The Impact on Nursing Students of Creating Audiovisual Material through Digital Storytelling as a Teaching Method

Abstract

The creation of videos in teaching has a high educational potential and is a challenge that can motivate students. There is little evidence on the use of this method when applied to the creation of digital stories. Thus, the aim of this study was to measure student satisfaction with the creation of audiovisual material through digital storytelling, measure its usefulness, and evaluate its impact on their motivation to study the subject. As a secondary objective, we intended to determine the influence of this learning experience on raising awareness of society toward mental illnesses by measuring the impact by the number of views on social networks. A cross-sectional descriptive study design was used. The participants were 90 third-year nursing students enrolled in the subject “Psychiatric Nursing”. The students created eight themed videos (depression, suicide, anxiety, anorexia, mobile phone addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, drug addiction, schizophrenia). The students were then asked to complete an ad hoc questionnaire on the matter. A total of 90% of the nursing students thought that creating the videos improved the acquisition of nursing knowledge, 91.2% replied that they would like to use the method in other subjects on the degree in nursing syllabus, and 67.8% thought that their clinical skills improved after using narrated digital stories to create videos. Students acknowledged that this training activity helped them feel better prepared and helped them better understand the subject. They believe that this teaching technique is more stimulating and more enjoyable than the conventional system, giving them more motivation to study the subject. Students acknowledge that the experience gained from this initiative has helped them feel better prepared and helped them better understand the subject, and they think that it will be a useful resource in the future as it has improved the process of the creation of audiovisual material through digital storytelling.