Digital Media Production in a Blended Graduate Teacher Education Course: Citizen Documentary for Social Change

• In Event: 43.040 - Research as Meaning-Making: Developing a Lens for Understanding the Impact of Aesthetic Education

Abstract

Digital media production has become an increasingly viable practice for communicating knowledge to a wide audience, as well as a powerful tool for mobilizing social justice issues. In less than a decade, access to digital media production technology and related tools has become matter-of-course. Enabling students to become creators in the media production process is in line with the call to “devise new and better ways to tackle social problems” (Smith, 1999). This study reports on the findings from a digital media production assignment in a graduate teacher education course: (Auto)biography in Education Contexts. During the six-week intensive course, the 23 student participants each created a 2-4 minute documentary style video based on their own contexts in education. This forum became a learning instrument, enriching participant discussion and reflection (Author, Hughes & Shami, 2015; Avery, Author, Hughes, 2017).
Hermeneutic questions (Smith, 1999, 2010) were employed as a theoretical framework to encourage individual students to further examine the process of creating and sharing a video documentary. Open-ended questions allowed students to express their ideas of video creation more fully. Content analysis around key words and themes of student-generated data provided further scope to analyze learning. It also allowed insight to inform direction for further study of the value of citizen-produced documentary in education settings. Digital hermeneutics, aligned with content analysis of recurring themes from student reflections (Gadamer, 1975, 1982; Hughes, Author, White, 2017), provided the means through which to begin a discussion about interpreting and making sense of the value of telling stories through video. Researchers and students gained a deeper understanding of the human condition as a whole, across cultural, societal and other divides while actively listening to students’ individual and shared stories documented through video creation. After the culminating videos, students were asked to participate in a questionnaire with open and closed questions designed to examine their learning process around creating their video. Students could respond online or request an in-person conference or video chat. All students elected to participate online.
Our findings have concluded that encouraging students to utilize digital media technologies, such as video and podcasting, provides a platform through which students’ may voice their stories, thus increasing engagement and interaction. Most significant to the student participants was the power of purposeful and autobiographical reflection, and the unique ability of video to project a larger story in a way that resonated not only within their lives, but also within their larger communities. Student participants reported a deeper appreciation for the role of documentary filmmaking in disseminating and mobilizing pressing philosophical, political, and social issues of our time. Giving graduate students a voice through this video assignment allowed them to reflect on their position, then empowered them with a viable framework to deepen their understandings of one another’s story. Students preferred to look more deeply at issues that were present in their daily academic and/or personal lives, highlighting issues which defined their individual challenge to “fit into” what they perceived as the dominant culture.

Author

• Karyn A. Cooper, University of Toronto