Faculty Publications

Diversifying Our Curriculum: Values and Intercultural Experiences Through Educational Technology

Document Type

Article

Keywords

instructional technology, diversity, multicultural literature, YAs’ novels

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Journal of Educational Technology Systems

Volume

48

Issue

2

First Page

213

Last Page

224

Abstract

To promote students’ awareness about diversity and to create and sustain an ethic of inclusion, it is vital to offer them critical analytical skills necessary to understand systems of power and the tools to create change. Although many faculty already integrate diverse perspectives, materials, and pedagogical approaches into their courses, many of us struggle to diversify our course content and teaching strategies. In this article, I overview the process of incorporating diversity into a literacy education course at a Midwestern university in the United States. In particular, I discuss how the use of this instructional technology enhanced students’ learning experience of diversity. In so doing, I focus on Plotagon, a video production app that provides a user-friendly script editor to narrate a story through custom-made characters, actions, emotions, scenes, dialogues, music, sound effects, and plots. Participants in this study were 36 male and female undergraduate preservice teachers enrolled in two sections of a required literacy education course. Each student read a multicultural young adult novel of their choice (see Appendix A in the article) and created an animated video version of a few scenes of the book in Plotagon. Integrating Plotagon multimedia medium into this instructional practice brought specific attention to the concept of diversity. The animated scenes improved the delivery of content, demonstrated students’ attention to different aspects of diversity, and enhanced their empathy. Also, through the creation of animated video clips, students were able to foster the fundamental skills of analysis, creativity, and engagement into their learning process.

Department

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Original Publication Date

9-18-2019

DOI of published version

10.1177/0047239519875735

Link to Full Text

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