Resources

There is so much – and increasingly more – out there to learn from. An abundance of voices also means an increased need for media literacy and sense-making. Below is a developing list of resources, frequently updated. Our primary intent is to support and inspire other faculty and teachers to assign storytelling projects that increase our conversation around diversity and inclusion. If there is something you think should be on the list, please send us a note!

As If We Needed Reasons

• Why we need diverse storytellers – Lauren Cheal for Echo Stories, 2017. The stories told today become history for future generations. History should be the story of all of us, but this isn’t the case; storytellers decide who the main characters are, what plot points to highlight, and what lessons to take away. It is therefore crucial that storytellers represent as many races, religions, gender identities, sexual orientations, and cultural groups as possible. “The stories told today become the history that future generations learn.”
• The danger of a single story – TED, 2009. Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice – and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

Tips on the Transformation of Teaching

• How to train professors to steer off microaggressions – “How can institutions ensure instructors enjoy academic freedom while also pushing them to be mindful of students’ racial backgrounds and experiences?” – The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2016.
• An approach to teaching diversity – from the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater.
• Increasing inclusivity in the classroom – from Vanderbilt University.
• Strategies for creating more trans*-affirmative classrooms, from Inside Higher Ed, 2018.
• Journalist’s Resource – “research on today’s news topics” – a wide variety of resources for teaching with data, facts, research studies, analyses, writing, reporting, etc., many of them compiled timely about the day’s news. For example, talking about, reporting on, communicating about, interacting with, and in general teaching, students and communities from rural America.
• Becoming a bilingual advocate for our students – from the “Liberal Education,” published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2018.
• The emotional labor of teaching diversity courses – Ways to support faculty doing important work related to diversity and inclusivity, as a way to also help change institutional cultures – an article from The Chronicle, 2018.

Projects on Diversity and/or Storytelling

• A compilation on digital stories that participate in transforming teaching and learning, Linda Buturian – free to read online or for download.
• The cultivating change stories – interdisciplinary project using digital storytelling, along with the author’s, Linda Buturian’s, article about the project.
• Diversity talk: My life, my story – any student, faculty, and staff member with a unique story that somehow relates to diversity. “To enlighten the community about the differences of people within the community and to help them better understand, appreciate and relate to those who have experienced a different background and upbringing” – from Penn State University.
• Digital storytelling resources, compiled for The Learning and Technology Library.

Text and photo stories

• Stories about the campus community to “better understand and appreciate the diversity we strive to foster among our students, faculty, and staff” – from Notre Dame University
• Dollar street, a visual story about diversity of living – “Imagine the world as a street ordered by income. Everyone lives somewhere on the street. The poorest lives to the left and the richest to the right. Everybody else live somewhere in between… In the news people in other cultures seem stranger than they are. We visited 264 families in 50 countries and collected 30,000 photos. We sorted the homes by income, from left to right.”
• An article on liberal education and gathering stories for retention, for connecting with alumni, etc. Also, to inform the wider public about the purpose and outcomes of a liberal arts education – from the “Liberal Education,” published by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2018.

Video stories

• Videos stories of resilience and learning from failure – from Tulane University.
• Diversity stories (narrative videos with light editing, no guidance) – from University of California, Berkeley.
• –Campus and community collaboration on stories (student video project) – University of Minnesota.
• Immigrant stories, University of Minnesota, Immigration History Research Center; particularly useful is the curriculum guides for instructors.
• A compilation of different types of video project assignments collected in a variety of types of courses at the University of Minnesota.
• Video stories to tell the experiences of DACA and undocumented students at Washington University St. Louis.

Audio/podcast stories

• –Podcasting across campus – a college-led and run initiative to tell digital stories about faculty, students, and campus projects at Indiana University Bloomington.
• MorningSide 48224, podcasts from Detroit.

Tools for Cool Digital Storytelling

• ThingLink – on creating interactive maps/images/etc.
• Some ideas for positive prompts to use in collecting stories (the context here is the workplace).