Using Digital Storytelling as an Evaluation Tool to Communicate COVID-19 Research Efforts

Abstract Information: Digital storytelling is an innovative, arts-based approach that can be used by evaluators to communicate with a broad audience. Stories are shared in an electronic format, and they typically incorporate a variety of multimedia approaches including short videos, photos, maps, quotes, and data visuals that accompany limited text to share the story’s narrative. The Northern New England Clinical and Translational Research (NNE-CTR) initiative adopted this approach to highlight COVID-19 research efforts since the start of the pandemic. The evaluation team used a platform known as StoryMaps to create and share the digital story, highlighting local, regional, and national research efforts over the course of a three-year period. This session will discuss the step-by-step approach for identifying the content, prioritizing the areas to highlight, capturing videos and images, and ensuring the story was integrated and seamless. The final digital story will be shared with participants, and strategies for other evaluators to adopt this approach will be discussed. The presentation will wrap up with a summary of lessons learned from each stage in the process to help others interesting in exploring digital storytelling.

Relevance Statement: Digital storytelling is an emerging method for communicating evaluation findings, and it is one that will likely garner interest among evaluators. This approach may not be used due to lack of familiarity, cost, resources, or applicability. This session will provide an example of how one multi-year evaluation used this approach to tell the story of how the initiative addressed a topic area over the past three years using information from project descriptions, presentations, video clips, and images.