Target Audience
A mixed audience of Communication, Visual Communication, and general Liberal Arts students at SUNY Orange — with a wide range of incoming skill levels, from students who had never edited a video to advanced students with prior production experience. Designed as an introductory course but built to challenge both ends of that spectrum.
Course Context
A 3-credit course in Arts and Communications at SUNY Orange, taught from 2016–2022 in in-person, hybrid, and fully online formats. The course existed at the intersection of media production, narrative theory, and emerging technology — covering everything from classical story structure to VR storytelling experiments.
Student Learning Outcomes
- Demonstrate media and visual literacy across image, video, audio, and web-based formats.
- Apply the theory and practice of digital storytelling across a range of media.
- Identify and evaluate emerging digital storytelling applications and platforms.
- Identify the seven elements of digital storytelling methodology (gift of voice, soundtrack, pacing, economy, dramatic question, emotional content, point of view) and integrate them into personal and professional projects.
- Integrate effective uses of multimedia — sound, music, narration, image, video, and typography.
- Demonstrate effective uses of digital design within storytelling.
- Critically assess the effectiveness of their own and others’ storytelling projects.
Learning Design Approach
The first six weeks operated as a deliberate scaffold — students built the components of digital storytelling one at a time before assembling them into full projects:
- Week 1: Story structure
- Week 2: The seven elements of digital storytelling
- Week 3: Visual storytelling through photo prompts and round-robin collaborative stories
- Week 4: Video editing and the influence of cuts on meaning
- Week 5: Audio, sound effects, and Garageband-built scores
- Week 6: First full project (Identity)
The four major projects each isolated a distinct constraint to push students into different storytelling muscles:
- Project 1: Identity — using personal narrative to introduce digital story craft
- Project 2: Open creative brief — student-chosen story
- Project 3: Silent Storytelling — no dialogue or voice over, forcing reliance on sound effects, music, body language, and editing rhythm
- Project 4: Group PSA — collaborative team production
The final exam closed the loop by requiring students to articulate the theory back. Reading reviews from The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media reinforced methodology throughout.
The course also experimented with emerging tech — VIVE VR headsets and storytelling experiences — letting students engage directly with the question of where digital storytelling is heading.
Key Outcomes & Impact
- Mentored a student through the SUNY Orange SOARS research conference, where she presented original video research on fracked gas in the Hudson Valley to faculty and administrators.
- The Silent Storytelling project became a consistent standout — students repeatedly produced work that exceeded expectations once dialogue was removed as a crutch.
- Wrote letters of recommendation for Digital Storytelling students who went on to BFA Film at SUNY Purchase, the Journalism and Media Studies program at San Diego State, internships at Neversink Media Group, and creative studio work.
- Successfully translated the course to fully asynchronous virtual delivery during COVID with no loss of the peer-critique structure that defined the experience.
Project Deliverables
- 4 Digital Storytelling Projects
- Story Reflections
- Reading Reviews
- Image-Based & Round-Robin Stories
- Adobe Spark Page (Digital Resume)
- VR Storytelling Response
- Final Exam
Related Skills
- Narrative Theory
- Multimedia Production
- Premiere Pro
- iMovie
- Adobe Spark
- Scaffolded Curriculum Design
- Peer Critique Facilitation
- Emerging Media