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Story Moves as Translation Checkpoint

Research to Story (RTS) Prototype Feature
— Fall 2025

The Problem: Scripts Are Not Plans​

In academic settings, students are often asked to write a script for a podcast or video essay as the primary “bridge” between research and production. Faculty can assess the script as a written artifact, but this approach assumes that a polished script will naturally translate into a compelling multimodal work.

It rarely does.

Students arrive at editing software with words, but not with a plan. The script is aspirational text — important, yes, but detached from the temporal and sonic logics of audio composition. The editing interface then feels like a black box, a wall rather than a canvas. Faculty, in turn, often find themselves teaching “technical fixes” rather than guiding intellectual inquiry.

The Story Moves Solution​

Story Moves provide a scaffolded checkpoint between research and production. They ask students to reconceive their sources, arguments, and ideas as storyable units — discrete blocks of narration, evidence, and sound with a purpose in time.

A story move is:

  • A chunk of content: an idea, claim, event, or transition
  • Anchored in evidence: research, quotes, or media that can be heard, not just cited
  • Coupled with sonic choices: what the listener hears, and why it matters
  • Rhetorical: aimed at shaping the listener’s journey, not just displaying knowledge

By breaking research into story moves, students engage in translation as inquiry: identifying gaps, rethinking sources as media, and making early methodological choices about how evidence “does” work in sound.

Pedagogical Rationale​

Story Moves foreground a dimension of intellectual labor that is often overlooked: the cognitive and interpretive work of making.

At their core, Story Moves are for the student first and foremost. They function as a scaffold that:

  • Helps students translate written arguments into time-based, multimodal story units
  • Surfaces gaps in sources and invites new directions of inquiry
  • Recasts evidence as dynamic audio material that can do things in sound
  • Encourages reflection on rhetorical decisions like pacing, sequencing, and audience impact

Because Story Moves capture this process of translation, they naturally become assessable artifacts because they reveal genuine domains of scholarship.

Faculty, in turn, can see and respond to:

  • How students mobilize sources as sonic evidence
  • How students anticipate audience experience in their sequencing and sound design choices
  • How methodological questions arise from the act of making
note

The purpose of Story Moves is not to create “something to grade.” The purpose is to scaffold making as scholarship. Assessment follows because the intellectual work is real. This also reframes production as more than an unimaginative technical hurdle, but as another layer of scholarly inquiry. (a core theme that informs this whole endeavor)

Story Moves and Invisible Literacies​

The Story Moves process presents a way to scaffold narrative planning, but it also does more: it surfaces the invisible but essential literacies of scholarly making that RTS highlights through Black Box Micro-Engagements (BBMEs).

Like BBMEs, Story Moves embody several interconnected pedagogical purposes:

  • Demystifying originality → showing that scholarly and creative work is relational, collaborative, and situated in networks of influence and support
  • Normalizing help-seeking → making it clear that gathering sound, editing clips, or seeking technical support is part of inquiry, not a weakness
  • Preparing for scholarly ethics → by tying each move to evidence and sound, students are continuing the work of acknowledgment, citation, and attribution practices
  • Reinforcing RTS philosophy → inquiry is reframing as much as answering, and tools are not funnels but prompts for asking, searching, listening, and adapting

Digital Organization and Archiving​

Story Moves also train students in digital organization and archiving habits that sustain creative research. In order to make a source “work” in a story move, students must:

  • Source materials ethically
  • Save and name files reliably
  • Attribute sources clearly
  • Retrieve clips for editing across platforms
  • Explore file conversion dillemmas and friction

These are invisible but crucial scholarly practices. Without them, inquiry collapses into lost files, rushed production, or broken citations.

note

By requiring students to connect narration, evidence, and sound for each move, the Story Moves table functions as an early archive of their creative and scholarly workflow. It cultivates habits of intentional saving, source tracking, and decision-making that extend into full production.

In this way, Story Moves complement BBMEs: both invite students to document their relational and infrastructural practices so that every act of making becomes part of the story of inquiry itself.

The RTS Alignment​

Within the Research to Story pedagogy, Story Moves align with and extend existing inquiry categories:

  • Spark of Inquiry → Which personal or course-based questions anchor the opening move?
  • Inquiry as Story → Which scholarly tensions or debates structure the middle moves?
  • Stakes & Significance → Which moves foreground public impact and disciplinary lenses?
  • Puzzles & Unknowns → Which gaps emerge when sources resist translation into sound?
  • Listeners & Lens → Which final move articulates a core takeaway for the audience?

App Affordances​

The Story Moves feature in RTS will include two complementary views:

Table Mode (Scaffold Inquiry)​

  • Students map 4–6 moves with fields for narration, evidence, audio, and purpose
  • Gaps flagged: narration with no evidence, evidence with no sound plan, etc.
  • Integrated asset log for media curation, citation, and file management

Timeline Mode (Arrange Composition)​

  • Moves visualized as blocks along a timeline, with tracks for narration, evidence, sound, and transitions
  • Students stretch and order blocks to match a target duration (e.g. 5 minutes)
  • Visual emphasis on pacing, balance, and rhetorical rhythm

Both views can be exported as PDFs or CSVs, scaffolding student agency and also providing faculty with a window into the process.

Why This Matters​

Story Moves dismantle the “magic funnel” myth — the assumption that well-written ideas simply pour into editing software and emerge as compelling podcasts. Instead, they reveal the intellectual labor of multimodal translation, cultivate process management skills, and surface inquiry at a stage where it can be supported and deepened.

By embedding Story Moves into RTS, we position the production phase as an extension of inquiry. Students learn to see their thesis as the outcome of scaffolded, multimodal decision-making.

Next Steps​

  • Prototype Table Mode as an MVP within RTS
  • Build export functions for faculty feedback and student reflection
  • Explore Timeline Mode as a stretch feature for visual pacing and arrangement
  • Integrate Story Moves with the broader RTS inquiry framework, ensuring every move reflects back on Spark, Story, Stakes, Puzzles, and Lens

đź“Ś Summary:
Story Moves scaffold the intellectual work of making. They give students a structured way to translate research into multimodal form, they reveal invisible literacies of digital organization and relational practice, and because they surface real domains of scholarship, they consequently provide assessable artifacts for faculty engagement.