Improving Primary School Students’ Creative Writing and Social-Emotional Learning Skills through Collaborative Digital Storytelling

Introduction: It is stated that digital storytelling (DST) involves a process in which students develop many skills such as searching for information, writing scripts, organisation, presentation, communication and problem solving (Robin, 2006). In this process, it is seen that recent studies have started to focus on collaborative digital storytelling (CDST) to support students (Liu, Huang, & Xu, 2018; Nishioka, 2016; Perez, Martinez, & Pineiro, 2016; Perez, Martinez, & Pineiro, 2018; Rubino, Barberis, & Malnati, 2018). Building a digital story as an artefact with a group and examining its effect on creative writing skills can help gain insight into the potential of the CDST. Also, it can be stated that CDST has the potential to provide a suitable environment for social-emotional learning skills. In this regard, this study aims to examine the effect of collaborative digital storytelling on the creative writing and social-emotional learning skills of elementary school fourth grade students. Methods: In the study, a quasi-experimental design, was used, with pre-test and post-test control groups. A process in which the experimental group was assigned a collaborative digital story, and the control group the task of preparing a visual presentation was designed. 60 students attending the fourth grade of a primary school participated in the study. The control group consisted of 30 students (14 females and 16 males), and the experimental group was also 30 students (15 female and 15 male students). The research was carried out in the 2017-2018 academic year and the implementation process lasted 11 weeks. Writing activities of the students were scored with the Creative Writing Rubric developed by Öztürk (2007). The Creative Writing Rubric is composed of eight sub-dimensions: (a) originality of ideas, (b) fluency of thoughts, (c) flexibility of thoughts, (d) word richness (selection), (e) sentence structure, (f) organisation (introduction to writing, development and outcome), (g) writing style, (h) compliance with grammar rules. The Social-emotional Learning Skills Scale developed by Kabakçı and Owen (2010) was used to measure social-emotional learning skills. There are 40 items on a 4-point Likert scale which consists of four factors: problem solving, communication, increasing self-value and coping with stress. In the study, paired samples t-test and single factor ANCOVA analysis were used and effect size (η2) and Cohen’s d were calculated. Results: According to the t-test results for dependent groups, an increase between pre-test and post-test scores was found significant for creative writing in both the experimental (t(29)=8.623; p=0,000) and the control group (t(29)=5.259; p=0,000).When the calculated effect size values are examined, it is seen that there is a large effect size for the experimental group (Cohen’s d=0.88) and a medium (Cohen’s d=0.54) for the control group (Cohen, 1988). For social-emotional learning skills, a statistically significant difference was found between pre-test and post-test scores in both experimental (t(29)=2.518; p=0.018) and control groups (t(29)= 3.934; p=0.000). The effect size is small for both in the experimental (Cohen’s d=0.42) and control groups (Cohen’s d=0.42) for social-emotional learning. When pre-test scores were kept constant, a single factor covariance analysis (ANCOVA) was conducted to examine whether the collaborative digital story preparation process had a significant effect on the post-test scores of the groups. According to the ANCOVA results, there was a significant difference between the creative writing post-test scores of the groups, F(1, 57)=7.09, p<0.05. In other words, the experimental process had an impact on creative writing. It is seen that the effect size value is calculated as η2=0.111. According to the ANCOVA results, there was no significant difference between the social-emotional learning skills post-test scores of the groups, F(1, 57)=0.137, p> 0.05. Discussion: When the experimental and control groups were compared, it was concluded that the experimental process had a moderate effect in favour of the experimental group on the creative writing skill. When the related literature is examined, studies-support these results. Schmoelz (2018) stated that the specific stages of digital storytelling are very important for providing co-creativity, especially the story production stage enables the co-creative flow experience. According to Daigle (2008), digital storytelling requires writing skills and creativity. It can be used effectively where DST is considered as a means of developing narrative knowledge (Garcia & Rossiter, 2010). When the social-emotional learning skills were examined, it was seen that there was an improvement in both the experimental group and the control group when the implementation process was completed. However, it was concluded that the experimental process did not have a significant effect on social-emotional learning skills. This may be because the students in both groups performed a collaborative study. Future studies may focus on an in-depth understanding of the process by conducting a qualitative study within the context of CDST and social-emotional learning skills. As a result of this study, it can be concluded that CDST improved students’ creative writing skills and can be used in language lessons. Conclusions: In the study, it was observed by the researchers that CDST was more advantageous in terms of time and application. Future research may focus on comparing individual and collaborative digital storytelling. Other research may examine the effect of CDST on the attitudes of students towards collaborative work. This study was designed with a quantitative method, and research can be conducted in the future using a qualitative or mixed method that addresses students’ experiences, difficulties, teachers and parents’ views in the process.