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Part IV. Storytelling and Learning in the 21" Century ] 135
DST were better retained and easier to recall from memory. Teachers attributed
the positive effects on cognitive skills to several factors, which were: (1) the
exploration of the environment was not done randomly but according to
steps they had planned in advance; (2) students interviewed a family member
or expert in a targeted way, focusing on elements that fit into their digital
story and listening actively to the interviewees; (3) students paid attention
to the guality of the elaboration and worked in a planned way. Teachers
also considered the impact that DST had on students" emotional factors,
which provide significant support to their cognitive functioning. Students
motivation and interest in the subject matter increased as well as their social
and communication skills; digital literacy also improved significantly during
the process (Di Blas & Paolini, 2013).
Sadik (2008) found similar results in his action research. He found that
DST helped to develop intrinsic motivation in students, who were driven a
desire to engage in the creative experience. During the process of DST the
students had a flow experience characterized by concentrated immersion
and exclusion of the outside world. Xu et al. (2011) also confirmed that the
flow experience can be enhanced if the entire creative process takes place in
a virtual environment.
The motivation and engagement with the subject matter which arises
through the use of DST has been observed across several age groups. In an
experiment by Preradovic et al. (2016), 6-7-year-old Croatian pre-school
children developed basic mathematical skills over the period of one year
using storytelling. The members of the experimental group worked with
the DST method, which involved searching for materials online, arranging
images in Prezi, and then recording their voices. The control group prepared
mathematical presentations using physical tools, printed postcards, and glue.
The results showed that the complexity of the DST approach had a positive
effect on the motivation of the students in the experimental group and also on
their attention, computational and mathematical skills. Similar results were
obtained in a Taiwanese control group experiment (n = 117), in which the
effect of DST was tested in a science class. The motivation of the experimental
group was significantly higher, and a positive change was also observed in the
attitudes of the fifth-grade students toward learning the subject (Hung et al,
2012). A similar relationship between students’ motivation, attitudes toward
the subject and learning achievement was found by Kotluk and Kocakaya
(2017). Turkish upper secondary school students tried DST in a physics class,
a subject which students generally did not enjoy as much as others. After the
subject post-test, the students performed significantly better compared to
the control group and their own subject pre-tests.
In another study, pre-matriculation students (n = 110) used DST to make
films on specific topics in English as foreign language lessons. Their motivation
and interest in the subject increased and they considered DST to be important
and useful by the end of the process. The experimental group performed