CREATING TRANSMEDIA NARRATIVES TO ENHANCE DIGITAL INTELLIGENCE IN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

In contemporary education, the convergence of digital literacy and digital communication are a part of participatory culture that takes into account the potentials of teenagers' digital intelligence and their interests, who as a result lack the motivation for learning and improvement in a teacher-centered classroom. High school students’ digital literacy is a prerequisite for their success not only in educational but also in the communication field. Using a story in a combination with communication and information technologies opens up numerous opportunities for improving learning and teaching processes with the aim of more effective adoption and reproduction of the teaching content. As teenagers spend more and more time using social and digital media, both during leisure time as well as for learning independently, the main research question was formed: Is it possible to influence the development of teenagers’ digital intelligence by creating a task where they independently select appropriate digital tools to create transmedia extensions of the given content? It was answered by a case study of transmedia extensions by 33 high school students during English language classes. Their task was to apply transmedia storytelling method and to select an appropriate digital tool and create digital content with the aim of extending the narrative of an authentic literary text, a short story Welcome to Mars written by Tom Hanks. The analysis of the results revealed a positive difference in the level of the acquired knowledge by using transmedia storytelling in the English language classroom in relation to the level of the acquired knowledge by using the conservative one-way teacher-student approach. During the research, the students' attitudes towards the use of the transmedia model of teaching as well as their evaluation of the reception of transmedia digital contents in relation to classical printed materials were analyzed. The apparent proportional effect of transmedia narratives on the development of digital literacy of teenagers and consequently on their development digital intelligence was noticed. The comparative analysis of the results of the study in comparison with the results of similar scientific research has led to a conclusion that the synergistic effect of the application of digital media and transmedia storytelling in teaching influenced the development of the digital intelligence of teenagers. Moreover, this comparative analysis has established the originality of the paper through idiographic approach towards the implementation of research based on case studies conducted in English language classroom. At the cognitive level, the scientific contribution is reflected in the creation of informational concepts of digital creativity, and at the methodological level through the development of the original methodology of qualitative compliance of the attitudes of high school students with the quantitative degree of the reception of the given teaching content adopted by the method of transmedia storytelling.