Digital stories are powerful instructional tools that allow students to communicate complex concepts and emotions through both linguistic and nonlinguistic modes. A digital story is a 3-6 minute multimodal video through which students can engage in critical reflection about their experiences, participate actively in the learning process, and give voice to their identities.
This course will lay a foundation for understanding how stories shape communities, identities, memories, and perspectives on our lives. It will provide opportunities for the theoretical analysis of self-representation and composing narratives on behalf of ourselves and others with a focus on our linguistic and cultural heritage, critical incidents and experiences as they are preserved and performed through narrative within digital stories. Students will be required to call on their own intellectual, emotional, and imaginative processes and to develop their own skills in reflection, interviewing, oral history collection, and the use of relevant digital storytelling tools.
The first part of the course is devoted to the methodological inquiry discussion of relevant concepts and frameworks in the analysis of personal stories of critical incidents and experiences told in digital stories by individuals and communities. Students are offered narrative and autoethnography tools to explore mentioned stories, especially in relation to ethnicity, race, gender, and class with application in the assembly of non-fiction digital stories. The second part is devoted to guiding students either in creating their own digital stories as self-representation of who they are or on behalf of others (i.e. their communities, family members). Students will be encouraged to produce digital stories in languages other than English. Bilingual and multilingual productions are welcomed too (with the possibility of adding one credit module to the course).
About Professor Rashed
Doaa Rashed joined the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick as Associate Teaching Professor and Director of the Language Engagement Project in October 2019. Prior to that, she was the director of the MA TESOL (Teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages) Program and co-director of the TESOL Teacher Professional Training Programs at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Rashed works at the crossroads of bilingual and multilingual education, and cross-cultural studies. A native speaker of the Egyptian dialect of Arabic and a learner of Standard Arabic and English as a foreign language, her personal and educational experiences led her to career paths in teaching English as a Foreign Language and as a Second Language, language teacher education, and teacher professional development. Rashed received a Bachelor’s of Arts Degree in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from Alexandria University, Egypt, a M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and a doctoral degree in Language, Literacy & Culture from University of Maryland Baltimore County. Her research focuses on language teacher professional identity, the intersection between language, culture and identity, and identity as pedagogy.
Rashed has been active for many years with pre- and in-service English language teacher education, having taught courses on topics such as TESOL teaching methods, teaching grammar and pronunciation, cross-cultural communication, language assessment and evaluation, and second language acquisition.
Rashed is passionate about partnerships between academic programs and public schools in the United States as well as international partnerships, having coordinated partnerships with bicultural and bilingual centers in Bolivia, China, Ecuador and Peru. She also offered ample professional development to language teachers in language centers in Educator and the Dominican Republic.