MCS101L, Multimedia Literacy Lab, is a one-credit course offered for the
first time at UMBC in the Spring of 2010. Students were given 6 story
prompts to choose from for their final digital story projects.

With the goal of building a greater sense of community in the Linehan Artist Scholars Program, students in the Linehan Freshman Seminar class participated in a Digital Story Workshop over a four week period. Their stories reflect the broad concerns of young talented artists as they begin their university careers in the arts. The stories speak of family, creative passions, and the search for identity in a complicated and fractured world.

UMBC's Center for History Education (CHE) and New Media Studio have collaborated with teachers from Baltimore County Public Schools to create a new online resource for Hampton National Historic Site. "Hampton: A Revolutionary Place" was created as part of CHE's Making American History Master Teachers in Baltimore County Program, funded with a grant to Baltimore County Public Schools from the United States Department of Education. The Hampton project is one of several "virtual fieldtrips" to come out of last summer's workshop in digital storytelling and oral history. During the program, the New Media Studio worked with BCPS teachers to create rich media resources combining digital storytelling, photography, videography and web design.

The National Park Service is featuring the project on the Hampton website.

During January break the New Media Studio held its fifth annual digital storytelling workshop for UMBC faculty. Participants learned the technology and methodology of digital moviemaking, creating their own personal narratives while exploring applications in teaching and learning. Ten UMBC faculty members were joined by Archana Bhandari, Director of Instructional Technology at UMB School of Social Work for the three-day course. Workshop alumn Jason Loviglio, Director of the Media and Communication Studies program assisted in facilitating the writing component of the workshop. Other facilitators included Paul Iwancio, Bill Shewbridge and studio research assistants Satarupa Joardar, Chris Ferrera and Steve Yeager.

Enjoy stories from the group:

View more photos from the workshop.

During the Fall 2009 semester, students in ELC-A 504/054 (taught by Polina Vinogradova) produced digital ethnographies using main principles and techniques of digital storytelling. The students worked in groups and explored cultural communities of their choice. Focusing on either a particular aspect of culture or a theme within a cultural community the students developed and conducted interviews, analyzed the information they collected, and produced digital stories based on the interview answers and their understanding of the subject. The goal of this project was not only to introduce the students to a multimodal form of self-expression, but also for the students to explore different perceptions of culture outside of class and experience cross-cultural communication while working on digital stories with their classmates.

Inside a Heart

Our Celebrations

Rainbow Flavor

In ELC-B 504/054 (taught by Tsisana Palmer), the students produced individual digital stories about important aspects and events in their lives while exploring different meanings of culture and cross-cultural communication.

Ramadon

Mysterious City

Arabic

Greatest Man

I Love You

In this core course for the MA program for Intercultural Communication in the Fall 2009 semester, the students worked with undergraduate students in Visual Arts 395 to develop stories about an intercultural incident or encounter that was a crucial factor in motivating them to study intercultural communication. Accompanying a final paper, in which this incident was the framework for an analysis of intercultural competency, sensitivity, and awareness, the stories tell of very personal encounters of US students either in the US or abroad, or international students in the US. They relate some of the painful and embarrassing, but also enjoyable and stimulating difficulties they have had adjusting and adapting to cultures that were other than their own.

In the Fall of 2009, Susanne Sutton, lecturer of German with the Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communication Department (MLLI) taught an Advanced German 303 topics course, "German Immigration into the US".
As semester project, students worked on their own digital stories (in German) in which they recounted an experience they had had while having worked, studied, or vacationed abroad. Students then teamed up with first-generation German immigrant women from the larger Baltimore area.  Students and immigrants collaborated to produce the immigrants' personal digital stories during a two day workshop. At the end of the semester, after the students had finished the immigrants' stories, everyone came back for a 'story festival' to view the finished products.

Immigrant and Student Projects:

Student Projects: