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
Madden, M. (2005). 99 ways to tell a story. New York: Penguin. (Print)
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.
Athabasca University reserves the right to amend course outlines occasionally and without notice. Courses offered by other delivery methods may vary from their individualized study counterparts.