Promoting Authentic Learning With Multimedia Research Projects

Low student engagement and artificial intelligence have everyone wondering about the future of teaching and learning, especially when it comes to assessment. Teachers are struggling to keep kids engaged, foster academic integrity, and design assignments that are meaningful and equitable. Desperate to prevent cheating, many schools have doubled down on in-class essays written by hand or invested thousands on cheat detection.

With a few small changes, we can build on what educators already do best to develop solutions that dissuade cheating by design and develop cultures of learning that help our students become intellectually agile and emotionally resilient. 

In my new book, Storytelling With Purpose: Digital Projects to Ignite Student Curiosity, and companion course, Uncheatable Assessments, I share classroom-tested solutions to these problems—student created, multimedia research projects—that provide engaging, authentic learning experiences and cheat-resistant assessments.

What are Multimedia Research Projects?

Multimedia research projects are student-created, nonfiction digital stories in which students apply the skills and concepts from our curriculum as they make authentic products for audiences beyond the classroom. Instead of worksheets, tests, or essays, multimedia projects require students to put concepts from our curriculum to use answering their specific questions about the world or solving challenges in our communities. 

Unlike traditional high-stakes assessments, multimedia projects invite students to prove their knowledge and literally show what they know. I like to think of multimedia projects as STEM for the humanities, since they allow students to create a product (the story) for an end user (the audience) that strives to solve a problem (understanding of a topic). 

Multimedia research projects can take a variety of forms, and they are flexible enough to use in every subject area and grade level. Annotated photographs, oral history projects, data visualizations, infographics, and digital books are just a few options.

Multimedia Projects Discourage Cheating

Let’s face it: If a kid really wants to cheat, they’ll find a way. So instead of spending time and energy policing students, we can design assignments that disincentivize the desire to cheat in the first place.

Rote, tedious assignments—and those that have no clear purpose beyond getting a grade—set the stage for cheating, and when every student is expected to have the exact same answer, we’ve set ourselves up for failure.

Multimedia story projects prevent cheating because they embrace originality, personal connection, and purpose. Each multimedia project is one of a kind, students have agency to explore an aspect of a topic in ways that resonate with them, and it’s created with the purpose of sharing with an authentic audience beyond the classroom.

How Multimedia Projects Elevate Learning

Multimedia projects aren’t a nice-to-have reward once the “real” learning is done. They’re a rigorous learning model that has been proven to be more effective than traditional teaching and learning strategies. Research shows, for example, that deeper understanding occurs when we have to explain—or teach—concepts to others.

Multimedia digital stories are a type of teaching, since they require students to clarify their thinking and explain concepts clearly, concisely, and accurately to others. Multimedia projects are also based on the inquiry process, one that researchers find to be more effective than direct instruction.

These project-based learning assignments are intrinsically motivating. Students care about the result, know their hard work will help others, and are given the agency and responsibility to do so, which thereby elevates the quality and integrity of their work.

The process of creating stories also helps students develop the mindset and workflow they need to thrive in the future, such as discovering how to give and receive feedback, understanding the importance of context, and, most important, embracing wonder and curiosity as a strength. 

Examples of Multimedia Research Projects for Inquiry

Recently, one of my journalism students addressed an intersection in our ­community where drivers consistently ran stop signs. Once the story was published on our social media accounts, local police took notice and placed an officer at the intersection to issue tickets. Who knows whose life was saved or bodily injury avoided because of this ­student’s work?

In this “intersection” project, curiosity and purpose drove the learning, not the threat of grades. My student set a goal to make a difference by solving what he thought was a real problem through learning and sharing knowledge. And for these reasons, he had no ­motivation to cheat. 

With traditional strategies, the topic of pedestrian safety might have been assessed in a report, a class presentation, or even a test, all of which are “cheatable” (with or without the use of ChatGPT) and may demotivate students who struggle with writing, public speaking, or exams. Instead, the same curriculum was addressed, but kids became excited about the topic because they had agency over their learning and knew that their hard work would be put to good use to help others. 

Digital Stories for Every Classroom

Multimedia story projects can be completed using a variety of media across content areas, and most are an easy pivot from assignments you already have. Explainer videos, for example, can be a direct replacement for class presentations or essays; others, like oral history projects (podcasts), provide unique opportunities to hone public speaking and writing skills. 

The following are some quick-win projects I’ve used with students and teachers around the world that you can try right away.

Interview an expert. Using the audio recorder app on phones or tablets, or a videoconferencing tool like Zoom, have students interview an expert on a topic they’re currently learning about. Level up: Have students create a podcast by editing the interviews and adding voice-over commentary and music.

Skills learned:

• Qualitative research methods
• Public speaking and interpersonal skills
• Question development
• Scheduling meetings
• Importance of primary sources and expertise

Offer anthology projects. Websites and digital books give students a repository to collect multiple learning artifacts such as essays, photographs, audio recordings, data visualizations, and videos. This helps students create larger narratives that can make space for complex topics, provide opportunities for collaborative stories with multiple authors, or show the progress and change of a topic over time.

Skills learned:

• Editing and curation
• Analysis
• Writing
• Collaboration

Rigor and hard work can be synonymous with passion and purpose. We can and should enjoy working hard to achieve goals that are meaningful and for causes we care about. This is really the most important lesson our students can learn.