Course Name: NMD 343, Designing Stories, 3 credits
Meeting: Fer 337, T/TH 2-3:15
Instructor: Prof Joline Blais
Tools: Website, Slack, ZOOM, Camera, Shorthand, StoryMaps, Davinci Resolve.
Office Hours:
— Prof Blais: T/TH 11:30-12:30 (248 Boardman or Ferland); Wed 3-5 (Zoom); Slack anytime
This course is for students who want to strengthen their creative storytelling and digital media skills through work grounded in real places. You will use photography, video, audio, text, and interactive mapping to create original stories about Maine’s landscapes and communities.
Across three projects, you will practice noticing what makes a place meaningful, capturing strong media, shaping a clear narrative, and combining different media into engaging digital stories. Along the way, you will build practical skills in photography, video production, editing, mapping, and digital publishing while learning how stories can reveal connections among people, culture, history, and the living environment.
The goal is to move beyond simply documenting a place and learn how to make audiences see it differently, understand why it matters, and recognize the possibilities within it.
In order to best accommodate student projects and course goals, the format, schedule or content for this course may be modified. In addition, student input may alter the content and direction of our work. In such case, changes will be made directly to this online syllabus, with in-class announcements.
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
Digital storytelling gets better through conversation, critique, and collaboration. Part of your class/lab grade reflects how actively and thoughtfully you contribute to the work of your peers.
You can contribute through class and lab discussions, Slack conversations, and WordPress assignment comments.
Good feedback is specific, honest, supportive, and useful. Start by identifying something that is working well. Then point to something that feels unclear, less effective, or worth developing further. Whenever possible, offer a question or suggestion that helps the storyteller see new possibilities.
Helping someone else—and asking others for meaningful help—are both valuable forms of participation. You receive credit for giving substantial help and for seeking out and using help from your peers. Let me know about significant peer collaboration through Slack.
Storytelling is collaborative. Intelligence is social—and interspecies. Listen closely. Share generously. Ask good questions. Help each other make better work.
Tutoring is available for a wide range of UMaine courses using the tutor matching platform Knack. To meet with a UMaine peer tutor, go to UMaine Knack and sign up with your MaineStreet account. During signup, there will also be an opportunity to download the Knack app for apple or android. Using the Knack app, you will be able to select the course in which you want tutoring and then select a tutor. You will communicate with the tutor through the Knack app to arrange a time and location for your tutoring session.
For more information or with questions, contact: Office of Student Academic Success in 104 Dunn Hall, or call 207-581-2351.3
Format: Photo-based digital story using approximately 8–15 original images with concise text/captions.
Place can be broadly defined: a neighborhood, street, forest, river, lake, shoreline, farm, trail, workplace, gathering place, building, campus location, small town, or other meaningful Maine location.The goal is not simply to show what a place looks like.
Use photography and storytelling to investigate what happens there, who or what belongs there, how it is changing, and why it matters.
Format choice:
This builds directly from the single-image project by asking you to create sequence, movement, character, sound, pacing, and narrative arc. The course models support this progression through examples like Patagonia’s advocacy films, NYT Op-Docs’ concise documentary structures, National Geographic’s scientific storytelling, and Beau Miles’ ability to find stories close to home.
The final project asks you to synthesize your photography, writing, video, audio, research, editing, and storytelling skills in a more complex spatial form. This allows you to move beyond documenting landscapes toward revealing your relationships, histories, ecological systems, and future possibilities.
Some useful models include Craig Mod’s integration of walking, photography, maps, and essays; National Geographic’s multimedia integration of maps, photography, video, and science; and UMaine’s own ARC-GIS repository of stories about conservation and community.
1. Show Up & Do the Work
Missing work = zero. That hurts your grade fast—so keep up and turn things in, even if not perfect. A 65 grade will NOT lower your grade as much as a 0.
2. Freebies = Lifelines
Life happens. You get 1 chance to turn in late work, no excuse needed. Your second late project gets docked 5% per day late. Try not to use this, it’s for unusual circumstances.
3. Absences Add Up
You get 2 free absences. After that, each one drops your attendance grade by 5 points (out of 100). No distinction between excused/unexcused—you’re in charge of managing your time.
A = Outstanding
Above-and-beyond effort, strong work, active help to/from peers, clear growth.
B = Very Good
Met all expectations, showed effort and thoughtful input, supported others.
C = Just OK
Did the basics, little extra effort or class contribution.
D = Slipping
Work mostly incomplete, little learning or engagement, low scores.
F = Checked Out
Missing or failing most work. No signs of effort or progress.
Bottom Line:
Come up with asome good portfolio projects that you cause to showcase your skills. Pick topics that interest you. Start early, and keep working. Last minute projects are often poor, and well below your creative abilities. Stay engaged, do the work, and ask for feedback or advice if you need it—we’re here to help you thrive.
Being present with focused attention on your work and your classmates is key.
Show Up, Speak Up
Be in class, on time, and ready to participate. Attendance counts toward your grade.
Do the Work—On Time
Turn in assignments by the posted deadlines. Partial work is better than none.
Revise & Improve
Low grades? If you turn in work time, you may get 1-2 chances to revise or replace them—stay on top of your work.
Communicate Early
Missing class or struggling? Tell me ASAP. I’ll help if you show effort and responsibility.
Respect Matters
Listen actively. Speak thoughtfully. Support diverse perspectives.
Stay Focused
No phones out during class. Don’t multitask unrelated work on your laptop—do use it to expand your engagement with class work.
Be Ready to Work
Bring your laptop or necessary tools—phones alone won’t cut it for in class work. Use your phone when required for tasks or fieldwork.
Use Your Resources
Take advantage of TA office hours, tutors, labs, equipment, and campus support services.
Life Happens—Talk to Me
Illness? Family duties? Reach out early. I won’t grade based on personal setbacks, but I need to know to support you.
Your stories have something AI does not: lived experience, relationships, observation, memory, judgment, responsibility, and a point of view. Take pride in developing your own creative, storytelling, and technical abilities. These skills—and the ways you use them to represent people and places—matter more than any single course grade.
This course emphasizes place-based storytelling, which depends on being present: noticing, listening, photographing, recording, interviewing, and discovering what is actually happening in a place. AI can simulate a generic story about a place, but it cannot replace your own embodied experience of being there. AI may support your learning, but it should not replace the observation, creative decisions, media capture, or storytelling an assignment is designed to develop. You remain responsible for every idea, claim, story choice, and piece of media you submit.
Unless an assignment states otherwise, you may use AI selectively to:
Begin with your own observations, photographs, recordings, interviews, research, and creative direction. Use AI to respond to your ideas rather than asking it to invent the story for you. Evaluate, revise, and often reject AI suggestions rather than accepting them automatically.
Do not submit AI-generated stories, scripts, reflections, interviews, photographs, video, audio, or other creative media as your own, or use AI to replace required fieldwork and media-production practice. Never fabricate sources, quotations, interviews, experiences, or community perspectives, or imitate another person’s identity, voice, image, or style without permission.
For this course, the most important creative work should come from being somewhere, paying attention, making media, and deciding what the experience means.
Protect privacy and consent, represent people and communities fairly, credit sources and collaborators, and avoid unnecessary AI use. Ask whether AI genuinely helps you learn or tell the story better—and whether it is replacing something you should be learning to do yourself.
Include a brief AI Use Note naming the tool, explaining what it contributed, and describing what you changed or verified—or state “No AI used.” Clearly label AI-generated material included in a final project; routine spelling and grammar checks do not require documentation.
Your grade reflects your storytelling, observation, creative judgment, media craft, accuracy, ethical choices, and ability to explain your process—not how much AI you use.
Covid 19: For more information see Black Bears Care Pact: https://umaine.edu/return/black-bears-care/
And: UMaine Covid 19 policy
• Academic Honesty
• Students Accessibility Services Statement
• Course Schedule Disclaimer
• Observance of Religious Holidays/Events
• Sexual Discrimination Reporting
• Student Conduct Expectations
• Classroom Civility
• Inclusive and Non-sexist Language
• Copyright Notice for Materials Accessible through the Course Website
• Contingency Plans in the Event of an Epidemic