Manuscript received April 7, 2023; revised May 25, 2023; accepted July 5, 2023.
Abstract—Dependence on technological concepts and
applications to improve learning outcomes and learners’
performance has broad positive effects on deepening students’
understanding, especially in higher education and postgraduate
studies. Digital storytelling (DST) is a high-value-added tool for
achieving many learning goals. This study aims to explore
students’ perceptions about the use of DST in strengthening the
understanding of practical concepts among students on a
master’s program in instructional technology at the Arab Open
University in Oman. Both quantitative and qualitative methods
were used to gather the required data. A total of 67 students
participated in the study through a questionnaire, and a
semi-structured personal interview format was used to gather
qualitative data from ten of these participants. The results
indicated that the students used DST for the purpose of learning
and deep understanding of some practical concepts in an
effective, fun, useful and constructive way in order to achieve
targeted learning. The students’ most positive perception was of
the technique when used in the following categories:
information stability, application of concepts in a variety of
contexts, and problem-solving skill development (M = 4.186, SD
= 0.7371; M = 4.051, SD = 0.7558; and M = 4.023, SD = 0.7531
respectively). At the same time, the students’ perception was the
least positive for DST in the analysis and discussion categories
(M = 2.056, SD = 1.209). Most of the participants supported the
idea that DST was a perfect and enjoyable tool for learning and
deep understanding in their specialization. They also agreed
that DST helped them to fix what they had learned and helped
them to achieve broad interaction with the content and that it
also contributed effectively to the application of the concepts in
various learning contexts. DST developed students’ ability to
solve any instructional problems but mainly contributed to
raising the motivation toward learning.
Index Terms—Digital storytelling, instructional technology,
practical understanding, e-content, e-learning
Nader S. Shemy is with Instructional Technology Department, Faculty of
Education, Fayoum University, Egypt. E-mail: nshemy@aou.edu.om
(N.S.S.)
Cite: Nader S. Shemy, "The Power of Digital Storytelling: Students’ Perceptions about Its Utilization in Developing Practical Understanding in an Instructional Technology Context," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 13, no. 9, pp. 1439-1444, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).