Abstract:

ReGap, an acronym for “Reducing the Educational Gap for migrants and refugees in EU countries”, is a research project aiming to develop highly relevant e-learning resources offering strong social belonging. The project builds on recent studies showing the importance of feeling social inclusion for the completion rate in online courses. In the ReGap project, which is co-funded by Erasmus+, digital storytelling is a core means for creating social wellbeing. These are personal stories and experiences told by refugees and migrants, implemented and integrated as part of the learning resources.

This paper accounts for how digital stories are being used in ReGap to build social inclusion. Using a qualitative approach, 18 focus groups with 101 refugees, immigrants, educators in Italia, Portugal, North-Macedonia and Norway were carried out in the first phase of the project. Based on the feedback, a template for the courses was created. Thereafter, six courses were developed, with the aim of contributing to inclusion in the society and employment for migrants and refugees.

The topics of the courses reflect this overall objective, and address
1) Employment,
2) Health from cradle to the grave,
3) Social Security and Welfare,
4) Education,
5) Gender issues and
6) Justice and Citizenship.

These six courses where thereafter trialled by more than 300 refugees and migrants, as well as 50 educators, and then improved based on the response.

Using the Health from cradle to grave course as a case in this paper, the main storyline follows the lives of three refugees and migrants. Their stories are interweaved in the learning resources using a variety of multimodal expressions, including videos, texts, images and interactive activities. A prominent finding based on feedback from 19 refugees and migrants from 12 different countries in three continents, is that they all actually did identify themselves, wholly or in part, in the stories. Yet, there were many different aspects of identification that were aroused even in a short digital story, related to not only from what is actually being said, but also how and by whom. However, in which ways the refugees and migrants recognised themselves in the digital stories, what thoughts that were provoked, varied over a wide range. The revealed identifying elements were both of the type looking back at their past as well as looking forward, adapting to a new country, and can be summarised by the five categories of answers: A common destiny, a better or safer life makes everything worth it, being new and alone, adapting to a new country and finally language is the key. On the question whether the digital stories increased their motivation to take the course, a large majority of the informants confirmed they would. Of the very few who disagreed, the reasons were one out of two: It was either that they would have taken the course anyway, because of their interests and they found it helpful, or rather opposite: They were not interesting at all, so neither digital stories nor any other means would have them change that decision. This pattern repeated when we asked whether digital storytelling in general could contribute to an increased desire to learn. Depending on whether the stories have something in common with their personal experiences, personal stories can be inspiring. But again, based on our data, digital storytelling seems to be most useful when the motivation to learn is not completely present.

Keywords:

Digital storytelling, social inclusion, desire to learn, refugees and migrants, online learning, learning resources.