Overview
Communication Studies 419: Digital Storytelling explores a variety of storytelling frameworks. Stories—and the ability to tell them—are assuming a new primacy in contemporary culture. As the data glut of the World Wide Web threatens to drown out personal stories, social media is responding by providing a powerful forum for digital storytelling. Blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, Pinterest, Facebook, and Ancestry.com are symptomatic of the popularization of personal narratives in digital media. Even as the nature of contemporary stories morph in their articulation into new forms as diverse as computer games, narrative medicine, and organizational storytelling, they remain as essential as breathing.
Students will learn the practice and theory of digital media production, including working with images, audio, and video. This course will include
- visual storytelling and photography;
- comics and the conjunction of image and text;
- time-based storytelling in digital video; and
- space-based or environmental storytelling in online works, games, and locative media.
Outline
This course has 10 units:
- Unit 1: Introduction to Story
- Unit 2: Story Structure
- Unit 3: Framing the Story—Point of View and Discourse
- Unit 4: Visual Storytelling
- Unit 5: Graphic Stories, Storyboarding, and Production—Making Your Story
- Unit 6: Thinking about Sound—Radio Stories and Audio Slideshows
- Unit 7: New Media/New Stories—How Digital Technologies Create Opportunities for New Forms of Storytelling
- Unit 8: New Media Narratives
- Unit 9: The Search for Meaning—Massively Multiplayer Online Games and the Future of Storytelling
- Unit 10: Postmodern Challenges to Traditional Forms of Storytelling
Evaluation
To receive credit for this course, students must participate in the online activities, successfully complete the assignments, and achieve a final mark of at least 50 percent.
The following table summarizes the evaluation activities and the credit weights associated with them.
| Activity | Weight |
| Assignment 1: Story Creation | 20% |
| Assignment 2: Storyboard | 30% |
| Assignment 3: Final Story | 35% |
| Assignment 4: Reflection Paper | 15% |
| Total | 100% |
To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University’s online Calendar.
Materials
Physical course materials
The following course materials are included in a course package that will be shipped to your home prior to your course’s start date:
Madden, M. (2005). 99 ways to tell a story. New York: Penguin.
Other Materials
All other course materials are available online.
Challenge for credit
Overview
The challenge for credit process allows you to demonstrate that you have acquired a command of the general subject matter, knowledge, intellectual and/or other skills that would normally be found in a university-level course.
Full information about challenge for credit can be found in the Undergraduate Calendar.
Evaluation
To receive credit for the CMNS 419 challenge registration, you must achieve a grade of at least D (50 percent) on the examination.
Challenge for credit course registration form