Social Media Integration with Nonlinear Educational Storytelling Application

An educational computer game was created in a research project where new teaching methods for information technology were developed. The game development project was a co-creative process involving both skilled information technology students and students with low information technology skills. Students with low information technology skills participated in the game development by writing gamified nonlinear stories that were integrated into the 3d game. Nonlinear stories are special type of stories where hyperlinks are used to connect parts of the story. Special software is often used to write nonlinear stories to make hyperlinking easier and to enable organizing the storyline structure. Here we use an open source storytelling software Twine. Nonlinear stories written with Twine were collected in a pilot study. These stories and the process of writing nonlinear stories were analyzed. It was noted that the software is more suitable for single users than collaborative work. Lack of easy-to-use options for sharing and remixing stories and difficulty in collaboration in story writing affected negatively to classroom activities. Social media integration for the story writing tool were designed and implemented to improve the potential for classroom adoption. Possible future use of the method is discussed.