Scholarly Research on Digital Media Labs: Part II

A Screenshot from Erin Collins’ Digital Story, Girl Scouts of the Sierra
Nevada. (Reproduced with Erin’s permission.)

For this post, I'd like to focus on the usage of digital media in academic libraries.  Coincidentally, there was an article that I came across which was a direct connection to one of the classes I am taking this semester about multicultural societies.  The focus of the assignment was to participate in service-learning.  It required me to volunteer at a service provider to learn up-close about a particular society and their needs.  After completing twenty hours, I was required to write a reflective essay about what I learned.  This is where the article I came across comes in.  A similar class conducted the same service-learning assignment, but instead of a completed essay as the end result, they created digital stories with the help of the University of Nevada, Reno Libraries' Dynamic Media Lab.  The course instructor worked closely with the media specialist and the librarian to teach students how to create their digital stories with images and video editing.  Five class periods within the library were devoted to helping over 50 students conceptualize and create their digital story based on their experience at their community service provider.  In essence, the students took images, created narratives, connected appropriate videos, and used music to produce their own digital stories.  These projects were so incredibly put together that some of the students were asked to join their respective community service provider's media and marketing team.  I have included a picture from the research article where a student was the winning presenter for this assignment.  Additionally, I have included below one of the digital stories that a student created.  This just shows that digital media labs are really the wave of the future and libraries would do great to incorporate them and connect them to classroom assignments. 

References

Blithe, S. J., Carrera, W., & Medaille, A. (2015). Stories of service-learning: Guidelines for increasing student engagement with digital storytelling. Journal of Library Innovation, 6(1), 60-74.