Goals and focus
The broad goals of the ELD project are to use digital storytelling as a tool to:
- Reveal and create, overlapping, multilayered connections between people, practices and the urban environment
- Connect classroom and community through technology
- Advance interdisciplinary awareness and technological literacy
To achieve these broad goals the ELD project focuses on three specific areas which include:
- Detroit’s ethnic histories
- Undergraduate (and graduate) education at WSU
- Partnerships with Detroit organizations and local community
ELD focuses on Detroit’s ethnic histories by creating digital stories tracing the roots and following the routes of various ethnic groups that helped build the city of Detroit. To this end, ELD is developing a digital portal that will inform students, scholars and community members about the cultural, linguistics, and historical background of different landmarks in Detroit. Our digital portal will use augmented reality technology that allows users to interact with points of interest within a real-world environment via images, audio, and video displayed on a screen. For instance, users could hold up a tablet or smartphone at a historical landmark, monument, or building in Detroit and see a historical image of the building superimposed on their view of the building in real-time.
As a pedagogical tool, ELD’s digital storytelling platform and its developmental process will be integrated into the coursework of several existing WSU courses taught by the project’s co-directors. In addition to using the portal in existing courses, we also plan to create an upper-level undergraduate/graduate interdisciplinary humanities course at WSU on storytelling through digital media. Ultimately, we will create an online course on storytelling, possibly a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), open to the general public beyond WSU.
An advisory board and connections with local and national organizations with interests in public history, and local community organizations representing religious, cultural and ethnic groups will be formed.
Project duration and timeline
The ELD project’s initial duration of 18 months (June 2014 through Dec 2015) has been extended until November 2016. Our short-term goals, to be completed by the end of the project, including creating 20 to 25 digital stories about historic sites in Detroit and on WSU’s campus and developing ELD as a teaching tool. Our medium-term goals, after the end of the project, include creating an upper-level undergraduate/graduate interdisciplinary humanities course at WSU on storytelling through digital media. Our long-term goals, which are three to four years post-grant, include creating an online course on storytelling, possibly a MOOC.
Product dissemination
Our product dissemination plans include showcasing through our website and other means the 20 to 25 stories about sites in Detroit and on the WSU campus, integration of ELD into teaching, enhancing the ELD website and its social media presence, conference presentations and publications, and conducting WSU workshops on digital storytelling for scholars and students pursuing aligned projects.
Grants
ELD has been awarded a number of grants, including two WSU Humanities Center Working Group grants (October 2012; 2013), a WSU Foreign Language Technology Center (FLTC) Mini-Grant (summer 2013) and a Digital Humanities Start-up Grant (Level 2) (March 2014) from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). For a broader context on how these grants helped shape the development of the ELD project, read the ELD story.