Enhancing Student Learning and Engagement Using Digital Stories Colleen M. Fisher and Laurel Iverson Hitchcock Department of Social Work, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA ABSTRACT To prepare students for competent practice in increasingly technology-enabled settings, social work curricula must provide ample opportunities for developing digital literacy. Incorporating digital stories as course assignments ofer educa- tors one promising approach. Despite the fact that digital stories can provide a powerful teaching strategy and meaningful learn- ing experience for students, they have received little attention in the social work education literature. This study explored implementation of a digital story assignment in three social work courses and examined undergraduate and graduate stu- dents’ appraisals of the assignment and learning outcomes. Qualitative fndings indicated high satisfaction and learning associated with key social work competencies such as digital literacy, group work, and advocacy. Students valued the novel opportunity for creativity and collaboration, and were chal- lenged in positive ways to produce high quality work that could be shared with a public audience. Key challenges identi- fed by students included a steep technology learning curve, some technology resistance, and limitations associated with group projects (e.g., group dynamics). Overall, however, these exploratory fndings suggest that digital story assignments can ofer a timely and useful tool for social work educators to enhance engagement and learning, foster advocacy practice skills, and build digital literacies needed in the 21 st century practice landscape. KEYWORDS Social work education; digital literacy; digital storytelling; technology- mediated; information and communication technologies Storytelling has always been a vital part of social work practice, whether in the form of fact-driven, written narratives in incorporated case notes, persuasive reports, research articles or in therapeutic interventions as part of narrative practice (Hall, 2019; Kelley & Smith, 2017). Storytelling also has been central to social work’s advocacy efforts (Sage et al., 2018). As technologies have expanded, so too have storytelling methods. Digital storytelling can be broadly defined as the practice of using compu- ter-based tools to tell stories. Its outputs may vary widely, including info- graphics, audio stories, photo exhibits, short videos, or even curated collections of tweets or other social media posts (Sage et al., 2018). The term CONTACT Colleen M. Fisher cmfisher@uab.edu Department of Social Work, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1402 10 th Ave South, 3150 University Hall, Birmingham, AL 35294-1241 JOURNAL OF TEACHING IN SOCIAL WORK 2022, VOL. 42, NO. 4, 371–391 https://doi.org/10.1080/08841233.2022.2113492 © 2022 Colleen M. Fisher, and Laurel Iverson Hitchcock