeper reflection process and understanding regarding their own lives, motivations and behaviours and that of others, confirming the pivotal position of DS in personal and social development. Another participating teacher explains this as such,

this type of approach is very important because it allows today’s students to get to know each other and share. Today’s students have great difficulty in sharing, in opening up. They receive and receive and give back very little. This would allow them to give back a bit of their life, to share things that are relevant to them. .[…] This would bring them closer, foster tolerance and understanding. […] It would help them become people, people.(emphasis in original)

For students to talk about what is socially perceived as private is hard because they are afraid to be criticised. Students, like everybody else, worry about what impression they make on others and each element of the story is selected and organised to disclose what they want. The DS process enabled them to undergo a process of self-reflection on who they are and what they wanted to show, whether they then disclosed their thought or not.

Students’ reflections may shed some light on this:

Creating this Digital Story was a gratifying experience because it allowed me to, firstly recall my journey until today and the obstacles I had to overcome and secondly, be aware that although my decision to invest in myself was done rather late, it was one of the best decisions in my life.

Even if we don’t create a very personal Digital Story, …, we always end up reflecting on who we were when we began and who we are now.

We must be imaginative and think about what we want to show. If we want to disclose more, and what aspect we want to show, because that is very important too. We should show what we want. What the viewers are going to see is what we decide and choose.

I learned that sometimes we don’t see all we believe we see. I was surprised to see how my colleagues were able to show their sensitivity, their life, their innermost self.

Public sharing was an obstacle, seen by the number of stories erased and the number of students that did not deliver the final story. In fact, in the three attempts and of the 58 students who were invited to participate, only 14 consented. Our findings acknowledge that identity, when focused on the more personal issues, is not an acceptable topic to discuss in HE. Four students revealed the reasons for not wanting to hand in their stories, stating:

Sometimes we find it difficult to talk about ourselves. We are still discovering ourselves and so it is a bit difficult.

I prefer to talk about others. (…) Speaking about ourselves is always complicated because we never know if someone is judging us or not, if they agree with what we are saying or not.

If I open up too much, I am afraid people will hurt my feelings.

It is complicated to talk about myself because I am not at ease. I believe it is easier to talk about others than to talk about ourselves. We are never completely aware of who we are or what we are doing. We are testing new limits, talking about things we never thought we’d talk about.

One student who chose to participate in the study situates Identity in HE and the role of DS as follows:

To talk about the self is something we do not do in our daily life, not in this HE context. We must focus on what we are listening to and learn in class, focus on what we must do, on the tasks and often we don’t have time to talk to this or that person to understand what we are feeling, who we are. Obviously there is always a part of us that is disclosed, but to talk about ourselves this way is something deeper, more personal and something I truly enjoyed doing, [it was] very interesting and useful, because it also allowed us to understand our colleagues better.

[…] It makes us reflect, structure, think about what we are going to disclose, what we don’t want to disclose and, of course, articulate it with sound and images, which makes it much more interesting and relevant in HE. We must learn how to articulate for future jobs or interviews. This helps because it makes me reflect on who I am and what I want to present to others. HE is a good time for something like this, although it is not common. Therefore, I thought it was a fantastic way to get us to speak, to make things a bit more personal and make us reflect on who we are.

For the students present, these moments seem to have been important, in the sense that students knew they were sharing stories, private moments and feelings that were meant for the group only. Furthermore, it was interesting to see that, although unique, there are universal aspects to these stories. Students discovered commonalities, recognising their own life experience in the story of others.

The DS creation process in itself implies the development of effective communication skills and it engages the author and audience in a great amount of reflection. As such, it can be applied to every subject. However, as we have stated elsewhere, the reflection involved in the DS process, whether from the perspective of the author, or the audience, transpires the personal perspective, enriching and creating depth to the final story, as each layer mirrors the self—a story with personal meaning. While research on reflective teaching and emotional intelligence is abundant, the truth is that it remains a challenge to bring this practice into HE classroom.

The value of integrating reflection and emotion in our teaching and learning is sometimes hard to recognize and even harder to practice. (Lambert 2013, p. 184)

The largest obstacle in incorporating DS in HE challenge is to get teachers to recognise its value, to recognise that student reflection and expression of emotion enrich the learning process. Teachers need to acknowledge the alignment between DS and the intended learning outcomes in HE: DS encourages student inquiry, deeper analysis, critical thinking skills, visual literacy skills, visual and oral communication, team work, as well as global and civic knowledge, rooted intentions in higher educational levels.

DS focuses on the personal and therefore often challenges the way we traditionally think about student and teacher roles in HE, where the teacher still assumes his/her role as the active deliverer of information and content. This personalised approach in DS creates situations where the student assumes a more visible and active role throughout the entire process. Besides, as DS emphasises how we engage students in their own learning process, it is also capable of overturning the carefully planned and controlled lessons from the teachers’ hands. Additionally, what is valued in today’s ever-changing world is not knowledge as a tidy, transferable package, but adaptable knowledge that derives from personal interpretation and critical reflection. In that sense, DS foments reflection and evaluation of experiences by creating opportunities in the classroom for such activities, as an interactive and collaborative process where students offer suggestions, argue and question points of view and ultimately rethink ideas. We would argue that the process develops essential but tacit skills that challenge the objectivity, argument, distance and reason currently valued in HE, especially because it is difficult to assess and quantify. Thus, teachers may perceive DS as lacking rigour and “objectivity,” despite the substantiated evidence in the field of DS that question this idea. In DS, learning has the power to abolish indifference generated by faceless, student numbers and it invites teachers and students to embark on a new, unprecedented journey, but change is daunting. Our study, in line with Lambert, confirmed it is difficult to break out of the formal, well-established educational discourse despite the proven value of DS. To be fair, we would probably react similarly if confronted with a novel and/or unusual pedagogical practice that had the potential to challenge our deep-rooted beliefs and routines.

Conclusion

Our integrative, interdisciplinary and interpretative approach revealed that Digital Stories are puzzles. Authors and audience use Digital Stories to create consistency, clarification and coherence of the self, through a continual process of subjective interpretation. Each story presents one of the many possible self-representations, inseparably connected with the micro-, meso- and macro-context. Grumet (1991) summarises this idea by stating: “Our stories are the masks through which we can be seen, and with every telling we stop the flood and swirl of thought so someone can get a glimpse of us, and maybe catch us if they can” (p. 69).

Our journey began within the field of education and, in seeking a deeper understanding of DS in HE, we travelled the path of identity development and self-representation, student development as well as objectives and practices in HE. We focus on the connection of identity, emotion and interpersonal relationships to DS as the basis to humanise HE and prepare our students for the world to come. Our own story intends to argue that although the three pillars—identity, education and DS—present a real challenge to the dominant assertions in HE, when interwoven, may potentiate learning experiences.

Crafting a personal story is a complex and engaging activity for meaning making that couples cognition and affection, and links the self to others. Stories are used to create consistency, clarification and coherence of the self, through subjective interpretation. Some criticise emotional and personal content in HE. However, research has demonstrated that the emotional content at the core of personal storytelling is connected to intelligence and higher cognition. It is a reflexive and recursive process, which incorporates the essence of human development, identity and education. By adding the digital to personal storytelling, we are able to incorporate the technical aspects, which drive the information society we live in. While we perceive Digital Storytelling as chaotic, DS imposes rigour. The DS process cements interpersonal relationships and deep critical reflection, which leads to transformation, which lacks in Digital Storytelling.

HE today is not about transferring consolidated or developed knowledge. There is a need for a range of generic skills that are relevant for society, essential for employability and overall citizenship such as applying knowledge in practice, adapting to new situations, information management skills, autonomy, team work, organising and planning, oral and written communication, without ignoring interpersonal skills. The Story Circle and the Story Show are about listening, promoting community, trust and closer emotional ties between teacher and student and among the students. The content is personal and emotional, and thus empowering, motivating and engaging. Digital Storytelling offers more than an opportunity to incorporate technology. As a process, Digital Storytelling demonstrates the capacity to weave the essence of HE: human (personal) development, social relational development and technology, thus fostering Boyer’s integrated learning approach.

Note

  1. 1.

    Full transcript of the focus groups can be found in Ribeiro (2015).