Creating Stories

The creating digital case stories section is designed to provide relevant resources to assist you with the various stages of creating a digital case story.

• Acceptance Criteria for New Stories
• Case Story Structure
• Case Story Timeline
• Case Story Production Guideline
• Guide to Writing a Case Story Synopsis
• Video Editing Guide
• Faculty Developers' Feedback on Use
• Additional Resources
  

Creating Stories

Acceptance Criteria for New Stories

Do you want to add a case story to MERLOT ELIXR's website? If so, the ELIXR team has established acceptance criteria. Read more about the criteria and review process.

Case Story Structure

The elements of each case should have some consistency to support easy consumption by the user. Within this case story structure, the uniqueness of your story will still come through via your personal voice as story teller and the personal impact for you and your students, as well as engaging visual examples from your course.

You can use this default Case Story Structure as is, or you can work with your local digital media specialists to adapt the default structure to your needs.

The current default Case Story Structure has five parts:

1. The Trailer is a 1 minute or less thumbnail of your case story designed to quickly give the viewer an understanding of the content and drama of the case.
2. The Story - is your story about why you adopted the practice that is the subject of the case, what it is that you do differently now, how the students are responding to what they and you are doing, and what evidence you have, if any, that it is making a difference in student learning.
3. Personal Reflections This is your personal reflection – video and text – on what making this change in your teaching has meant to you.
4. More on this story - The elements here will vary depending on the unique parts of your story that are worth emphasizing including a visit to a lab where students are at work, syllabus, sample questions, assignments, links and examples of student achievement.
5. Instructor's Guide - This is where tips and tricks and the expertise of others who have used this technique are brought together so that the reader who wants to dive deeper into understanding the technique, and maybe even other techniques that support it, can be learned.

Case Story Timeline

This document visually summarizes the steps in creating a Digital Case Story.

Case Story Production Guideline

This document outlines the mutli-step process of creating Digital Case Story and includes information on story development, filming, and post-production.

Guide to Writing a Case Story Synopsis

This resource helps case story builders create a written summary of the story points.

Video Editing Guide

This section is intended to share the process we have developed for editing video for ELIXR case stories and the lessons we've learned during that process.

Faculty Developers’ Feedback on Use

This document summarizes useful information for case designers on how faculty developers are using digital case stories and what they prefer as far as length of clips, text, and viewpoint of the story.

Additional Resources

The following aids provide more detail on particular steps:

• Request a Pachyderm Account
• Guides for Authors and Editors of ELIXR Case Story
• Pachyderm Webinars

  Listen to the audio and see PowerPoints from recent training events about Pachyderm, the multi-media authoring tool used to create ELIXR case stories.

  • December 4, 2007 – Using Pachyderm Templates to Construct your Case Story Recorded Session, including PowerPoint slides
  • May 6, 2009 – Pachyderm 2.1’s New Capabilities Recorded Session (Note: Forward through the blank part of the recording by starting the presentation at 1hr 40 mins.)
• Accessible Captioning
  • The "Steps to Captioning" outlines the steps to caption QuickTime and Flash videos for use in Pachyderm.
  • Automatic Sync is one company that provides transcriptions and captioned files in any format for a fee.