A CULTURE OF SHARING
A Look at Identity Development Through the Creation and Presentation
of Digital Media Projects
Caitlin Kennedy Martin, Brigid Barron
Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning, Stanford University, Stanford, California, U.S.A.
Kimberly Austin, Nichole Pinkard
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, U.S.A.
Keywords: Identity, Project-based learning, Technological fluency, Media design, Case study.
Abstract: We share two longitudinal case studies of thirteen-year-old students who were part of a design intervention
focusing on media production and technological fluency, tracking how project production and presentation
developed students’ sense of themselves and their reputation within the community. Practices supporting
positive academic and creative identity development are highlighted.
1 INTRODUCTION
We believe that there is a need for theory that
specifies practices to support not only the
development of interest in learning (Hidi &
Renninger, 2006) but positive academic and creative
identities, as well. In this paper we look at youth
production and presentation within a technology and
media rich school environment and how
opportunities and affordances within the
environment influenced student identity
development. Our specific research questions
include: (1) How does presentation and sharing of
work support students’ identity development as they
take on meaningful roles in production, access
domain knowledge, share and receive community
attention? (2) What practices within the environment
support the development of different positive
identities, including that of new media creator?
Recent theoretical perspectives on identity
development seek to move beyond static and
singular conceptions of identity, typically cast in
terms of demographic variables such as gender, age
and ethnicity. Penuel & Wertsch (1995) argue that
identity formation involves an encounter between
cultural resources for identity and individual choices
with respect to particular commitments. Gee (2000)
distinguishes nature identity, institutional identity,
discourse identity, and affinity identity and argues
that identity can shift across contexts or time. Nasir
& Saxe (2003) provide an analytical approach that
helps us understand how the social environment
positions students as particular types of community
members.
Developing, presenting and sharing technology
projects and experiences within a collaborative
community of people with similar interests/ideas is
recognized as one way for youth to develop a sense
of their own identity, role, and position within the
new media culture. In his 2006 position paper,
Henry Jenkins addresses the importance of sharing
as part of a digital community, maintaining that the
new definition of technological fluency involves
youth taking part at various levels in continuous and
widening cultures of technology and media creation
and involvement. Examples of this type of
participatory culture range from simply being a part
of an online community, to producing new media
projects, to collaboratively developing and sharing
new media, goals, and messages. Other researchers
have noted the potential of participation in these
types of environments as a way for youth to develop
a sense of their role within the community. Peppler
and Kafai (2007) documented youth who
participated in a Community Technology Centre
gaining new understandings of what it means to be a
designer, including choice of appropriate tools,
167
Kennedy Martin C., Barron B., Austin K. and Pinkard N. (2009).
A CULTURE OF SHARING - A Look at Identity Development Through the Creation and Presentation of Digital Media Projects.
In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 167-174
DOI: 10.5220/0001978101670174
Copyright
c
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finding resources, critiquing their own work and that
of others, getting feedback, and revising.
In our analysis, we build on these theoretical and
methodological insights in the service of advancing
our understanding of how a school-based technology
learning environment supports identity formation as
authors, designers, and creative new media artists
and critics.
1.1 Context and Methods
Data collection takes place at Renaissance Academy,
a middle school serving approximately140 students
grades sixth through eighth (i.e., ages 11 to 14 years)
in a large, urban area in the Midwest region of the
United States. The school has a partnership with the
Digital Youth Network (DYN), an organization
intended to develop students’ “new media literacy,”
(Pinkard et al., 2008). Opportunities for presentation
are considered important and are built into the
program. The DYN programmatic structure contains
formal and informal learning spaces, including: (1)
mandatory weekly media arts classes offered during
the school day; (2) eight weekly after school clubs
called “pods,” including digital design, digital
music, digital radio, digital video, digital queendom
(a girl’s only space), spoken word, video game
design, and robotics; (3) weekly after school forums;
(4) Remix World, an online social networking site
that complements face-to-face participation by
creating additional spaces for project development,
presentation, and critique; and (5) unstructured time
to use the program’s production tools. While all
students attended yearlong media arts classes, the
other DYN components were voluntary.
Approximately 50 students regularly attended at
least one after school pod each week.
Data collection occurred during two academic
school years, 2006-07 and 2007-08. We are in the
final year of a three-year study documenting the
learning and development of nine focal case students
within
DYN who began sixth grade in the fall of 2006.
We use both interview and field note data to create
portraits of learning about technology across time and
setting in a genre that has been called technobiography
in recent work (Henwood, Kennedy, & Miller, 2001).
1.1.1 Interviews
Interviews with students at multiple time periods and
adult teachers and DYN coordinators were recorded
and transcribed.
Learning Ecologies Interview. A semi-structured
interview protocol was developed to obtain detail on
how computers were used at home, school, with
peers, on-line, and through community based
contexts. There were three main sections of the
interview: (1) How students used and learn about
technologies in the contexts of home, school,
friend’s houses, and community locations; (2) how
students see themselves in relation to new
technologies; and (3) interests and future plans. Each
interview was conducted by one interviewer with
one student in a private room and was recorded with
both a digital audio recorder and a video camera
when possible. Interviews varied in length from 30
minutes to over an hour. All case learners were
interviewed in December of their sixth grade year.
Artefact-based Interview. This semi-structured
interview was designed to provide a focused look at
the projects students are working on and obtain an
account from the learner’s perspective of how they
learned, how the projects came to occur (pathway),
and the opportunities for fluency building within
different projects. Questions primarily focused on
their stories of creation and learning. Two
researchers interviewed each student in a private
room at school with student work displayed on their
laptops. Interviews lasted approximately one hour
and were video-recorded with the camera focused on
the screen and keyboard to capture the visual
referent of the interviewee. All case learners were
interviewed at the end of sixth and seventh grade.
Teacher and DYN Coordinator Interviews.
During an offsite professional development
workshop, eight teachers and coordinators
participated in three 15-30 minute semi-structured
interviews about a case learner. Prompts were
designed to elicit adult perceptions of the cases as
learners, producers/creators, collaborators, and
members of the DYN community. All interviews
were audio-recorded.
1.1.2 Field Notes
Three researchers observed more than 195 hours of
the 45-minute classes and 2-hour after school
sessions. Researchers focused on: (1) instructional
delivery, (2) opportunities for production and
presentation, and (3) adult and youth interactions
around instruction and creation. While in the field,
researchers prompted participants to explain
decision-making related to teaching and production.
We recorded events as descriptive “episodes” in
effort to maintain the real-time sequencing of events
(Emerson, Fretz & Shaw, 1995). Lastly, researchers
collected audio and video recordings as well as
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Figure 1: Technobiographical timeline representation for Maurice, with key.
artefacts. Researchers conducted line-by-line coding
(Emerson, Fretz and Shaw, 1995) of these notes
using broad categories. The third author reviewed
the application of these codes in order to refine the
schema. Using this revised coding plan, the notes
were re-examined and coded as event segments
whereby changes in group membership, instructional
format, locations, discontinuity of time, and
instructional topics of materials formed the frame for
applying codes (Stodolosky 1988). The researchers
used the output from this coding to identify patterns
in student identity develop within the learning
context.
2 RESULTS
In the DYN classes and pods, coordinators used a
project-based approach to encourage the acquisition
of digital literacy skills. Project work often involved
students taking on specific design and production
roles. In DYN during-school classes, students were
sometimes assigned roles or were allowed to choose
from a list of responsibilities needed to complete the
assigned project work. This format supports student
identity development within a set of defined new
media production roles. The more informal DYN
spaces, including the after school pods and the remix
world online social networking site, provided
opportunities for students to independently pursue
their own projects and come up with new and
innovative roles for themselves. Across classes,
pods, and online spaces, the public sphere of
presentation motivates creation but also fosters
identity emergence and saliency via the acts of
invitation, performance and discussion, and the
recognition through competition and evaluation.
Below we share two cases that highlight identity
development within the context of project creation
and presentation in DYN. More generally we look at
how this environment and certain practices within it
contribute to or detract from the positioning of
students as creative media producers.
2.1 The Social Change Activist
Maurice was an outspoken student in the DYN
community who used his digital media expertise to
share messages and ideas, which frequently involved
African American history and pride. He participated
in the radio and music pods in sixth grade and the
video and radio pods in seventh grade. His timeline
reflects his growing technology skill set and project
portfolio (see figure 1). By the end of seventh grade
Maurice had developed at least six substantial video
projects, five music projects, three radio packages
(podcasts), and an online social networking website
titled wechange. Maurice saw himself as a unique
individual who was capable with technology and by
the end of seventh grade most of the DYN
community seemed to agree. DYN coordinators
referred to him as “innovative” and “creative” and
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his peers often looked to him for help. His project
work and visibility were instrumental in his personal
identity development and the formation of his
reputation within the larger community.
2.1.1 Visibility of Self in Project Production
One way that Maurice shaped his identity as a
producer and creator was to clearly document his
roles. His video work often included a credits
section listing his contributions, such as “Video
director” and “Visuals director.” He consistently
used a radio DJ name for his podcasts in the radio
pod. The “About me” section of his wechange social
networking site profile read simply, “I am the
Creator of this network.” When asked about the
roles he played in the site development, he
responded:
“I saw myself a lot of different ways as an
inventor and as a student activist…I was making
my dreams, my observations and what I talked
about more then just a dream and observation
when I talked about. I took action and I actually
put it, put what I was thinking about into motion
…Well, before I created this website I was
student activist and it’s always been my dream
especially for the future to be a student, a social
activist. And so I saw when I made this
website…it was a way of social activism to get
people to stand up to what they believed in to
talk about it, to discuss it, and to come
together.”
Another manifestation of his visibility within
projects that has helped Maurice to develop a
recognizable identity within the DYN community is
his use of representations of himself in his work. In
his video project entitled Black Pride, one fifth of
the movie is footage of Maurice’s face as he reads a
poem. On his wechange social networking site, he
embedded a promotional video featuring himself in
multiple roles, that of the “nerd” who uses a popular
social networking site and that of the “cool guy”
who uses Maurice’s site. When the radio pod
assignment was to create a movie about an
“American Rebel,” Maurice chose himself and
included his story, his voice, and photos of himself
throughout the video.
“So I started the school recess movement and I
guess that would have made me an American
rebel because I was actually, I was standing
against the laws at my school and I decided that
I wanted to change something.”
2.1.2 Visibility of Project Work
Maurice was also very successful getting his work
viewed by a relatively large audience within the
DYN community; he frequently showcased his work
through formal and informal live performances in
class, pods and online spaces. Online, he utilized
both the DYN remix world site and his own
wechange site. On remix world, he began and/or
contributed to 54 discussions. Some of his posts are
political musings, others are related to cultural
events or styles, and still others are his own written
work, including poems. He posted his Black Pride
video project on his profile page and was a member
of four groups. On wechange, he started seven
discussions and posted two of his own video
projects, Black Pride on his profile page and the
promotional video for the wechange site in the
“about us” section. His online participation in both
Web spaces allowed Maurice to show his work,
receive feedback on it, and comment on and critique
the discussion posts and work of others in the
community. He also cross-referenced his profile and
project visibility, potentially widening the audiences
for his work: On remix world his screen name is the
title of his own social networking site, “wechange”,
and there are links from each site profile page to the
other.
2.1.3 Adult Positioning of Student and Work
A final important factor contributing to the visibility
of Maurice’s project work and the development of
his own identity along with community recognition
of this identity was the frequent positive positioning
of his role and his work by DYN coordinators.
Maurice was sometimes considered “too academic”
or a “know-it-all” by his peers but the DYN
coordinators purposefully worked to change this
perception, encouraging students to see Maurice as
someone who could help them.
“I think the kids see [Maurice] as socially
awkward…I think he’s able to balance that with
some students, but other students are like,
‘Maurice is saying something smart again…’
For me as a mentor when I see those situations
happening it’s like, ‘No, let him speak because
you can learn from him.’”
DYN coordinators helped to validate Maurice’s
role as a media creator by becoming members of his
wechange site. They posted his project work on
remix world, including three interviews Maurice
conducted with adults (a teacher from the school, a
game designer, and a community centre program
leader) as part of the radio pod. They also replied to
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Figure 2: Technobiographical timeline representation for Renee.
his online discussions, commented on his projects,
and provided links to his work. A comment from a
DYN coordinator about one of Maurice’s video
interviews read:
“Very specific and focused questions that
prompted substantive answers from [the
interviewee]! Mistakes we see in a lot of our
interviews are student's asking very short vague
questions, which end up getting short vague
answers unfortunately. You’ve set a good
standard for everyone to keep up between this
and the [game designer interview] piece!”
With the help of DYN coordinators and his own
inclinations toward project production and
presentation, Maurice’s public role as an engaged
expert within the community resulted in new
opportunities for learning. Two DYN coordinators
used Maurice in classes and the after school pods as
an informal assistant both for technical and media
literacy topics. He was also asked to be part of a
student design team to plan elements of a new
building to house their school. These new
opportunities have the potential to strengthen his
own identity as an expert and expand the recognition
of him as an expert to a wider community.
2.2 The Personal Explorer
Renee began middle school without much computer
experience beyond basic word processing but
participated in a range of in school and after school
technology learning opportunities through DYN (see
figure 2). During sixth grade, she participated in the
video pod, the design pod, and the video game pod,
while in seventh grade she participated in the design
pod and the digital queendom pod. In sixth grade,
though Renee had produced and edited a 10-minute
movie about her cousins independently on her own
time, and created a multi-page Web site about her
work, her design interests and talents were not
recognized within the wider DYN community.
Coordinators spoke of her consistent participation
and ability to complete her projects but described
her as “very quiet” and an “average” student. By the
end of her second year in the program Renee’s
identification as a designer evolved and her work
was more visible and widely recognized through her
participation in remix world, the online DYN social
networking site.
2.2.1 Hesitancy to Label Self in Defined
Role
Though Renee created a number of projects across a
range of media including computer games, digital
videos, page layout designs, and Web sites, she was
hesitant to label herself as an expert and often did
not clearly identify her own role in production.
Though her collaborative projects, such as a video
commercial for a line of clothing, sometimes
featured her in an acting role, there are no credits to
identify the roles she played in the development of
the project artefact. When asked about roles she
played in collaborative project work, she was vague
about her particular responsibilities or used “we”
instead of “I” to describe her learning and creating in
DYN programs.
When talking about her knowledge and her own
work she sometimes included a disclaimer. “I’m the
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person for teaching people how to use it…If they
don’t know how to use something, I do – probably.”
Despite having a fully designed profile page on
remix world, with an artistic background image, 28
posts about a range of topics, membership to three
groups, her own video work, and background music,
she warns the interviewer about its incompleteness.
“I actually don’t have that much made, but I
post like discussions and reply to a lot of
things.”
2.2.2 Selective about Shared Work
Renee was not driven to share her technology
project work with a wide audience, and her projects
were often left unpublished. DYN coordinators had
little knowledge of projects she pursued outside of
formal assignments. Though she regularly presented
in classes and pods when it was part of the particular
assignment, she was hesitant to show her work to
outside audiences. One coordinator recounts:
“When I pulled [Renee] for the presentation for
the lady that was coming around and looking
from outside the school, she told me that she
was uncomfortable in talking about what she
was doing. And I kind of joked with her like,
‘You like to do all the work but you don’t want
anyone to see you?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, I
really don’t want to talk about it all.’”
When Renee chose her own themes, her projects
are often reflections on and explorations of her own
identity, including a still-image movie with voice
over entitled “Princess” about her likes and dislikes.
Her content about herself and her family may have
been less given to wide distribution than projects
with messages specifically designed for the public,
like many of those by Maurice.
“Like well I didn’t post when I did my cousins’
film. I didn’t post it on remix world because I
don’t know, but I just didn’t post it for a lot of
people to see.”
2.2.3 Development of New Roles
Despite her disinclination to present work broadly or
position herself in the community in terms of her
technological project work and skill set, Renee
began to find her own way of participating and
defined new roles in the community for herself.
When she collaborated with a peer who did not
participate in the after school technology pods,
Renee took on the role of “teacher.” Within this
experience, she was able to see herself as someone
with more expert knowledge:
“Well she like found the music, found the
special effects. She edited some of it, but I did
most of it because I knew how to do it
better…Well like I was under – well, I just know
how to do it. So I just taught her. She helped
out. I know somebody has to teach her to learn”
At the end of seventh grade, Renee formed a
design production group with a peer in the design
pod. This labelled and named group was a step
toward branding her work and gaining recognition,
perhaps without having to draw attention to herself
as an individual.
“But this is for design class and we have a
company. So me and my partner, we chose this
because we thought it was unique like a Twilight
Zone has a lot of things that you want to see. So
like we’re going to be making like CD albums,
posters, and stuff light that…Like [Twilight
Zone] is just the name, like people they will
remember us. Okay, they’re unique they do stuff
that’s crazy, good.”
2.2.4 Use of Online Spaces for Presentation
In seventh grade Renee used remix world to show
carefully selected pieces and thoughts within the
community, valuing the feedback for her continued
revisions and production work.
“I like people to see it and critique like how I –
like critique the things like what needs to be
done to it. What can I change?...because it helps
like to make it better. It helps me to make the
best I do better.”
Renee’s discussions, posts, and video work
prompted encouraging responses from the program
coordinators. For her poem post she received
comments from two DYN coordinators, both
complimenting her work and suggesting ideas for
further innovations: “i love your poem. i would like
to see the other ways you can make this look (like a
comic life or short imovie).” One discussion she
began about what to do about violence in schools
prompted three DYN coordinators to reply in ways
that highlighted Renee’s unique position in the
community, including:
“Speaking of trendsetter...How many girls is
making beats like that. You need to slide some of
that over to the spoken word or video for
soundtracks. This year was just a start. Can't
wait to see how you continue to grow your
skills.”
The digital queendom pod coordinator posted a
video by a collaborative group including Renee, an
advertisement for a line of clothing. Given Renee’s
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disinclination to “show off” in person, the online
space may have offered both Renee and the
coordinators a more comfortable way to publicly
showcase her skills and her work.
Though the DYN community may not have
immediately recognized Renee’s entire technology
story, she was growing as a media artist, taking on
roles of producer, videographer, and designer both
with her independent and group work. Renee took
advantage of the opportunities offered through
DYN, and found a way to pursue her own topics and
explore some new roles as a media designer.
3 DISCUSSION
The promise of project development, from concept
to presentation, is clear. From the case learner
stories, we find that artefact production can: (1)
build reputations of students as particular kinds of
participants in the eyes of the community; and (2)
lead to a sense of self as an author, artist, inventor,
creator, or teacher.
These points are impacted by the degree to
which students are participating in the larger
community and sharing their work. Students at
Renaissance Academy who chose not to participate
in the voluntary aspects of DYN were less likely to
evidence identity growth and development as a new
media creator. Though both case students in this
paper developed their skills through formal classes
and pods and followed their own interests to learn
more by playing around with tools and creating their
own interest-driven projects, the degree to which
they shared their new knowledge and were
recognized for their accomplishments differed.
Renee’s initial preference for creating personal
rather than public projects highlights the importance
of attending to engagement in learning across
settings of home, school, and other informal
community spaces (Barron, 2006). Though her
personal projects were less visible to mentors and
peers, they were important learning opportunities
that provided grounding for her later more public
efforts.
Our findings highlight a number of practices
within the DYN environment that impacted
participation, sharing of work, and positive identity
development, including (1) providing multiple
opportunities and spaces for showcasing work, (2)
identifying and labelling clear roles in project
production, (3) encouraging the development of new
roles and practices within the community, and (4)
explicitly positioning student contributions as
valuable.
We believe that the intentional design of learning
environments that attend to identity development
may be productive and more generative than
curriculum alone. The practices identified here may
be informative for those interested in designing such
environments to ensure that despite individual
tendencies or dispositions, all students have
opportunities for participation and growth.
Additionally, although our research effort was
situated in a technology and new media program,
these practices are not intrinsically linked to the
subject itself. Instead, we believe that they can be
adapted for use in many different kinds of project-
based learning environments.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been made possible by a grant from
the John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation.
The authors would like to acknowledge all members
of the research team in Chicago, IL and Stanford,
CA, including Dr. Kimberly Gomez and graduate
students Maryanna Rogers, Jolene Zywica,
Kimberly Richards, Lori Takeuchi, and Daniel
Stringer for their contributions. We also thank the
DYN coordinators, students, and parents who
contributed their time to the case study development.
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