Collaborative comic-based digital storytelling with primary school children

Rutta, Carolina and Schiavo, Gianluca and Zancanaro, Massimo and Rubegni, Elisa (2020) Collaborative comic-based digital storytelling with primary school children. In: IDC '20: Proceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference :. ACM, New York, pp. 426-437. ISBN 9781450379816

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Abstract

This work explores how comic-based digital storytelling can support primary school children in reflecting on situations involving conflict in the classroom. In particular, we focus on investigating three specific aspects: (1) the potential of digital story composition conducted collaboratively or individually, (2) the children’s perception on the use of digital storytelling for reflecting on conflicts that might arise in class and, (3) the teachers’ experience of introducing a digital tool for collabo- rative storytelling and comics composition in an educational context. In this paper, we explored these aspects by develop- ing a case study. A class of 12 children and 2 teachers explore the use of a digital tool, named Communics, aimed at creat- ing digital narratives individually and collaboratively. The results show that digital narratives created from collabora- tive storytelling are longer, more structured, and richer with meaning compared to stories from individual work. More- over, it emerged that children prefer to work collaboratively, even if it meant compromising, going slower and waiting for their turn. Finally, teachers appreciated the collaborative use of Communics, and in particular, the turn-based feature as children can practice the narrative re-elaboration with a peer while waiting for their turn.