Keywords

1 Introduction

In the human history, most events were narrated in a written or spoken form. Complicated ideas, concepts or information will become more comprehensible if they are explained in the form of storytelling (Chung 2006). According to Porter (2005), it is important for students to communicate with each other through digital media; students should have strong communication ability and be equipped with diverse ideas and different communication skills; aside from expressing their ideas in a written form, they should be able to create and share their stories in diverse ways. Stories can be constructed in the combination of various media, including picture, sound, music, film, transition, subtitle, and action (Skinner and Hagood 2008). With the rapid technological advancement, digital storytelling has come into being. Based on technology, it will become an efficient tool for improvement in teaching and learning (Ibanez et al. 2003; Mello 2001; Sadik 2008). Hence, the educational application of digital storytelling has been attracting the attention from a vast number of educators (Chung 2006; Robin 2008; Sadik 2008; Shin and Park 2008). Many studies have shown that digital storytelling can strengthen students’ capabilities, including narration, writing, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving (Mou et al. 2013; Sylla et al. 2015; Xu et al. 2011; Yang and Wu 2012). The factors for story development can be integrated into the conceptual diagram to improve learners’ thinking on story construction (Liu et al. 2011); according to the element, a story can be created in four stages. By developing the stories about their life, students can enhance their learning effectiveness, critical thinking, and learning motivation (Yang and Wu 2012).

The digital storytelling system can be applied to teaching in various forms, and it can strengthen the capabilities of students. But in terms of story development, there hasn’t been a digital storytelling system which can lead beginners to a story featuring a complete structure and a progressive story development architecture. For that reason, this study developed a system with a structural story architecture to help beginners create structurally complete stories with digital media. Meanwhile, the variation-oriented structural function teaching was adopted to help learners create different stories.

To assist college students obtaining the knowledge of story concept and developing diverse capabilities, this study added different concepts of story structure into the digital storytelling system. Therefore, the research purposes of this study are as follows: (1) to develop a storytelling structure system featuring complete creation for college students; (2) to assess the teaching environment and features usability of the digital storytelling system.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Development of the Application of Digital Storytelling to Teaching

Jonassen and Hernandez-Serrano (2002) argued that stories could promote learning and help students solve problems. Robin (2005) believed that digital storytelling encouraged learners to organize and express their views and knowledge as well as help them with study in a unique and meaningful way. Robin and Pierson (2005) pointed it out that digital storytelling could sustain students’ and teachers’ imagination and facilitate significant story creation to improve the experience of students and teachers. According to Tsou et al. (2006), storytelling is a pragmatic and efficient teaching tool; combining digital storytelling with linguistic courses was a creative learning method which could improve students’ reading, writing, speaking and listening. Renda (2010) encouraged teachers to adopt digital storytelling because it could facilitate the instruction in class (Robin 2008) and help students turn a complex and chaotic world into an orderly and rational one in the plot development of stories (Bruner 1990; Gils 2005).

Gils (2005) believed that the educational application of digital storytelling had the following advantages: (1) it offered more variation than the traditional teaching; (2) it provided personalized learning experience; (3) it gave more attractive explanation; (4) it facilitated the creation of stories about realities; (5) it enhanced students’ participation in learning. Padilla-Zea et al. (2013) developed instructive games with the storytelling system. In the research, they emphasized that story architecture, constituent, the definition of relevant attributes, and the sequence of events could improve writing. Di Blas (2009, 2010) also argued that digital storytelling could accelerate the team work among students in education; apart from contributing to a closer tie among peers, it could fuel the interaction between students and teachers; as far as digital quality was concerned, students could develop many information abilities through storytelling. Storytelling is a path leading to innovation and more efficient learning; it motivates learners to review and construct their knowledge (Liu et al. 2011).

To date, scholars in different areas have applied digital storytelling to teaching. On top of enhancing basic learning motivation and effectiveness as well as writing, it also improves cooperative participation and critical thinking. Therefore, it can help students develop various abilities. With the creative and unique teaching, students can make use of their imagination and think about problems from diverse perspectives and develop the problem-solving ability. Driven by technological advancement, digital storytelling has been rigorously developed (Miller 2004). An official digital storytelling pattern can be presented through more complicated media. Therefore, digital storytelling is a word with broad meaning which includes various storytelling methods (Pierotti 2006).

Porer (2005) regarded digital storytelling as “an old art featuring verbal storytelling where images, pictures, music, sound effects and the stories of authors are combined to form a movie”. Digital storytelling is highly modifiable, and the works can be shared through the Internet (Susono 2007; Laura 2015; Russell 2010).

This study aims to develop a storytelling system to help students create highly structural stories with much variation. It is hoped that the system will not only enrich students’ knowledge of story concept but also improve their capabilities.

2.2 Usability Evaluation of the System

Teaching Environment Assessment

Nokeleinen (2006) proposed the model of empirical assessment of teaching environment where the following factors were adopted to measure the teaching materials of digital learning: learner control, learner action, cooperative/collaborative learning, objective orientation, adaptability, additional value, motivation, background knowledge assessment, flexibility and feedback. Psomos and Kordaki (2011) believed that the educational digital storytelling environments (EDSE) included the basic teaching criterion concepts of the constructivist learning, so they proposed 16 factors for an overall assessment of the EDSE in education, including collaborative learning, creativity and innovation, multiple representations, motivation, cultural sensitivity, gender equality, cognitive effort, feedback, learner control, flexibility, learner activity, value of previous knowledge, sharply-focused goal orientation, experiential value, knowledge organization and metacognition.

Usability Evaluation

As for the system usability evaluation, Schafer (2004) proposed five dimensions, namely, comprise, construction, presentation, interactivity, and appeal, which were included in the DS application software evaluation model with 12 criteria: concreteness, involvement, conceptual structure, coherence, continuity, cognitive effort, virtuality, spatiality, collaboration, control, interactivity and immersion.

According to the theory by Schafer, Psomos and Kordaki (2012) believed that the digital storytelling system had some common features. For instance, the materials of digital stories are preset or created by the user and can present the contents of stories; the story architecture usually follows a conceptual structure, and the storytelling of the structure is related to the literal definition of certain story; the conceptual structure would influence the cohesion and consistence of the meaning of the story. Moreover, the spatial application of story factors also influences the cognitive effort to make a story, while the image presentation is dependent on the degree of virtuality and spatiality. Spatiality means that objects can develop in several directions with the contents of stories in any space, while virtuality indicates the degree to which stories are presented in a virtual way. Additionally, the degree of the collaboration in the creation of a story, the degree to which the user controls the plot development of the story, and the degree of interaction allowed by software all influence the degree to which the user is immersed in the creation of stories. Hence, the common features of the above systems were adopted to establish an assessment model of the digital storytelling system.

Norms of Self-evaluation

The seven factors of digital story proposed by Matthews-DeNatale (2008) were adopted to develop the norms of story evaluation:

  • View (self/audience): self-view means that one sets an objective early and is clear about the focus throughout the process; view of audience indicates that the creator can clearly explain why the selected text, music and pictures are suitable for the target audience.

  • The sound is clear, and the music fits the plot.

  • Rhythm: an appropriate rhythm (development and textual segment) can help audience become involved in the story.

  • Emotion: Emotional change needs to be consistent with the plot, and audience wants to get acquainted with the motif, figure and creators.

  • Image: Image building matches the unique atmosphere and tone in different stages of a story and delivers the meaning or metaphor of symbols.

  • Economy: Details are well made, and the story is neither too long nor too short.

  • Source citation: The owners, organizations, citations, ideas, music sources and sponsors are clearly marked, and the pictures or sound which is not created by self can also be accepted.

According to the DS application software evaluation model first proposed by Schafer (2004), this study developed a digital storytelling system with 5 dimensions and 12 criteria (concreteness, involvement, conceptual structure, coherence, continuity, cognitive effort, virtuality, spatiality, collaboration, control, interactivity and immersion), so as to evaluate the features of the stories created by learners. According to the analytical results of the reliability and validity of the trial test on the system, the composition layer and the construction layer were combined to form the “fundamental layer”. As Schafer employed the 4-point scale, only positive and negative views could be stated, and there wasn’t the item of “Neutral”. To avoid the problem of relevance, the system features scale of this study is based on the Likert’s 5-point scale.

According to what has been mentioned above, technological development has contributed to an increasing number of digital storytelling creations, so that most people can edit their personal stories and share them with others through diverse digital media at any time. In general, digital stories are created in the form of picture and photo, and the plot is developed through text or illustration. Some stories are filmed and edited before they are told; some stories are published on blogs, rich in text and picture. There are special websites and systems for the user to make digital stories, but existing software and systems are unable to help the user create stories with story structure or develop plots with different structures. Therefore, this study used the Pure MVC design system architecture, Flash, and the ActionScript to develop a digital storytelling system, presenting the plots of all scenes created by the user through the storyboard of a linear story structure. Moreover, the process of the user’s storytelling was transcribed and recorded with a microphone.

To strengthen the capabilities of students, digital storytelling has been applied to a wide range of courses. In this study, the story setting and the story creation theory proposed by McKee (1997) were taken as the basis of the system construction; they were combined with story review to lead the user to make digital stories, so that learners can develop stories with the basic linear structure. Moreover, the four variation-oriented structures (the paralleled structure, the Z-shaped structure, the bus station structure, and the ring structure) put forward by Sullivan et al. (2012) were added into this digital storytelling system, so that the user can create stories with diverse structures. Finally, the application and usability of the digital storytelling system in teaching were evaluated, so as to explore the role of the system in helping learners create structurally complete stories and develop stories with different variation-oriented structures.

3 Research Method

The digitalized storytelling system is developed in this study by diverse structures that confer on the issue of the structural integrity of the story. The usability evaluations of teaching environment assessment, system features evaluation and self-story assessment are completed by the experts (investigation of teaching environment), user’s operation (features of digital storytelling system) and user’s satisfaction (of created storytelling). There are three stages in assessment framework to evaluate as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.
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The Assessment framework

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In the first stage, three experts were invited to evaluate the teaching environment of DSTS-U systematic prototype (Psomos and Kordaki 2011) by 16 factors to confirm its effectiveness.

In the second stage, the digital storytelling system was operated by the user and then evaluated the characteristics of the usability of system when effects on learns to create a story. The software of Digital Storytelling Application Evaluation, proposed by Schafer’s (2004), is used on evaluating. It is divided into four levels of a total of 12 factors to measure the advantages and disadvantages of the DSTS-U system.

In the third stage, the user assesses the story setting, creation and overall satisfaction of their created story to determine the effect of DSTS-U system on the benefits of the story structure development.

3.1 Experimental Tools

The research tool of DSTS-U system is based on elements of digital storytelling, procedure and related literature. It combined with Pure MVC framework, Flash tool, compiled in the ActionScript language to complete the SWF file, and then executed by the Flash Player on different platforms.

The experiment is carried on the process of story set, story creation and story review bases on the DSTS-U system, and then analyze the results. The story creation model of DSTS-U including 1. Freestyle creation; 2. Structured creation; and 3. Variant structure. The framework of system as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.
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The framework of DSTS-U system

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The DSTS-U system provides learners with a quick and structured storytelling approach that enrich story content through story setting, story creation and story review. There are four different variations in the stage of story structure to enhance and to plenty the story content. Additionally, the DSTS-U system provides a freestyle mode where one could play creative freely. The operation process of system is shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.
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Operation process of DSTS-U system

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3.2 Research Subjects

The DSTS-U system, a storytelling system guides creative story with variation and complete structure, is developed for college students. There were 40 sophomores, 21 males and 19 females, as subjects who have no prior knowledge or similar experiment of digitized storytelling system. According to the teaching of the digital storytelling system, the experiment is planned to last for four weeks. Each experiment was repeated for four times (including the pretest), and each time lasted for 90 min.

3.3 Research Hypotheses

According to the research architecture, the first step is to assess the teaching environment of the system, which is followed by the system features evaluation and the self-storytelling, as is shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4.
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Operation process of DSTS-U system

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  • H1: After using the DSTS-U system, the user makes positive remarks on the 16 dimensions of the teaching environment, including cooperative learning, creativity and innovation, multiple expression, motive, cultural sensitivity, sexual equality, cognitive effort, feedback, learner control, flexibility, learning activity, knowledge organization, clear objective orientation, experiential value, knowledge organization, and meta-cognition.

  • H2: After using the DSTS-U system, the user makes positive remarks on the four dimensions of the system features, including “fundamental layer”, “expression layer”, “interaction layer” and “attraction layer”.

  • H3: After using the DSTS-U system, the user makes positive remarks on the “story setting”, “story creation” and “overall satisfaction with story” of the self-story assessment.

3.4 Questionnaire Design

The questionnaire of this study consists of three parts, namely, the questionnaire of expert’s assessment of the system teaching environment, the subject’s system features evaluation, and the questionnaire of self-story assessment. Based on the studies of such scholars as Psomos and Kordaki (2011), Schafer (2004), and Mou et al. (2013), the items and sentences of the scales were slightly modified to meet the direction of discussion. There were altogether 42 items.

Before the official experiment, 12 copies of the questionnaire were used for the trial test, where Cronbach’s Alpha was taken as the test standard to modify the items which were semantically unclear or impractical, so that the Cronbach’s Alpha of all the dimensions stayed between 0.553 and 1.000, which was above the 0.5 suggested by the scholars (Fornell et al. 1981). In this way, the questionnaire was reliable.

3.5 Data Analysis Tool

In this study, SPSS 20.0 was taken as the data analysis tool of the questionnaire items and used to explore the relevance between the items and the dimensions. Additionally, the qualitative view was adopted for a deeper analysis to demonstrate the results of this study.

4 Analysis and Discussion

4.1 Analysis of the Reliability and Validity of the Questionnaire

The Cronbach’s α of the dimensions of the system features assessment of the scale stayed between 0.674 and 1.000, and the overall Cronbach’s α was 0.899. The Cronbach’s α of the dimensions of self-story assessment ranged from 0.677 to 0.732, and the overall Cronbach’s α was 0.869, which was higher than the 0.7 mentioned by Nunnally (1978), indicating a high level of reliability. According to Fornell and Larker (1981), the combined reliability should be higher than 0.6, and a higher value indicates that the items are more capable of detecting potential variables. The combined reliability of the dimensions was between 0.821 and 1.000, which is consistent with the level suggested by the scholars. The average variance extracted (AVE) of the dimensions stayed between 0.553 and 1.000, higher than the 0.5 suggested by the scholars (Fornell et al. 1981). According to Table 1, both the combined reliability and the AVE reached the standard level, which means that this study has a high level of dimensional reliability.

Table 1. Analysis of reliability of the scale
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Tables 2 and 3 show the matrix of relevant coefficients among the dimensions, and diagonal shows the AVE square roots of the conceptual variables. It reveals that the variables of the dimensions in the model indeed varied from each other, which means that the questionnaire of this study has a high level of discriminant validity.

Table 2. Discriminant validity of the dimensions of the system features evaluation
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Table 3. Discriminant validity of the dimensions of the self-story assessment
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4.2 Analysis of Usability

The DSTS-U system is something new for beginners, so it takes them some time to get used to it. In terms of difficulty, the story system is suitable for beginners (Table 4).

Table 4. Analysis of the difficulty of the story system
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In the Experimental Group, 38 subjects believed that the hints offered in the story creation were very clear or clear, accounting for 98% of the samples (Table 5). Hence, it is possible to make the conclusion that the instructions in the hint column on the left side of the DSTS-U system interface are clear enough for learners to follow the steps of story creation (Table 5).

Table 5. Analysis of the clarity of the hints offered in the story creation
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37 subjects were very clear or clear that structure was needed for story design, accounting for 92% of the samples. Therefore, it is possible to make the conclusion that the user follows the story architecture of the DSTS-U system and is clear that structure is needed for story design (Table 6).

Table 6. Analysis of the degree of being clear that structure is needed for story design
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12 subjects agreed to continue to use the system to tell stories, taking up 30% of the samples; 28 subjects showed the attitude of “Average”, accounting for 70%. Therefore, most of subjects showed the attitude of “Average” when asked to continue to tell stories with this system (Table 7).

Table 7. Analysis of the intention to continue to tell stories with this system
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Analysis of the Standards of the DSTS-U Digital Storytelling Teaching Environment

This study aims to develop a storytelling system featuring complete creation. To evaluate the usability of this system in a prudent way, the questionnaire was made according to relevant academic papers, and three experts were invited to analyze the teaching environment of the digital storytelling system. On the whole, the average of the three experts’ scores for such dimensions as collaborative learning, creativity and innovation, motive, cultural sensitivity, feedback, flexibility, learning activity, knowledge organization, clear objective orientation, and experiential value was high. In terms of cognitive effort, the average of the scores by the experts was low; as for learner control, it was “Average”; when it comes to sexual equality and meta-cognition, the average of the scores by the experts was very high (Table 8).

Table 8. Experts’ scores for the digital storytelling teaching environment
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Analysis of Difference in the System Features Dimension

In the system features evaluation, the average score of the fundamental layer, the expression layer, the interaction layer, and the attraction layer was 4.03, 4.05, 4.06 and 4.15 respectively. It is estimated that the DSTS-U system combined with different virtual materials can facilitate the creation of story board of different visual effects. The scores of the operation of whole system, the story creation progress, the flexibility of modification, the collaborative creation, and the degree of immersion were positive.

Analysis of Self-story Assessment

There was no significant difference in gender among the dimensions of the self-story assessment, which indicates that gender would not affect the use of the digital storytelling system. This study adopted the ANOVA and the Post-Hoc test to explore if the difference in the degree of being clear that structure is needed for story design would influence the variable of continuing to use the system. The significance of the “Levene test with equal variables” was lower than .05, which implied heterogeneity. In the Games-Howell test, p was .002 (which was .000, lower than .05), showing significant difference between “those who are averagely clear that structure is needed for story design” and “those who are clear that structure is needed for story design”; “those who are clear that structure is needed for story design” showed a stronger intention of continuing to use this system. It is deduced that the user find it difficult to the DSTS-U system in the first use and that it takes him/her some time to get used to it; however, after he/she becomes clear that structure is needed for story design, he/she is willing to continue to use the DSTS-U system.

With the DSTS-U system, the user can adopt several story factors to establish story board quickly and try the combination of different materials with the hints of different scenes. The different image presentation, along with the written description, indeed enables the user to create a structurally complete story.

In the experiment, the subjects needed to discuss the setting of story objective, role, role’s preference, and spatial and temporal background to become familiar with and apply the concepts of different variation-oriented structures. After that, they entered the stage of story creation directly and developed stories through such scenes of triggering event, progressive conflict, crises, climax and ending. In this stage, it is possible to enrich the contents of stories through the variation-oriented structures. In the final story review, the stories were reviewed and slightly modified, so that the subjects would be able to create a story with a complete structure and much variation in content.

Research results: H1: After using the DSTS-U system, the user made positive remarks on the 16 dimensions of the teaching environment.

H2: After using the DSTS-U system, the user made positive remarks on the 4 dimensions of the system features.

H3: After using the DSTS-U system, the user made positive remarks on the 3 dimensions of the self-story assessment.

As a whole, the digital storytelling system developed in this study enables learners to present stories in forms of text, picture and recording; moreover, learners are clear about their direction and the objectives to achieve with the hints; the structural concept enables learners to immediately acquire knowledge; the use of the system meets the need of cultural diversity and sexual equality, and the mental loading is low; learners can master the system in a flexible way. If they encounter any problems in the use, they can receive immediate response. With the assistance of teachers, students will indulge themselves in the creation, enhance their awareness of story structure, and feel willing to use the system again. Therefore, learners can create a story with a complete structure and obtain the knowledge of story concept with the help of the DSTS-U system.

5 Conclusion

With story structure as the basis, this study attempts to develop a digital storytelling system called Digital Storytelling Teaching System-University (DSTS-U). With the system, learners can quickly create stories with structural architecture and increase the variation in stories with different story structures. Also, the usability of this system was evaluated from three perspectives, namely, teaching environment assessment, system features evaluation, and self-story assessment.

The results show that the experts provide a positive evaluation for the DSTS-U on learner’s teaching environment. It is sure that the DSTS-U system achieves the purpose of this study with positive evaluation of the characteristics and self-story satisfaction. The user could create a structured story and prompted the knowledge of story concept by using the DSTS-U system. The user would complete a structured digital story through the tips to guide when familiar with the DSTS-U system. In additional, DSTS-U system provides a good creative tool for users to create an in-depth story. In the process of DSTS-U, knowledge construction of structural stories concepts would be learned when the user starts the variant structure story creation based on the basic structural formula. It would enrich the story deeply.