Elixr Case Story Toolkit

Faculty Guide to Authoring an ELIXR Case Story

1. What is an ELIXR case story?

An ELIXR “case story” is a recounting of the experiences and reflections of faculty and students throughout the implementation of the instructional strategy. The case stories include multimedia records of both teachers and students reflecting on the process of designing and implementing new learning and teaching activities, and will be accessed in faculty development workshops and also through MERLOT and other partner online resource repositories.

More about digital storytelling: Seven Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling1 is a good overview with descriptions of course designs to engage students with digital storytelling.

2. ELIXR Case Stories: the Product

Examples of ELIXR Case Stories: check the Products page of the ELIXR website at http://elixr.merlot.org for examples of ELIXR Case Stories from other instructors.

Default Case Story Structure The elements of each case should have some consistency to support easy consumption by the user. Within this case story structure, the uniqueness of your story will still come through via your personal voice as story teller and the personal impact for you and your students, as well as engaging visual examples from your course.

The current Toolkit contains a default Case Story Structure. Some faculty authors with particular experience in digital story telling and/or interactive media will want to expand on this, so that the pre-assembled components in the Toolkit will expand over time. You can use this default Case Story Structure as is, or you can work with your local digital media specialists and the central ELIXR team to adapt the default structure to your needs.

The current default Case Story Structure has five parts:

i. The Trailer ii. The Story iii. Personal Reflections iv. More on this story v. Instructor's Guide

i) The Trailer is a 1 minute or less thumbnail of your case story designed to quickly give the viewer an understanding of the content and drama of the case. It helps them decide whether they want to explore the case further. This is usually the last part of the Case Story to be created.

1 http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7021.pdf

/6 ii) The Story - presented as “Pat’s Story” etc. so that you are identified as the author - is your story about why you adopted the practice that is the subject of the case, what it is that you do differently now, how the students are responding to what they and you are doing, and what evidence you have, if any, that it is making a difference in student learning. (It is also important to personalize the authorship so that faculty going through your story get the sense that their story will be equally distinctive as a reflection of their strengths as teachers, the context for their students, etc.)

Also critical to the story is what difficulties you have had along the way.

The intent of telling these stories is to engage a teacher-to-teacher communication about the advantages and limits of innovative strategies that you have implemented…as well as lessons learned in the process of the design and implementation of a new approach in your teaching. iii) Personal Narrative/Reflection This is your personal reflection – video and text – on what making this change in your teaching has meant to you. You can also add commentary on aspects of the story which have not been fully revealed in the rest of the content, especially since the text of this reflective part is not as limited in duration like the video components. iv) More on this story This is a place for diving deeper into parts of the story told in The Story. The elements here will vary depending on the unique parts of your story that are worth emphasizing. The current elements we have been using to reveal More on this story include the following:

Students-at-Work: A fuller demonstration of the innovation being used in the course. Because the clips in The Story are relatively short thumbnails of the process, a fuller demonstration allows the viewer to understand more fully and authentically how the innovation is used and how it works. The video clip or series of clips in this section can be longer and more complete. Reflection by you as instructor on what is seen in the clips is also very useful to include here.

In the Ken’s Story prototype, the focus is on what happens in the classroom so Visit the Class makes sense as an opportunity to see Students-at-Work. In other stories, you might show students working in the lab or in a field placement, or working with a librarian on researching a term paper. There is a good explanation of the value of this observation of Students-at-Work in a paper and video by Jim Sandefur2 of Georgetown University, Problem-Solving: What I Have Learned from My Students3.

Resources This is the place to put documents, links, or other resources that are supports for anyone wanting to understand your course more fully in order to utilize the methods your have

2 http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/sandefur/ 3 http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/sandefur/ProofPaper.pdf

/6 demonstrated in the story. Examples would be the syllabus, sample questions, assignments, links to outside resources and scholarship for the course design, etc.

Student Achievement This is where you put the evidence you have about student achievement. This may be empirical or anecdotal data, or actual examples of student work. Different screens may be used for this depending on the amount and type of information to present. v) Exemplary Practices: Instructor's Guide This is where tips and tricks and the expertise of others who have used this technique are brought together so that the reader who wants to dive deeper into understanding the technique, and maybe even other techniques that support it, can be learned. There could also be theoretical background and research studies here. Creating the resources here is not seen as solely your responsibility as a faculty member telling your individual story, and will most likely be generic across disciplines.

3. ELIXR Case Stories: the Process

The Roles of Authors, Editors, and Media Experts

ELIXR Case Stories are autobiographical. Most authors of an autobiography need an editor, especially 1st time authors or anyone working in a new medium. Editors support authors in making the transition from a personal reflection – written for your own learning – to a case story which will support the learning of others.

Editorial guidance for ELIXR varies in scope, and can include: - mapping an appropriate structure for your story - selecting critical story elements - including student voices - choice of language and tone to best convey what happened, and how it felt. The work of a good editor never gets noticed by the readers or audience – they will experience it as your story, with the added bonus of student reflections and insights.

You will likely have two co-Editors supporting you, although on occasion a single person could fulfill both roles: a Faculty Development Editor who understands the context in which ELIXR Case Stories are used, and a Digital Story Editor who can help you use the medium most effectively.

You will also have support from Media Experts, e.g., in preparing video clips of yourself and your students, recording audio files, creating graphics, etc. For some authors, you Digital Story Editor will also provide other media expertise. We also expect that some of the media work may in time be undertaken by student assistants.

/6 4. ELIXR Case Story Development Timeline (attached document)

5. Creating an ELIXR Case Story from an Ongoing Experience

You may have been asked to consider building an ELIXR Case Story as part of the process of developing enhancements to student learning on a course. Knowing in advance that you may want to tell someone the story of this process gives you an advantage in reflecting about the process along the way, recording your feelings and concerns, and preserving artifacts that would be useful in remembering your activities when it comes time to structure the story for others to use. You may have already planned to keep a Teaching Journal about the process of implementing a new approach in your teaching – knowing you may want to retell the story later provides even more reason to keep track of your thoughts about events as they happen. As outlined above in the section on Digital Story Telling, the way you later present your story can rely on the Journal but will not likely rely on that structure as the primary format for the story.

You may also want to preserve some of the artifacts you built along the way, even if they do not end up in the final course or learning activity. For example, if you found that certain designs for student work did not achieve what you wanted, then it could be very valuable for your colleagues to see those designs and hear from you why they fell short.

When it comes time to construct your ELIXR Case Story, you will still want to follow the steps outlined above in the ELIXR Case Story Development Timeline. However, you will have a richer set of resources ready than if you had not known in advance that you might be sharing your story with others as an ELIXR Case Story.

6. ELIXR Case Stories: Overview of Other Resources, Tools and Support

Supporting Authors of ELIXR Case Stories as a Faculty Development Editor (attached)

Supporting Authors of ELIXR Case Stories as a Digital Story Editor (attached)

Media Production Guide for ELIXR Case Stories (in progress) Elixr Case Story Authoring Software (Pachyderm)

Pachyderm Authoring Support Page

Pachyderm Media preparation Guide (under development)

Elixr Case Story Shell Example | Case Story Shell Structure.pdf

…all works in progress…latest versions accessible from the Products page at on the ELIXR website at http://elixr.merlot.org

/6 Supporting Authors of ELIXR Case Stories as a Faculty Development Editor

The Editor Roles

ELIXR Case Stories are autobiographical. Most authors of an autobiography need an editor, especially 1st time authors or anyone working in a new medium. Editors support authors in making the transition from a personal reflection – written for their own learning – to a case story which will support the learning of others.

Editorial guidance for ELIXR varies in scope, and can include: - mapping an appropriate structure for your story - selecting critical story elements - including student voices - choice of language and tone to best convey what happened, and how it felt. The work of a good editor never gets noticed by the readers or audience – they will experience it as the author’s story, with the bonus of student reflections and insights.

In the case of ELIXR, faculty authors are writing for an audience of their peers, not just as a personal reflection. The editors’ role is to support the authors with specific expertise in the areas such as the following:

· Talking about instruction in ways that will communicate across contexts; · Providing a story for use within a workshop plan for faculty development; · Using digital story telling as an interactive medium;

Usually it will require more than one editor to assist faculty authors in these areas - in particular, we have used two Co-Editors in the Ken’s Story prototype: one of us [Tom] helped frame the story for use in faculty development, one of us [Lou] provided the support for digital story telling. You are reading the guide to supporting faculty authors as the Faculty Development Editor; there is a parallel guide to supporting faculty authors as the Digital Story Editor. Although we anticipate that in most cases there will be different people in these two roles, it is of course possible for you to take on both roles, or each role may involve a team of people.

Our goal for the Author/Editor relationship is like that of the ‘as told to’ autobiography. Since we did not have a model story to demonstrate with Ken Nakayama, the prototype case was more of an ‘as told by’ story; the stories in Round I and II may be more ‘as told with’ stories as we work toward the goal or an ‘as told to’ relationship between authors and editors.

There are also other areas of expertise, such as the recording and production of digital video, where complementary skills will be needed to create an effective ELIXR story. There is a parallel Media Production Guide for ELIXR Case Stories to support this role.

/6 Supporting Authors of ELIXR Case Stories as a Digital Story Editor

The Editor Roles

ELIXR Case Stories are autobiographical. Most authors of an autobiography need an editor, especially 1st time authors or anyone working in a new medium. Editors support authors in making the transition from a personal reflection – written for their own learning – to a case story which will support the learning of others.

Editorial guidance for ELIXR varies in scope, and can include: - mapping an appropriate structure for your story - selecting critical story elements - including student voices - choice of language and tone to best convey what happened, and how it felt. The work of a good editor never gets noticed by the readers or audience – they will experience it as the author’s story, with the bonus of student reflections and insights.

In the case of ELIXR, faculty authors are writing for an audience of their peers, not just as a personal reflection. The editors’ role is to support the authors with specific expertise in the areas such as the following:

· Talking about instruction in ways that will communicate across contexts; · Providing a story for use within a workshop plan for faculty development; · Using digital story telling as an interactive medium;

Usually it will require more than one editor to assist faculty authors in these areas - in particular, we have used two Co-Editors in the Ken’s Story prototype: one of us [Tom] helped frame the story for use in faculty development, one of us [Lou] provided the support for digital story telling. You are reading the guide to supporting faculty authors as the Digital Story Editor; there is a parallel guide to supporting faculty authors as the Faculty Development Editor. Although we anticipate that in most cases there will be different people in these two roles, it is of course possible for you to take on both roles, or each role may involve a team of people.

Our goal for the Author/Editor relationship is like that of the ‘as told to’ autobiography. Since we did not have a model story to demonstrate with Ken Nakayama, the prototype case was more of an ‘as told by’ story; the stories in Round I and II may be more ‘as told with’ stories as we were work toward our goals.

There are also other areas of expertise, such as the recording and production of digital video, where complementary skills will be needed to create an effective ELIXR story. There is a parallel Media Production Guide for ELIXR Case Stories to outline this role.