StoryMaps: Faculty Use Cases

History

Professor Chandra Manning partnered with the National Park Service and the Organization of American Historians to create Escaping Slavery, Building Diverse Communities with her students.

Emma Trone (COL ‘23) made “It’s a Great Camp for Us All”: A Musical History of Midwest Chinese Family Camp in Professor Mireya Loza’s Public History class. Read more about the project.

Journalism

In Ann Oldenburg’s JOUR 3368-Media & Social Justice course, students focus on telling stories of those who are disenfranchised, marginalized or oppressed — the stories of those who are most vulnerable to injustice and inequality. In this way, journalism can help in addressing social issues in society. The seminar explores ways to report on social issues through discussion, research, interviewing, immersive journalism, solutions journalism and opinion writing. At the start of the course, students find a "community" to "immerse" themselves in for the semester. They are expected to get to know members of the community, and assignments are built around the community. As they report and write those assignments — an analytical piece about the community, a profile of someone in the community, an issue piece, a cultural piece and an education-focused piece, along with a final Op-Ed story about the community, they are building the StoryMap. The final result is a true "story" of the community, with multimedia elements including audio snippets from interviews, videos, photos and text, all created by the student and beautifully visually presented in a StoryMap. Noa Offman (COL ‘25) made “Adult crime, adult time,” the story of juvenile lifers in this class. Read more about the project.