This pilot 2-week, randomized controlled trial examined integrating digital storytelling (DST) with heart rate variability biofeedback (HRVB) to enhance psycho-emotional well-being of hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) patients. HCT patients (N = 25; Mage = 51.9 years) were randomly assigned: (1) DST + HRVB intervention, or (2) DST-only control. Both groups viewed four emotionally-rich digital stories. The DST + HRVB group practiced HRVB at home for ten minutes/day. DST + HRVB participants decreased anger, depression, fatigue (d = 0.53) and increased emotional processing (d = 0.20), and HRV-assessed autonomic nervous system balance (3.5 vs. 0.9). This study supports feasibility of integrating DST with HRVB, and effect sizes indicate superiority of combining DST with HRVB.

This article addresses the teaching and learning of language attitudes within the context of a combined graduate/undergraduate Applied Linguistics course. Throughout the course, students critically discussed academic and research articles related to language attitudes towards some of the languages spoken by the students in the course (French, Spanish and Mandarin) and participated in a guided digital storytelling workshop. This article addresses the following research questions: (1) how do students embody their language attitudes through reflective storytelling? and (2) what do students gain in terms of learning outcomes from digital storytelling projects related to language attitudes? Common themes that emerged include (1) learning from others’ stories, (2) thinking creatively, (3) providing a platform for their voice, and (4) learning the connections between identity, language, and heritage. Digital storytelling can be used in other linguistics or problem-based courses as an alternative to final papers, with guidance that facilitates new understanding through collection of knowledge.

For older adults requiring permanent care in nursing homes (or residential aged care facilities), there can be a tendency to feel disconnected from their sense of self. Digital storytelling has the potential to improve relationships and social connectedness, and encourage a sense of self and identity; however, there is little research on the implementation of this practice. A qualitative process evaluation was conducted with a sample of 12 volunteers who delivered a Digital Stories programme. The programme connected volunteers with socially isolated residents of nursing homes with the aim of engaging the residents to reminisce and contribute toward creating a digital story about their lives. The study aimed to understand enablers of and barriers to implementing the programme in nursing homes, from the perspective of volunteers. Thematic analysis resulted in several overarching themes and sub-themes. The enablers of implementation included skills and characteristics of the volunteers (e.g. adaptable to residents’ needs), specific features of the programme (e.g. having a shared goal) and support from the nursing home staff. The barriers to implementation included individual traits of the resident (e.g. low capacity for engagement), limitations associated with the prescribed protocol, and managing perspectives regarding what stories are told. Volunteers also made suggestions for future programme development. Implications for successful future digital storytelling projects include ensuring a manualised approach to the program while allowing for flexibility in delivery, careful recruitment of residents and volunteers, and providing comprehensive training and education to volunteers.

This article outlines a human-centered approach to developing digital patient stories, for sharing their experiences in health care, while preserving patient and others’ privacy. Employing a research-through-design approach, the study proposes a design solution using visualization and digital storytelling to document patients’ and families’ experiences and emotions, as well as their interactions with healthcare professionals in the postnatal unit. By transforming selected observational data into animated stories, this approach has the potential to elicit empathy, stimulate stakeholder engagement, and serve as a practical training tool for clinicians. This work was conducted as part of a broader study that aims to contribute to the existing knowledge base by advancing our understanding of stakeholder needs in birthing facilities and through postpartum discharge. This study primarily focuses on strategies for the development of digital stories and summarizes the factors that contributed to the production of digital stories within the context of sensitive data. It may serve as a valuable resource for students, researchers and practitioners interested in utilizing digital stories to encourage discussions, education and ultimately to enhance systems of health care for respect, equity and support.

This paper aims to develop a sensory methodological framework to explore older user's landscape experience. Applying empirical experience in Australian aged-care facilities, it addresses a methodological gap in the current literature to help move beyond the current taken-for-granted approaches such as interviews, cognitive mapping, behavioural observation and visual methods. We propose a more holistic method which enables the exploration of older people's in situ environmental experience. The multisensory framework we propose here is based on the first author's doctoral fieldwork experience that took place in two aged-care facilities in Brisbane, Australia. Findings suggest this framework facilitates an understanding of users’ olfactory, auditory and visual responses to the physical environment, and promotes a deeper engagement with the landscape. We argue that this is essential to promoting good landscape design which genuinely connects with older people's needs.

This article describes a path to addressing the discomfort that I and many of my braver colleagues have had, when putting words into the mouths and heads of prehistoric actors, knowing that these words say more about us than they do about prehistory. Yet without such speech, how are we archaeologists and the broader public to imagine the intangibles of the deep past (emotions, affect, gender, senses)? Moreover, such words create a misleading certainty that conceals the ambiguities of the archaeological data. Are there alternative options to verbal and vocal clarity when creating imagined fictive narratives about the past? With inspiration from composer Györgi Ligeti, from linguists and experimental psychologists, and from ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) performers, I explore the emotive power of vocal non-verbal interjections and utterances that have more universality and less cultural baggage, using them in three diverse re-mediations of digital media from three prehistoric archaeological contexts in Europe and Anatolia.

Drawing upon research on narrative and speech styles and on digital and multimodal communication, the author proposes multimodal narrative discourse analysis (MNDA) with associated pedagogical and analytical procedures to teach and study storytelling. The second language (L2) students first participated in multimodal narrative simulations in the virtual world of Second Life. The university students then presented, evaluated, and revised stories in both face-to-face and digital contexts through multiple modalities and technologies. MNDA further provided tools and methods for analyzing the students’ discursive processes and agentive experiences of L2 storytelling. The results of MNDA showed that the proper use of narrative elements, discourse structures, and stylistic devices, as well as bodily, visual, and video resources, assisted the students in developing multimodal designs and storytelling styles. This technology-mediated discourse approach to L2 storytelling suggests the importance of teaching and researching broader narrative contexts and activities other than simply elocution in multimodal communicative activities.

Digital storytelling provides older adults with an opportunity to become digital producers, connect with others through story and explore their life history. The authors report on the results of a digital storytelling project for older adults. The study investigated the experiences and perceived benefits of older adults who created digital stories during a ten-week course and explored the reactions of story viewers to the digital stories they viewed during a special sharing event. Eighty-eight older adult participants in Metro Vancouver who attended one of 13 courses offered were included in the study. Most of the participants were female and over half were immigrants. Results from the focus group interviews demonstrated a rich array of reported social and emotional benefits experienced through the process of creating a digital story within the course. Three main themes emerged: social connectedness through shared experience and story, reminiscence and reflecting on life, and creating a legacy. Viewers who attended a ‘Sharing Our Stories’ event reported that the stories were meaningful, well constructed and invoked a range of emotions. The researchers conclude that digital storytelling may help digital storytellers increase connectedness to others and to self. Additionally, this connectedness may extend over time through the process of examining the past to create a digital story that can serve as a legacy to connect to future generations.