Digital Stories with the Online Collection of the V&A for Inquiry-Based Learning

Abstract

This article explores the use of digital storytelling in the classroom to frame inquiry-based learning with digital museum collections. It presents the final in a series of three interventions that were part of doctoral research that tested the DiStoMusInq framework. The intervention involved a class of 15-16-years-old students at an international school in Greece as part of their English Literature curriculum, and included eight lessons, two of which were virtual visits to the online collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, UK. The students worked in small groups to agree what questions they want to explore and used their own smartphones and laptops to look for answers in the online collection. They then collected material from the collection and/or took inspiration from the collection to create their own material, and used these to produce video stories that presented their answers. The findings suggest that inquiry-driven digital storytelling offers an effective way to leverage digital technologies in the classroom to engage students in purposeful, self-directed explorations of online museum collections. The processes of developing a digital story and inquiring the collections feed into one another, resulting in cultural heritage-inspired, historically informed creative student outputs and the development of student research skills.