Digital storytelling as an interdisciplinary project to improve students’ English speaking and creative thinking

TLDR

The study investigated whether digital storytelling improves English speaking and creative thinking among foreign‑language learners. DST was delivered as an eight‑week interdisciplinary project linking an English course and a computer course, with students collaborating in small groups to design and produce digital stories in English, and a quasi‑experimental pre‑ and post‑test design compared learning outcomes. Results show that DST provides authentic, meaningful learning experiences that effectively enhance students’ proficiency in English speaking and creative thinking, supporting the recommendation of future interdisciplinary DST projects.

Abstract

The present research examined the effectiveness of digital storytelling (DST) on foreign language learners' English speaking and creative thinking. In this study, DST was realized in the form of an interdisciplinary project integrated in a partnership between an English course and a computer course, with the class time of the former devoted to the content design and that of the latter to the multimedia design of learner-generated digital stories. The participants were required to work in small groups to create their digital stories in the target language, English, under an eight-week interdisciplinary curriculum. A two-group quasi-experiment with a pretest and posttest design was then conducted to compare the participants' learning outcomes. The findings reveal the authentic and meaningful learning opportunities that DST has to offer for effectively fostering the students' development of becoming proficient English speakers and creative thinkers. Future implementations on interdisciplinary DST projects are thus recommended for educators.