Ed Tech Tuesday: StripDesigner

The landscape of education has been rapidly evolving, with online learning becoming increasingly prevalent. Educators now face the challenge of creating engaging and interactive online courses to capture and maintain students' attention. In this blog post, we introduce an innovative app called StripDesigner, which can be a game-changer for college online educators seeking to foster student engagement and participation.

StripDesigner is a versatile digital storytelling app that enables users to create comic strips, storyboards, and visual narratives. Originally developed as a tool for artists and storytellers, StripDesigner has found its place in the realm of education by facilitating creative expression and enhancing engagement within online courses.

Engaging Students with StripDesigner:

1. Visual Storytelling: Humans are wired to respond to stories, and visual narratives have a unique ability to captivate our attention. By incorporating StripDesigner into online courses, educators can encourage students to create their own visual stories related to course content. This not only stimulates creativity but also deepens their understanding and retention of the subject matter.

2. Active Learning: StripDesigner provides an interactive platform where students can actively participate in the learning process. Assigning tasks such as creating comic strips or storyboards based on course concepts can transform passive learners into active contributors. This approach encourages critical thinking, problem-solving, and the application of knowledge in a practical and engaging way.

3. Collaboration and Communication: StripDesigner offers collaborative features that allow students to work together on shared projects. By engaging in collaborative storytelling activities, students can develop teamwork skills, enhance communication, and learn to appreciate different perspectives. This fosters a sense of community within the online classroom, promoting a more immersive and inclusive learning environment.

4. Multimodal Learning: Online courses often rely heavily on text-based materials, which may not suit every student's learning style. With StripDesigner, educators can introduce a multimodal approach by incorporating visuals, text, and dialogue in the form of comic strips or storyboards. This appeals to a broader range of learners and facilitates information processing and knowledge retention.

5. Assessment and Reflection: StripDesigner can also be utilized as an assessment tool, allowing students to demonstrate their understanding of course content in a creative manner. By evaluating students' comic strips or storyboards, educators gain valuable insights into individual comprehension levels. Moreover, students can reflect on their own work and engage in self-assessment, fostering metacognitive skills.

Interested in seeing some examples of StripDesigner projects? Check some out HERE.

In the era of online education, engaging students in meaningful ways is paramount. StripDesigner provides a powerful tool for college online educators to transform their courses into interactive and captivating learning experiences. By incorporating visual storytelling, promoting active learning, encouraging collaboration, embracing multimodal approaches, and facilitating assessment and reflection, educators can leverage this app to enhance student engagement, participation, and overall learning outcomes.

So, if you're looking to inject creativity and interactivity into your courses, give StripDesigner a try. Empower your students to become storytellers, enabling them to explore and express their understanding of the course material in an engaging and memorable way.

I'd love to hear your ideas on how you might be able to use this tool in your own online course. Share them in The Online Educator Facebook Group!