Vev x Oxford Brookes University: Teaching Tomorrow’s Digital Storytellers

Mar 6, 2023

Words by Malin Cornelia

We were honored to teach 70 journalism and publishing students as part of their degree. The digital stories they crafted in Vev blew us away.

Teaching at the cutting-edge of digital storytelling means keeping pace with a constantly evolving set of technologies, content formats, design trends, and skills — which is precisely what makes it so exciting.

Yet, beyond Adobe Creative Cloud, what tools should you teach a new generation of creatives about to enter the workforce? For Oxford Brookes University, analyzing the creative platforms used by some of the world’s most ambitious publishers was a natural place to start.

We were thrilled to teach 70 budding digital storytellers how international media houses like Schibsted, Publicis, and Politico use Vev to publish immersive stories.

The Future of Digital Storytelling

Today, digital stories don’t have to be passive text-and-image affairs; they don’t even have to follow a traditional vertical experience. At Vev, we know that creatives who can tell great stories and translate them through diverse visual media, animations, and interactions are at a distinct competitive advantage.

That's why we were thrilled to share insights from our own publishing clients as part of Oxford Brookes University’s prestigious BA in Media, Journalism and Publishing. Across three sessions, we taught students how to use the visual storytelling techniques powering the web’s most exciting content — from video scrollytelling, advanced interactivity, and animations, through to horizontal scrolling experiences and parallax effects.

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Launching a Personal Brand

As with all of our Education Partnerships, Oxford Brookes students actually got to make something in Vev, too. This is a great way to apply new-found visual design skills, and explore the kind of no-code web creation platforms used by elite publishers.

Oxford Brookes University’s course puts a huge emphasis on teaching students how to effectively market their skills; so much so, that working out a personal brand and how to present it digitally forms a core part of their coursework.

After our introductory sessions, each student had just three weeks to create a stand-out personal portfolio in Vev — creating an adaptable digital hub they can continue to expand throughout their professional lives.

"The students really enjoyed working with Vev. It was great to have all sorts of features accessible that aren't available on other web design platforms."

— Alexandra Shakespeare, Course Director

Student Portfolios in Vev

While we may not be assessing the students’ work, we certainly feel everyone deserves top marks. Here are a handful of our favorite student portfolios made in Vev.