Personal voices in higher education: A digital storytelling experience for pre-service teachers

Digital storytelling (DST) has recently emerged as a new tool in instructional environments. DST involves the combination of media and technology with traditional storytelling to help students learn. This paper examines the use of DST in a university course and pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their learning experiences using this tool. Thirty-eight pre-service teachers participated in the study, in which DST was employed as a learning activity. In the course, the participants created personal digital stories about their careers. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used for data collection and analysis. The findings indicate that DST is very useful for learning. The pre-service teachers perceived DST as an attractive way to share ideas and feelings, and valuable for using in lessons. DST served as a practical learning tool to present the students’ personal experiences to others, and the process encouraged emotional interactions. Implications regarding these findings are discussed. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media New York.