Digital Storytelling from scratch? Welcome to ARU Town

by Andrea Kocsis on May 8, 2024

It's like the start of a lousy whodunnit: 50 tense people from different backgrounds who do not necessarily want to be there but must be locked together. This is how the mandatory Research Communications class I randomly found myself leading and building from scratch started. How did I do?

A massive group of third-year students in their last term before graduation from History, Philosophy, Politics, Linguistics, and Sociology, with no explicit affinity for digital or storytelling, were staring back at me on a Monday morning with slight pity and more annoyance. It’s nice to win from here. But we eventually got there, and together, during the course of 12 weeks, we created ARU HiPPS Town. Come on in!

ARU HiPPS Town is a virtual settlement, optimised for mobile browsers, where you can enter the Town Hall, the Hospital, the Church, the School, the Museum, the Library, and the Funfair to discover various stories told creatively.

For example, why don’t you find yourself diving into the interactive long-read about Kipling and identity? If an IRL museum has already expressed interest in displaying it, it’s better to check it out. Or you still can’t really comprehend why people with Anxiety are whining? Give a chance to this role-playing game, and hopefully you will see the world through different lenses. Do you want something punchy but short? Then, read this one on microaggression at Universities.

I embraced the idea that there is no boring dissertation, just a boring way to talk about it. During the Research Communications class, the ARU HiPPS Town citizens learnt to identify their message, audience, and the most suitable formats to tell their stories.  Among the solutions, you can find StoryMaps, Twine games, interactive stories, social media campaigns, and infographics exploring research from the field of Social Sciences.

I won’t lie. It was a challenge to teach technical skills to large groups, do a bit of dissertation supervision here and there, and explain the principles of storytelling while doing so. But it worked out well for those who decided to stick around. The end results are super creative, and some of my students decided to pick coding up after playing with Twine.

They also challenged me as both a lecturer and web developer. As a reference, here is the—otherwise super original—wireframe they came up with.

The wireframe as imagined by the students

While realising it, I cried JavaScript lines instead of tears. What do you think about the results? Enter ARU HiPPS Town!