This just in: High school students master digital storytelling at UND
And with UND CONNECT funding, Digital Storytelling Summit likely will grow next year, organizers say
“Growth,” “passion,” “nuance,” “inspiration” and “opportunity,” were just some of the words a group of high school students used to describe the experiences they had while attending the Department of Communication’s inaugural Digital Storytelling Summit from June 3-7.
Those words came in answer to a question posed by Art Malloy, vice president of Student Affairs, who, on the final day of the summit, asked the students to boil down their experiences to a single word. Judging from their responses, the communication event had an overwhelmingly positive impact on the students’ experiences of learning about, and creating products in, the digital media landscape.
In total, 15 students attended the weeklong event, with some staying in UND residence halls during that time. They came from high schools across North Dakota and Minnesota (with one even turning up from Texas), to engage in hands-on experience and education in how to write a feature story and then pair that story with a digital video production.
Their task? To create usable marketing and promotional materials for their “clients,” which included the UND departments of Biology and Chemistry, the Grand Forks Optimist Club and the Empire Arts Center. The students were divided into teams, then paired with a client to get the inside scoop on the content they were tasked with creating.
But that was only half the point of the summit. Of course, the students learned about responsibly telling engaging stories from their community in a digital format, but the clients also were able to pick the students’ brains, as to how they should promote their news to the student demographic.
Speaking on Friday, June 7, at the summit’s celebratory culmination event, Emily Gibbens-Buteau, teaching assistant professor in the Department of Communication and one of the summit organizers, said the skills the students learned would serve them well no matter what area of study or employment they pursue.
“One thing that we emphasize is that even if you don’t want to be a communication major, you don’t want to be a journalist, that’s OK,” she told the students and their parents, who also were in attendance on Friday, to see the end products delivered by summit attendees.
She continued: “The world needs good storytellers in every field, from medicine to aerospace. Wherever you end up, you are going to need to be a good communicator.”
Before the summit’s storytellers took the stage in a section of the Memorial Union Ballroom on Friday, they had to learn skills surrounding video production and feature writing.
Beginning on Monday, June 3, attendees toured various facilities across the UND campus and got familiar with their clients. The following day they toured the WDAY television station in Fargo, to get a sense of what goes into video production. They spent the remainder of the week honing those newly acquired video skills, and attending workshops on news writing, digital media literacy and even a mental health seminar.
Bigger, better and back next year
Joonghwa Lee, summit organizer and associate professor of Communication, said the summit is set to return next year. It also will likely include more students, as he said organizers are looking to recruit additional attendees from the western part of the state.
Doing so, Lee said, addresses the need to help younger people, who are natives of the digital landscape, harness their communication skills. The summit is a way to help them tell community-based digital stories in a socially responsible way.
Lee also said that organizers are working to include in the summit students who visit UND through TRIO programs. TRIO assists first-generation college students (where neither parent graduated from a four-year college) be successful in their studies.
“We are so pleased at the success of our inaugural summit,” Lee said. “We are looking forward to growing this summit in the future, and to providing more students with digital educational experiences that will help them create meaningful content in their home communities. Working with the TRIO students next summer will be a fantastic opportunity to do just that.”
Back in the Memorial Union on Friday, attendees said they found the summit to be an enjoyable experience. Caitlyn May-Ley, a high school student from Grand Forks who worked on producing content for the Optimist Club, said she plans to attend the summit next year, and said that she “absolutely” plans to attend UND after graduation. She said she enjoyed learning about creating digital stories and learning how different “clients” interact.
“I learned all different types of things, like how different companies, especially in this town, work together to create such an amazing and welcoming environment for people who come here,” she said.
Hudson Murphy, also from Grand Forks, worked on producing the feature story for the Biology Department. No doubt the skills he learned at the summit played a role in that process.
“My favorite part about this summit was probably taking a tour of WDAY and getting to learn behind the scenes about the news, and how storytelling works with the news,” he said.
Thank you, UND CONNECT!
This year’s summit was generously funded through a grant from the North Dakota Newspaper Association Education Foundation, as well as through the College of Arts & Sciences and Department of Communication. Next year, a special UND initiative, UND CONNECT, is lending a helping hand.
Lee is among 13 faculty members leading nine projects who make up the inaugural cohort of the UND CONNECT program. The new program provides faculty members with up to $5,000 to engage in “impactful community-based research, development and outreach” programs.
More information about UND CONNECT can be found on the University’s website, and information about the inaugural cohort and programs can be found in UND Today.
