Abstract:

Stories, storytelling and digital storytelling are powerful strategies in teaching and learning process. In the literature, definitions of digital storytelling focus on combining the art of storytelling with several multimedia such as image, audio and video for certain purposes (Hung, Hwang, & Huang, 2012; Reitmaier, Bidwell, & Marsden, 2011; Robin, 2006; Stacey, & Hardy, 2011; Lowenthal, & Dunlap, 2010).

There are various uses of digital storytelling such as telling the personal narratives about important events in life, examining historical events in order to understand the past and presenting information for the educational purposes , etc. (Robin, 2006). Digital storytelling is commonly used in different disciplines such as education, health, communication, tourism and sociology. There are studies in different disciplines that mention several benefits of digital storytelling as a strategy or a method or a practice. In the educational contexts, it is stated that digital storytelling has contributed a lot to students’ improvement in several skills (Belet, & Dal, 2010; Hung, Hwang, & Huang, 2012; Liu, Liu, Chen, & Liu, 2010; Pieterse, & Quilling, 2011; Yoon, 2012; Yang, & Wu, 2012).

In this study, content analysis was employed with a systematic descriptive review strategy by examining research articles about digital storytelling in the educational context. Therefore, research articles were searched in Web of Science database using “digital storytelling” as key word and within the scope of “education & educational research” areas without year limitation. As a result of the descriptive review, 57 articles that meet the criterion stated above were identified. Later on, content analysis was done based on their key words, contexts, years, countries, research groups, variables in the problem statement, methods and analyses. Thus, suggestions were presented for future research revealing the existing situation about digital storytelling in the educational context.

Keywords:

Digital storytelling, education, descriptive review, content analysis.