Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Aline Gubrium

Since the late 1980s, digital storytelling (DST) has become a powerful teaching tool, combining storytelling with multimedia elements like images, audio, text, video, and music. This approach makes stories more engaging and easily shareable online (Robin, 2008). A growing body of research has explored the process, practice, and effectiveness of DST in education, highlighting its benefits for student engagement and learning outcomes (Wu & Chen, 2020).

Research shows that DST can significantly enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. By encouraging students to share their stories creatively, DST positions them as active participants in their learning process.. “Students have their own individual approach based on their interactions and experiences and generate novel outputs by using different sources in their creation of the digital story” (Smeda et al., 2014, p. 13). This process encourages personal expression, critical thinking, and deeper engagement with learning materials.

This transformative nature has led Dr. Aline Gubrium, Professor of Community Health Education in the Department of Health Promotion and Policy in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, to integrate digital storytelling into her health communication course. The goal is to shape students’ understanding of health promotion through participatory narrative communication.

“Rather than hiring trained ‘professionals’ to come in and ‘collect’ stories by interviewing passive subjects and collecting video footage within a community, DST honours storytellers and the knowledge they are sharing by letting THEM decide how to tell a story and providing them with tools and hands-on skills for actually putting the story together.” -- Dr. Gubrium.

Why Digital Storytelling

For Dr. Gubrium, digital storytelling is both a personal and professional learning journey. With a background in anthropology and narrative approaches, Dr. Gubrium explored its potential as a powerful tool for amplifying diverse voices, particularly in research and education. Her work on digital storytelling is featured in books and scholarly articles (see Resources section).

Dr. Gubrium is the recipient of the 2024 UMass LIRA grant for the HEART Initiative. The Health, Environment, and the Arts (HEART) initiative has brought together accomplished faculty and staff across campus to develop innovative arts-based approaches to addressing health and environmental inequities. A key focus of the initiative this year is to instantiate a HEART beat by “practicing what we preach” – with a plan to draw affiliated faculty and staff to find collective ways that research, teaching, and creative activity create a pulse for action.

So far, HEART affiliates have participated in two arts-based research (ABR) workshops - including a DST workshop led by Dr. Gubrium in January in which 15 participants each produced a digital story about important moments in their lives. Participants in HEART activities noted the strength of developing an interdisciplinary curriculum focused on ABR to serve UMass students.  

Dr. Gubrium has also been involved in StoryCenter workshops since 2006, using digital storytelling to bridge public health and intervention efforts. She is involved in research efforts funded by the NIH, Ford Foundation, and currently the Mass Humanities Foundation, which center DST as a method for intervention, research, and action.

Digital Storytelling as a Powerful Tool for Learning

Dr. Gubrium views digital storytelling (DST) as a powerful educational and transformative tool for several reasons:

• Participatory and Community-Engaged – DST allows storytellers to decide how to tell their stories, which, in this case, aligns with public health’s commitment to engaging local communities in discussions and solutions for health issues.
• Empowerment and Identity Transformation – Creating stories enables individuals to assert control, cope with challenges, and shape their identities. Organizing events and linking thoughts and emotions provide structure, meaning, and a sense of control, making emotions easier to manage.
• Building Community Through Shared Stories – Group storytelling fosters connection and bonding and can serve as a platform for solidarity building and action. As stories are shared, a sense of community emerges, allowing individuals to feel seen and heard while listeners find their own meanings in the narratives.
• Challenging and Shifting Stigmatizing Conversations—DST creates a space for confronting stigma, which is socially constructed and can lead to discrimination and negative health outcomes. Storytelling encourages storytellers to make the private public, challenge stigmatizing and shaming conversations, and ultimately re-energize conversations in a more productive direction (Japp et al., 2005).

Affordances and Challenges

Dr. Gubrium believes that incorporating digital storytelling in a health communication and promotion course brings several benefits. It strengthens student connections and fosters team building, promoting collaboration and deeper engagement. The hands-on process of creating digital stories encourages active learning, making the experience more interactive and meaningful. Additionally, the creative aspect of storytelling adds an element of fun, increasing motivation and enjoyment in learning.

However, implementing digital storytelling also presents challenges. One significant concern is students’ potential discomfort with publicly sharing their personal stories, which raises issues of privacy and vulnerability. Some students also struggle to fully grasp the assignments, requiring additional clarification and support. While group work enhances collaboration, it can sometimes feel forced, making it difficult to ensure balanced participation and engagement among team members. 

One solution Dr. Gubrium found is that transparency throughout the course about the potential use of the stories - as part of a group project but not to be shared beyond the classroom - can help alleviate student concerns about confidentiality and privacy. Ultimately, it is each storyteller’s decision whether or not to share their own digital story beyond the classroom. Students also struggle to conceptualize the group project. Often, it is not until digital stories are screened and discussed by a group that students understand the final project. Dr. Gubrium has found that showing examples of prior group projects (albeit not screening digital stories contained within the projects) helps students understand the final assignment better.

Student Feedback

Dr. Gubrium asks each group to consider the DST process and outcomes (i.e., digital stories and final project) in their assignment. Students often draft a “process” section in their project, where they reflect on their engagement with the process and what it felt like to screen their stories as a group in front of the class. 

Reflections on Personal and Professional Development

Dr. Gubrium emphasizes that students benefit from clear examples of final projects, as well as viewing sample stories from various genres (i.e., shorter, longer, theoretical, personal, political) and on varied topics (i.e., health can relate to any and everything, notes Dr. Gubrium). She also notes that the group-based element of the project, where students in each group contend with their own stories in relation to others to develop a project that might be used in a health communication/promotion campaign, is a great way for students to try their hand at using a participatory and culture-centered health communication approach. This involves learning by doing and putting themselves in a similarly vulnerable position that they might ask of other community members should they engage in this critical narrative intervention process.

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