Digital Storytelling as a Gateway to Computer Science

Computer science departments continually look for ways to make computer science more relevant to a wider population of students, to attract more students to the major and combat declining enrollments. This article describes the initial offering of a digital storytelling course within a computer science department at a small liberal arts college. The course was offered as a freshman seminar during the fall of 2006 to a group of thirteen students of widely varying technical backgrounds. Students explored elements of effective storytelling within the context of several genres: text, images, video, and computer programming. We discuss how the course utilized elements of storytelling to introduce key computer science concepts and to foster critical thinking. We dissect what activities worked especially well and how the instructor plans on evolving the course in the future, as well as the benefits and limitations to offering such a course within the context of a freshman seminar.