ARTICLE REVIEW CALL

TITLE

A New Approach Toward Digital Storytelling: An Activity Focused on Writing Self-efficacy in a Virtual Learning Environment.

JOURNAL

Xu, Y., Park, H., & Baek, Y. (2011). A New Approach Toward Digital Storytelling: An Activity Focused on Writing Selfefficacy in a Virtual Learning Environment. Educational Technology & Society, 14 (4), 181–191.

AUTHORS

Yan Xu - Department of Educational Technology, Korea National University of Education, South Korea. xuyan1218@hotmail.com

Hyungsung Park - Department of Teacher Education, Kyonggi University, South Korea. hyungsung@gmail.com

Youngkyun Baek - 3Department of Educational Technology, Boise State University, USA. youngkyunbaek@boisestate.edu

SUMMARY

This research is carried out with the aim to examine the effects of writing for digital storytelling on writing self-efficacy and on flow in the virtual reality learning environment known as Second Life. The researchers organized an activity for undergraduate students to create digital stories. The sample consists of 64 undergraduate university students from two classes taking “Media Production for Teaching and Learning” at the Korean National University of Education. There were 32 students in each class with the age ranged from 20 to 22 years old. One class was selected to perform digital storytelling in the virtual world of Second Life while the other class performed digital storytelling off-line utilizing the video editing software Windows Movie Maker. The findings of the research demonstrate that digital storytelling in Second Life is more effective than digital storytelling off-line. It is proven that writing self-efficacy and flow can be improved through actively engaging in writing for digital storytelling in a virtual-reality learning environment similar to Second Life. Therefore, it is suggested that the technique of digital storytelling can be used effectively in classroom settings to teach writing. 

PERSONAL REACTION

           

I personally find this research is very interesting because it reveals a new dimension to attract and encourage students in writing. I do agree that writing in virtual environment enables students to pay more attention to the writing process, thus they will have ownership of their stories. Second Life for instance, serves as an instructional technology platform whereby students imagine and create the residents in a 3D virtual world. The residents in Second Life are presented as avatars in which they can easily build, walk, fly and teleport to anywhere they want to go in the virtual environment. In this virtual environment, there are communication tools like Instant Message, Local Chat, Note Card and Voice Chat to enable a variety of interactions including avatar-to-avatar interaction and avatar-to-object interaction. Through these functions, students are able to build an environment in which digital storytelling can take place. All in all, I believe Second Life not only enhancing students’ self-efficacy in writing but it also allows them to create an experience or a space in which others can walk through their stories as Jonassen et al. (1999) stated that meaningful technology integration is defined as curricula utilizing authentic tasks that intentionally and actively help learners to construct their own meaning from thinking about experience. 

   Since this research is an experimental study, the researchers had specifically designed a well-planned procedure in order to obtain valid and reliable data during pre-test and post-test. Therefore, I do think this research had been well conducted mainly because the findings met the objective of this research in which digital storytelling in Second Life is more effective than digital storytelling off-line.

The findings of this research have significant implications to the writing teachers especially whereby teachers can utilize digital storytelling to teach writing skill in classrooms. Digital storytelling in the virtual world like Second Life is proven to the effective method because it can stimulate learners’ imaginations and encourage more creative writing. Besides, digital storytelling can be a platform to encourage learners who do not like writing or who have no confidence in writing. In the Malaysian Educational Transformation, KSSR and KSSM have been introduced to enable the implementation of task-based learning in classrooms. Based on this, I strongly believe that teaching writing through digital storytelling regardless in Second Life or off-line that utilizing Windows Movie Maker could be integrated in teaching and learning instructions in the language classroom. This is because digital storytelling provides the students with a learning environment whereby they need to apply communication skills and work collaboratively as well as think critically to generate content using digital technology. In another words, digital storytelling requires learners to take the responsibility towards their own learning as Jakes and Brennan (2005) propose that, in the future, digital storytelling can be a potent learning experience that encompasses much of what society hopes that students will know and be able to perform in the future classroom. This is also in line to the basis of Malaysian Educational Transformation which is to transform the focus on examinations to the holistic education by focusing in the development of human capital.   

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