Dresher Center Working Group
Leaders: Bill Shewbridge (Media and Communication Studies) and Bev Bickel (Language, Literacy, and Culture)
This group explores research about and with digital storytelling, including discussions of digital literacies and competencies in the humanities and social sciences, narrative and storytelling research, community building and civic agency, and scholarship of teaching and learning across disciplines. The working group serves as a steering body for ongoing digital storytelling activities, serves as a networking space, and connects with other campus work that involves storytelling for civic agency and engagement. We promote opportunities for faculty, staff and graduate students involved in digital storytelling research and teaching to share experiences through presentations, workshops and roundtables.
Over the past few years, this working group has acted as a means of connecting UMBC with an international community of digital storytelling practitioners. This has included the authoring of a book chapter by Beverly Bickel, Bill Shewbridge, Romy Huber and Ana Oskoz: “Building collaboration and community engagement through Digital Storytelling” published in “Digital Storytelling in Higher Education: International Perspectives” Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Group members have presented at various national and international conferences, including DST 2017 in London and DST 2018 in Zakynthos, Greece.
Connecting with this community of practice has enabled us to introduce UMBC to innovative projects and explore inter-institutional collaborations. The group has hosted discussions on ongoing projects with the Smithsonian, the University of Loughboro and Montgomery County Community College. Over the next two years we plan to work with these partners to explore the possibility of co-hosting an international conference in our region in 2021. Prior to this we plan to work with colleagues at the University of Loughboro (UK) in developing programing for DST 2020 which they will host.
We have established a myUMBC group (https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/stories) to serve as the primary means of communication with our campus participants. Currently, the group has 37 members. This group is a essentially a subset of our broader Digital Stories @ UMBC (stories.umbc.edu) listserv which includes many beyond the campus. The listserv currently has 226 subscribers.
We plan at least one meeting per semester in the coming year, but anticipate that as plans for conferences and events develop in the coming months, the group may need to meet more frequently.
We intend to use the funding this year to cover expenses related to planning these events. This will include catering for meetings on campus, regional travel for group members and possibly bringing guest speakers to campus. The group will also develop presentations for DST 2020 focusing on UMBC’s community-engaged story work.