How do can we combine such informal learning with formal learning? How do we foster such extended classrooms?

In our digitally and socially connected world learning occurs both formally in the classroom and informally outside of the brick-and-mortar walls of our institutions and schools. Often the conversations that occur on the spheres over the social digital networks lead students to learn from each other through seeking artifacts and sharing these among friends over social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google+. Such artifacts may include links to videos and pictures posted on websites. They tell stories.

How do we re-teach thinking skills to our students and bring thinking back as an important piece of learning in our classrooms?

Gosney (2005) noted that our teenagers today are computer savvy and enjoy using multimedia.

They also like games. Both playing individually and collaboratively. Alternate reality games (ARG) include game elements in a fictional but near-real environment and Transmedia Storytelling is a hunting and gathering process where a story is told over multiple platforms, i.e., using various computer technologies. Documented educational uses of ARGs and Transmedia storytelling are still few; however, slowly growing.

Gosney, J. W. (2005). Beyond Reality. A guide to alternate reality gaming. Boston, MA: Thompson.

Active learning through Transmedia Storytelling allows a way to use various digital technology tools, seek content, weave together storyline, share, communicate, and express individual understanding –arguing, defending, and critiquing. It provides students an opportunity to cognitive learning together in a community where they have a stake in the learning experience. It may also help build the important critical thinking skills – all while engaging in playful learning using multimedia.

Giovagnoli, J. W. (2011). Transmedia storytelling, Imagery, shapes and techniques. ETC Press.

Alternate Reality Games (ARG) and Transmedia Storytelling experiences are closely related as they both involve and mobilize the audience – Participants are immersed in a seeking and sharing, set into place by the narrator or the game designer. ARGs may be seen as mainly synergistic, i.e., collaborative for an enriched outcome. Transmedia experiences are participative or synergistic (Giovagnoli, 2011). Transmedia storytelling may exist as stand-alone stories, however, are more enriching when experienced as a group.

We will next share an example of how we can use transmedia storytelling in our classrooms for collaborative, creative, and engaging learning.

• Normative Communicative Actions

• Strategic Communicative Actions

• Constative Communicative Actions

• Dramaturgical Communicative Actions

Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions (LTCA)

Warren and Wakefield (2012). Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions: Social Media as Educational Tool.

The instructor shares through normative communicative actions the requirements and expectations of students’ work. This will include collaborating in teams, designing story, teaching peers, evaluating each other’s performance etc. to achieve a certain grade for the unit. Normative communicative acts set the level of performance or accomplishment expected.

Start with curriculum content. It should always be the key to the learning experience – to set the stage. This can be a novel students are to read, a journal article, a professional video, and/or websites). Since curriculum is often determined or mandated by schools, systems, and authorities, it is shared as the strategic communicative actions, i.e., the shared consensus as we know it. This reified knowledge provides the foundation of our transmedia learning experience.

Assign teams of students to collaborate. Learning together through inquiry, design, teaching each other, and applying learning (knowledge construction) happens through Constative communicative actions – a sharing back and forth of truth claims and rejections until consensus occurs. Collaboration and communication skills are essential today. Through communicative acts and discourse students learn to weight claims made by others and negotiate for a shared understanding.

In a shared design, the strengths of each team member are brought out as each can contribute to the larger collaborative story project with their smaller parts as the story unfolds.

Ideas for technologies that may be used by students as they design their stories collaboratively for multiple platforms:

• Google maps

• Websites

• QR codes

• Facebook

• Twitter

• PB Wiki

• YouTube

• Vimeo

• Vines video

• Audacity

• Digital Photos

• Voicemail

• Pinterest

• Instagram

• Flickr

• Comics

• Online Newsletters

• MS Office

Collage by A. Wakefield using the Pic Collage app for iPhone with Web images.

GPS coordinates and tweets may be used as part of a location-based game such as in Lance Weiler’s ARG Pandemic where players both in the park and online collaboratively sought to stop the pandemic by searching and retrieving hidden artifacts in Park City given a deadline for completion.

QR codes can be used to find out additional information shared over another platform. Thus work well as part of a Transmedia Storytelling design.

Andersen, (2011, Jan 14). Sundance film festival is ground zero for Lance Weiler’s Pandemic 1.0.

Presentation of student-created stories. Story presentations can be classroom presentations, students’ classroom teaching of peers, or a game experiences such as a treasure hunt that takes the student across various media looking for artifacts to extend the story while learning. Content such as podcasts, video, QR codes etc. lend them self well for sharing clues as to where additional or new content is located. Created by peers each allows the learner to traverse various platforms and learn in a storied landscape.

A Unity game as a part of a transmedia story told over a blog, Unity game, QR-codes, audio, email, and voicemail.

Dramaturgical Communicative actions involve sharing internal life-world in an artistic way– making the subjective understanding made visible to the world. Truth claims are shared back and forth with peers until claims and rejections result in consensus.

Have students keep a blog or a journal for the purpose of expressing internal life-world. This journal should be open for peers to read and provide feedback contributing further to the collaboration, communication, and knowledge creation. Through communicative acts and discourse students learn to weight claims made by others and negotiate for a shared understanding.

Learning through developed, shared, and distributed stories delivered over various media and over various platforms lets students engage and immerse in the educational materials while also allowing for critical thinking and problem solving to be components of a collaborative experience. Incorporating transmedia storytelling in the classroom may thereby allow for one possible way of supporting immersive classroom learning and higher order thinking skills such as metacognitive reflection. This reaches towards a goal of improving communication, self-regulated learning skills, group and individual problem solving, and creativity. Our LTCA theory supported example lesson plan serves as one example educators may use and modify depending on their classroom topic.

Jenny.Wakefield@unt.edu