Digitally enhanced learning through collaborative filmmaking and storytelling for sustainable solutions

A challenge in the field of education for sustainable development (ESD) is to develop learning formats and settings that take into account the changing learning styles of young people and are able to effectively initiate learning processes. Filmmaking is one such pedagogical approach; the potential of active participation in film projects to stimulate learning has been researched and documented more intensively in recent years but has so far hardly diffused into the practice of ESD. This chapter reports on a workshop which began with a teaching experience wherein students in their first semester were trained to create short films conceived in the narrative format of storytelling on their own mobile devices. Since then, the method has been tested in various environments within schools, universities and technical colleges. By combining research-based learning and aesthetic practice, students use their mobile phones to investigate the climate crisis and its social consequences to develop and disseminate effective approaches to action in film. The experience of using filmmaking in this way has indicated the potential of the approach for ESD in terms of facilitating cognitive competencies and comprehensive personal development as well as the development of change agency and chairpersonship