Towards an ethical pratice of digital storytelling in Higher Education

Lecturers at CPUT have been using digital storytelling (DST) since 2010 across all faculties and many disciplines: for teaching and learning, in community engagement projects but also more and more as a research methodology. In our context we define digital storytelling as the process of creating a (personal) narrative that documents a wide range of culturally and historically embedded lived experiences, by combining voice, sound and images into a short video, developed by non-professionals with non-professional tools within the context of a digital storytelling workshop (Lambert, 2010; Reed & Hill, 2012).




Introducing DST at our institution has improved digital literacies and student engagement, provided a space for critical reflection and enhanced multicultural learning and engagement across difference. However, adopting this sometimes emotional and process-oriented practice into an educational context, with its constraints of course objectives, assessment regimes, timetables and large classes, raises ethical concerns. 




This can be where much of its power lies, in creating personal connections to curricular knowledge. This leads to a continuum of DST, from highly personal to purely content-based stories. Many of the guidelines listed below are drawn from projects that are more personal and hence more ethically charged. Thus, the guidelines below target the most ethically risky models, but will also be helpful for lecturers aiming for less emotionally charged stories, with a stronger curriculum/content focus. It’s useful to stay mindful of the fact that the personal can surface unexpectedly, even when it has not been specifically invited. 




These guidelines are aimed at opening up a space to reflect on possible ethical questions and dilemmas you may encounter in planning and running a DST project. We offer a list of questions or issues to consider rather than fixed solutions because context is critical: it’s important to ask the questions, but different constellations of lecturer, students, discipline and access to resources will require different answers.




This document is divided into three parts: guidelines for teaching and learning, research and community engagement. Lecturers thinking of using DST for community engagement are advised to read through the first two parts, as the third part covers only additional elements that apply to community engagement only.

These guidelines are the result of a one-year consultation process at CPUT led by Ass Prof Daniela Gachago, Jacqui Scheepers, Dr Candice Livingston and Dr Pam Sykes in 2018. It draws from lecturers’ and students’ experiences with and perceptions of digital storytelling. We also draw on our own experiences as digital storytelling facilitators and those of colleagues outside our institutions. Our thinking around the ethics of digital storytelling was shaped by the Ethics Working Group participants at the 2017 Untold Conference. In particular, this experience allowed us to recognise the many DST practices with all their different ethical concerns and encouraged us to work towards specific guidelines for higher education. A special thanks to our digital storytelling friends and colleagues Kristi Stewart, Brooke Hessler, Antonia Liguori and Michelle Van Wyk, who gave detailed feedback on these guidelines. We would also like to thank the SA Story Worker Group, who helped us think through some of our ethical dilemmas. And finally, our colleagues, students and community partners - without their passion and stories there would be no DST practice at our institution. This is work-in-progress and will be continuously updated.

For questions, comments and feedback please email gachagod@cput.ac.za.

Presentation at the Engaged Scholarship Symposium at the University of the Free State, 27th of February 2020