Children’s online collaborative storytelling during 2020 COVID-19 home confinemen

Collaborative storytelling encourages prosocial behaviors and shared representations when the group works towards a common goal. Thus, it can be a valuable pedagogical tool in traditional and distance education. This study investigates children's storytelling and collaborative behaviors during an online collaborative storytelling activity throughout the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 home confinement in Spain. From 1st to 5th grade of primary school, one-hundred-sixteen students conducted weekly activity sessions in a virtual space structured and adapted to their digital skills. The activity aimed to promote storytelling, collaboration, and deal with the social distancing derived from the home confinement and closure of schools due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Participants and four facilitators met up in a virtual classroom platform with several Google Meet rooms. The activity started in the main videocall room, where facilitators proposed a topic to the students from an image. Then, they asked children to shift into small groups in different secondary video call rooms to create their stories. Finally, children came back to the main videocall room to tell and share their stories. Facilitators observed and registered participants' platform use and collaboration. Also, stories were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using the Bears Family Integrated Story Analysis System. Moreover, three categories related to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic were added to the story content analysis. Results indicate that primary students worked collaboratively in an online environment, with some methodology adaptations to 1st and 2nd grade because of a more limited digital autonomy. Story lengths tend to be reduced with age, while cohesion and story structure show more stable values in all grades. All stories are balanced in positive and negative contents, especially in characters' behavior and relationships, while story problems remain at positive solution levels. In addition, the pandemic theme emerged directly or indirectly in only 15% of the stories.