Discover how digital storytelling can transform asynchronous online learning. This session explores evidence-informed storytelling strategies that enhance engagement and knowledge retention, featuring an interactive activity where participants build their own mini-narratives.

This session explores the use of digital storytelling as a high-impact pedagogical strategy for increasing student engagement and deepening learning in asynchronous online courses. Grounded in constructivist learning theory, digital storytelling allows students to construct new knowledge by connecting course concepts to their lived experiences as well as the experiences of others around them. As the online learning community continues to grow, educators face ongoing challenges in fostering meaningful interaction and sustaining student motivation, especially in asynchronous environments. Storytelling offers a powerful solution to these challenges.

Drawing from multi-semester implementation and classroom-based research in human-service courses, this presentation will showcase three digital storytelling assignments that were integrated within an undergraduate curriculum. These include audio-based, video-based, and creative writing projects designed to help students better understand abstract, value-based, and person-centered content. One featured project compares traditional textbook learning with a storytelling-based assignment to highlight how narrative formats can enhance conceptual clarity and intrinsic motivation. 

The session will include an overview of digital storytelling as a constructivist pedagogical strategy, a guided tour through the evolution of these assignments, including lessons learned, student feedback, emerging scholarship, and research outcomes. Attendees will be introduced to assignment structures and sample outputs, providing practical insight into how these strategies might translate into their own teaching contexts.

Interactivity is central to the session. Attendees will participate in a hands-on storytelling activity using a guided tool (e.g., Six-word Stories and/or StoryCube) that helps them quickly build a mini-narrative related to their teaching or training domain. By experiencing the cognitive and emotional impact of storytelling firsthand, participants will leave with a better understanding of how to use narrative as a tool for online engagement.

Key takeaways include:

• An understanding of the pedagogical rationale and research base supporting digital storytelling

• Real-life examples of storytelling assignments used in asynchronous online courses

• A hands-on experience with a storytelling tool designed to activate learner creativity and engagement

• A set of practical strategies to implement digital storytelling in their own instructional design

Whether attendees are new to digital storytelling or looking to refine their use of it, this session offers evidence-informed guidance, examples from practice, and an interactive opportunity to experiment with story as pedagogy.

Derek Malenczak, PhD

Assistant Professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Derek has been a faculty member for the past 13 years at UMDNJ/Rutgers University Department of Psychiatric Rehabilitation. Prior to Rutgers, he worked in community mental health non-profits for 12 years across housing, partial care, and co-occurring programs. Derek began at the university working on a research grant aimed at improving Executive Functioning skills in college students with mental health conditions. He eventually transitioned to teaching and is currently an instructor within the undergraduate program. Derek earned his PhD in 2023; his dissertation focused on the experience of re-entry to postsecondary education following a stopout due to mental health reasons.