Students' Digital Story Reflections and its Implications for Higher Education Pedagogy

Over the last number of years South Africa has embarked on a transformative process that aims at widening access to higher education. While this is a commendable move, it is a known fact that the mere provision of access to higher education is no guarantee to success. It is also common knowledge that the use of technology in teaching and learning in higher education institutions is no longer a debate but has become a fundamental principle. In an attempt to support students and to enhance learning, in 2004 e-learning was introduced as one of the university's teaching and learning strategies. The latter has been applied in various learning programmes across the institution. As part of blended learning, digital storytelling was piloted as a teaching and learning tool in some of the Extended Curricular Programmes (ECP) with the view to address gaps in students' academic skills. Simply put, the term blended learning refers to the fusion of face-to-face teaching and learning with online content and other media while digital storytelling, an e-learning tool, is a modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling that requires the use of digital multimedia in narrating a particular story. First year students taking the Lifestyle Management course were exposed to digital storytelling and were asked to create their own digital stories. Evaluation was subsequently conducted to assess the effectiveness of this technique. The objective of this paper is three-fold: 1) to share students' experiences of using digital storytelling, 2) to demonstrate how the practice can be utilized to advance learning in higher education, 3) to reflect on the effectiveness of digital storytelling as a teaching and learning tool. The application of digital storytelling as a teaching and learning tool revealed that although initially challenging and time consuming, digital storytelling can be an exciting and effective teaching and learning tool. Students felt that it was an exciting and empowering tool. Although some challenges were experienced, it can be concluded that the practice is highly effective for academics in catering for different learning styles when teaching, and it advances a multitude of digital literacies, a prerequisite for graduates in the 21st century.