Product Details

Author Information

Corresponding Author
Adam Kuban
Ball State University
408 West Charter Drive
Muncie, IN 47303
United States
p: 515-231-9394
ajkuban@bsu.edu

Authors (listed in order of authorship):
J.R. Jamison
The Facing Project

Product Description and Application Narrative Submitted by Corresponding Author

What general topics does your product address?

Public Health, Social & Behavioral Sciences

What specific topics does your product address?

Community engagement, Mental health

Does your product focus on a specific population(s)?

NA

What methodological approaches were used in the development of your product, or are discussed in your product?

Community-academic partnership, Service-learning

What resource type(s) best describe(s) your product?

book

Application Narrative

1. Please provide a 1600 character abstract describing your product, its intended use and the audiences for which it would be appropriate.*

Facing Depression in East Central Indiana is a project that told the first-person stories of those who struggle directly with depression to create ongoing dialogue about the topic. Writers were partnered with storytellers (those facing depression) to capture the narratives in 800 to 1,000 words, and the stories were compiled into a book that was launched at a community monologue and spoken word event whereby the stories were brought to life on stage. Beyond the launch and theatrical event, the 44-page book has been distributed to those who have a direct influence on the lives of individuals who struggle with depression. This includes mental-health professionals, hospitals, teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, and families/friends. Additionally, the national umbrella organization under which Facing Depression in East Central Indiana falls, The Facing Project, has included the stories on their website. The Facing Project website is frequented by college/university faculty from across the country who download Facing Project stories to use in their classrooms.

In addition to the community utilization of Facing Depression in East Central Indiana, the following scholarly activities have been produced:

1 accepted conference proposal at an academic, international gathering (September 2015);
1 film competition under review (Short Documentary in Heartland Film Festival);
6 media stories.

The intent is to have the short documentary aired via public television in early Fall 2015, and to seek opportunities for dissemination through traditional and nontraditional outlets.

2. What are the goals of the product?

Facing Depression in East Central Indiana is a project that told the first-person stories of those who struggle directly with depression to create ongoing dialogue about the topic. Modeled after the national umbrella of The Facing Project, the broader goal connects people through stories to strengthen communities by sharing the stories of those facing depression through the talent of local writers and artists to create community conversations. Tangentially, the model provides a platform for those facing depression to share their stories with a broad public.

This is done in three stages:

The stories are shared via text (the book available through CES4Health) & visuals (theatrical monologue event, film, and on the Facing Project website).
The books are distributed throughout the community to mental-health professionals, hospitals, teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, and families/friends. Additionally, the national umbrella organization under which Facing Depression in East Central Indiana falls, The Facing Project, has included the stories on their website. (The Facing Project website is frequented by college/university faculty from across the country who download Facing Project stories to use in their classrooms.)

The narratives are used to connect individuals facing depression, or those interested in becoming involved with organizations who serve those facing depression, to create dialogue, solidarity, and action for change.

These stories, and the connections they create, are not only important in East Central Indiana, but from a broader perspective. A news story published in January 2015 revealed sobering statistics about depression as a mental illness: 11% of adolescents have a depressive disorder by the age of 18; one in three college students report feeling depressed, and 50 percent of Americans who struggle with depression don’t seek treatment for it. Yet, as a society, we still have a stigma associated with mental illnesses, particularly depression. Individuals may not realize that they or somebody close to them might struggle with depression, and this project illuminates how they can help—or how they can get help.

Overall, these stories, whether used in the community or in an academic setting, are intended to create holistic conversations in East Central Indiana and beyond—to raise awareness about depression and put a local face on the topic.

3. Who are the intended audiences or expected users of the product?

In the case of Facing Depression in East Central Indiana, the intended audience is wide-reaching. One goal of The Facing Project is to create understanding across difference and provide the books and stories to those who are not part of the conversation to raise awareness and bring them into the dialogue with those who are already having conversations. Outreach is done through the local media outlets, social media, area businesses, school systems, and then distributed through the partner organizations.

The expected users of book include mental health counselors, hospitals, k-12 schools, higher education faculty and their students, the local libraries, those facing depression and their family/friends. These individuals also are included as part of the intended audience.

4. Please provide any special instructions for successful use of the product, if necessary. If your product has been previously published, please provide the appropriate citation below.

One product from Facing Depression in East Central Indiana was a 44-page book that chronicled stories of those in the community who face(d) depression. This book contains attributed statistics and figures, but it has not been published before CES4Health.

However, the product, and the project from which it stemmed, was the focus of 6 media stories from January - April 2015. Examples include local and international outlets:

WISHTV (Indianapolis)
(http://wishtv.com/2015/04/10/the-facing-project-spreads-internationally/)

WorldNews Network
(http://article.wn.com/view/2015/04/10/Ball_State_students_build_awareness_about_depression_through/)

The Star Press (Ind.)
(http://www.thestarpress.com/story/life/2015/04/21/ball-state-students-build-awareness-depression-facing-project-partnership/26123137/)

5. Please describe how your product or the project that resulted in the product builds on a relevant field, discipline or prior work. You may cite the literature and provide a bibliography in the next question if appropriate.

Freire [1] criticized the “narrow regime of teaching” and challenged educators to prepare students for a lifetime of ill-defined problems. He branded this type of critical pedagogy and warned against academic dead zones.

Well before Freire expressed discontent, William?Heard Kilpatrick pioneered the idea of project-based learning (PBL) in the early?1900s [2]. Blumenfeld [3] describes PBL?“as a comprehensive approach to classroom teaching and?learning that is designed to engage students in?investigation of authentic problems,” and Barrows [4] identified PBL as both a curriculum and a process where students remain responsible for both questions and answers to problems. This was one of the first experiments with PBL with formal assessment of it as a pedagogical paradigm that occurred at McMaster University in Canada.

Case studies reveal that students tend to respond favorably to PBL-oriented courses [4] and teachers tend to enjoy it too [5]. Duch [6] noted “PBL is an instructional method that challenges students to ‘learn to learn,’ working cooperatively in groups to seek solutions to world problems.” Blumenfeld [3] identified two advantages of PBL: It encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, and it is adaptable to myriad situations and different learning styles. In the decades after Freire [1] championed his version of critical pedagogy in the classroom, Giroux [7] has reinforced it, arguing that instruction should “provide the knowledge, skills and social relations that enable students to expand the possibilities of what it means to be critical citizens” [7].

Experiential learning theory defines learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience”[Kolb & Boyatzis, 8]. In other words, it is through experience that students learn and therefore acquire knowledge. Giroux [7] might argue that students must be provided this opportunity, as it allows them “to come to terms with their own power as critically engaged citizens” [7]. Yet, Giroux [7] notes a clear absence of this brand of pedagogy.

The Facing Project serves as a current application of the nexus of project-based and experiential learning.

6. Please provide a bibliography for work cited above or in other parts of this application. Provide full references, in the order sited in the text (i.e. according to number order). .

Citations

[1] Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc., New York.

[2] Wolk, S. 1994. Project-based learning: Pursuits with a purpose. Educational Leadership 52(3): 42-45.

[3] Blumenfeld, P., Soloway, E., Marx, R., Krajcik, J., Guzdial, M., Palincsar, A. 1991. Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational Psychologist 26(3-4): 369-398.

[4] Barrows, H., Tamblyn, R. 1976. An evaluation of problem-based learning in small groups utilizing a simulated patient. Journal of Medical Education 51(1): 52-54. See also Tseng, K., Chang, C., Lou, S., Chen, W. 2013. Attitudes toward science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is a project-based learning environment. International Journal of Technology and Design Education 23(1): 87-102.

[5] Rosenfeld, S., Ben-Hur, Y. 2001. Project-based learning in science and technology: A case study of professional development. Proceedings IOSTE Symposium, Cyprus.

[6] Duch, B. 1995. Problem-based learning: Bringing the real world into the physics classroom. Announcer 25(2): 55.

[7] Giroux, H. 2010. Rethinking education as the practice of freedom: Paulo Freire and the promise of critical pedagogy. Accessed 20 March 2014, http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/87456.

[8] Kolb, D., & Boyatzis, R. 1984. Experiential learning theory: Previous research and new directions. Perspectives on cognitive, learning, and thinking styles. Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey.

7. Please describe the project or body of work from which the submitted product developed. Describe the ways that community and academic/institutional expertise contributed to the project. Pay particular attention to demonstrating the quality or rigor of the work:

• For research-related work, describe (if relevant) study aims, design, sample, measurement instruments, and analysis and interpretation. Discuss how you verified the accuracy of your data.
• For education-related work, describe (if relevant) any needs assessment conducted, learning objectives, educational strategies incorporated, and evaluation of learning.
• For other types of work, discuss how the project was developed and reasons for the methodological choices made.

The following outline, quoted from The Facing Project website, has demonstrated an effective outreach tool for engaging and connecting campuses with their respective communities.

For each iteration, organizers of The Facing Project “enlist a team of writers to be paired one-on-one with citizens who are facing life circumstances that deserve to be shared to better educate the broader community. The pairs meet, get to know each other and share stories of triumph and tragedy, of loneliness and community, of hate and happiness, of deep depression and lofty goals.

“The writers will use their talents to take on the voice and persona of their subjects and write as if they were them—in the first person—bringing to life a voice that has been silenced, while keeping the anonymity of the subjects.

“All projects culminate with a book to be shared throughout the community and acted out by local actors through community theatre and monologues—bringing a face to the voice.

“Through these awareness outlets, communities can begin to sit down together to face the next steps of discovering new, grassroots solutions to the problem.”

To this end, I, the course instructor, along with 14 undergraduate students, pursued Facing Depression in East Central Indiana throughout the Spring 2015 semester. The capstone for this project resulted in students’ contributions to the book —Facing Depression in East Central Indiana — that compiled and chronicled the stories of those who struggle with depression. Each person, or storyteller, was paired with one of the students who utilized his/her writing talents to tell the story in the first person, as if it were their own story. This allowed the subjects’ voices to be heard in an authentic and compelling way while protecting their anonymity.

Student writers knew their interviewee (or storyteller) by the end of January, reading related literature about the topic before that time. Interviews occurred through the end of January and into February, with a draft of the written stories submitted in early February. Our community partners and co-founders of The Facing Project offered content edits for the students. Revised stories were submitted by the end of February to allow for ample time to create the book, publish it, and make abundant copies before the community debut in April.

Some students, typically those with public relations and advertising majors, contributed to the publicity and planning for Facing Depression in East Central Indiana. They were responsible for the creation of press releases, business cards, and the program design for the eventual community debut. Moreover, a few students also participated in the creation of a short documentary meant to encapsulate this iteration of The Facing Project. I created an outline (depicted below) that went into the course syllabus that reflects the division of labor.

The following depicts the intended outcomes for students who were enrolled in the course that connected to the project:

o Read contemporary articles & literature about depression as background knowledge about the subject;
o As applicable:
• Conduct at least one interview (although more may be necessary) with a predetermined subject who faces/faced depression;
• Write one 800-1000 word story in first-person, depicting the subject’s story;
• Take pictures or video, contributing to the overall multimedia expansion of The Facing Project;
• Compose/Revise entries for the Facebook page for The Facing Project along with press releases directed toward predetermined media outlets;
• Assist with event preparation — book publishing & community debut;
o Attend the community book debut, which is likely to occur in late-April 2015; and
o Participate as needed for the ongoing short documentary.

Related to those intended outcomes were the percentages utilized in order to determine students’ grades. Each metric had its own rubric in order to maintain fairness.

8. Please describe the process of developing the product, including the ways that community and academic/institutional expertise were integrated in the development of this product.

Facing Depression in East Central Indiana was developed following the national model for The Facing Project, which requires a partnership between writers and storytellers to develop first-person stories focused on an issue area as a way to bring a voice to the voiceless and enact community change. For each Facing Project a book is developed, and the stories are then acted out on stage during the official book launch for each project. The books are then disseminated throughout communities to create conversation and understanding across difference, while at the same time affecting policy, program creation, and advocacy initiatives based on localized community responses and needs.

For Facing Depression in East Central Indiana, college students enrolled in the Ingelhart Scholars Scholars journalism class at Ball State University, guided by Assistant Professor Adam Kuban, served as project organizers. Students were broken into three organizational areas based upon interest and skill: writers/editors, multimedia/theatrical production, and promotion. In the fall semester of 2014, the students met with the founders of The Facing Project, J.R. Jamison and Kelsey Timmerman, to learn more about the model and items for consideration. The students then met with various community partner agencies to learn about the topic of depression and discussed the opportunity for collaboration. Once agencies were on board, the storyteller recruitment process began. This was done by the community partners who shared flyers with potential storytellers, and, if potential storytellers were interested, they contacted the students with their interest in participating. Additional community-based writers were secured for the project as well, and the founders of The Facing Project trained the college student writers and the community-based writers on how to write a Facing Project story from the first-person perspective.

During the spring semester of 2015, writers met with storytellers, got to know them, and then wrote their stories in the first-person in 800 to 1,000 words. Following The Facing Project model, storytellers had so sign off on their story before it could be put forward for inclusion in the book. This provided opportunity for negotiation between storytellers and writers, and, in more cases than not, writers had to make edits to their stories to better capture the voice of the storytellers based on the storytellers’ recommendations. This phase of the project allowed for a power shift, giving ultimate control of the product to the storytellers who faced depression.

Once the stories were in their final form, the editing team and multimedia team began to lay out the book while the theatrical production and promotion students planned the book launch, monologue event, and all of the press. Student worked in tandem with partners at the Muncie Civic Theatre to map out the book launch and monologue event, and actors from Ball State University, the Muncie Civic Theatre, as well as community volunteers, set about on their journey of rehearsing the stories for the big debut night on April 23, 2015.

On the night of the book launch and monologue event, over 200 members of the Muncie community, including storytellers and the community partners, turned out to watch the stories come to life. Since the night of the release, the book has continued to be shared with mental health counselors, hospitals, k-12 schools, higher education faculty and their students, the local libraries, those facing depression and their family/friends as a means to create community dialogue and awareness.

9. Please discuss the significance and impact of your product. In your response, discuss ways your product has added to existing knowledge and benefited the community; ways others may have utilized your product; and any relevant evaluation data about impact, if available. If the impact of the product is not yet known, discuss its potential significance.

Faculty can gain from implementation of The Facing Project due to its flexibility. Of course, there is a structure in place for guidance in the development and delivery of each Project; however, that structure is malleable based on circumstances outside the faculty member’s control such as class size, discipline, and resources. No one Project requires a specific number of students, and even though each Project requires writers, students need not pursue a writing-based major in order to contribute. Moreover, some Projects have debuted based on financial backing from corporations, while others have succeeded based on the generosity of the public through crowdsourcing tools such as GoFundMe or KickStarter.

Staff and administration can gain from implementation of The Facing Project due to its focus on diversity and its ability to bridge the cliché town-and-gown divide. In an era of increasing accountability, specifically in demonstrating how higher education contributes to a “greater good,” The Facing Project can become a tool for social justice and an opportunity for postsecondary institutions to lead the charge in giving a voice to the voiceless in their communities.

Students can gain from implementation of The Facing Project due to its ability to provide them with an educative experience that shows how they can make a difference — even if on a smaller scale. Students often want to make a difference … but they struggle in the identification of what, how, and for whom to do it. The Facing Project, through the chronicling and compiling of individual stories, demonstrates to students how their willingness to listen and to experience somebody else’s situation can mean the most.

The community partner(s) can gain from implementation of The Facing Project because the initiative gives them exposure. The Project connects them with writers, storytellers, and the greater public, and that connection often sparks an ongoing dialogue that can boost awareness of the specific topic and even promote desired change.

While the longitudinal impact of Facing Depression is still being tracked, the potential for long-term impact and spin-off initiatives is high. Below are just a few examples of spin-off projects that have occurred in other communities beyond book distribution.

Atlanta, Georgia
Organizers from Facing Sex Trafficking: Atlanta’s Dirty Little Secret were involved with the development of an awareness exhibit on sex trafficking in the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The exhibit, Freedom Expressions, was available in the domestic terminal atrium from May to July 2015—putting a face on sex trafficking for millions of travelers. As travelers passed through the terminal, they could stop by the kiosk, put on headphones to hear recorded stories from Atlanta’s Facing Project, pick up information on how to spot human trafficking, and learn more about how to get involved to put a stop to human trafficking.

Fort Wayne, Indiana
An attendee at the book launch and LIVE event for Facing Homelessness in Fort Wayne was so moved by the stories she heard on stage that she approached the project organizers to see how she could get involved in efforts to help the homeless. Through conversations with local nonprofits on the planning committee for Facing Homelessness, she learned there was a woman who handed sleeping bags out to the homeless who don’t seek shelter during inclement weather. The attendee, who belongs to a sewing circle, has now partnered with the woman to make sleeping bags for the homeless.

Muncie, Indiana
The first ever Facing Project—Facing Poverty in Delaware County—was led by TEAMWork for Quality Living. Because of their stories, the organization was selected for 100 Men Who Cook and gifted $79,000. In addition, another Facing Project led in Muncie—Facing Autism—is used by the Indiana State Police for sensitivity training with officers.

10. Please describe why you chose the presentation format you did.

Our community partners, i.e., the creators of The Facing Project, are both authors. In their initial iteration, Facing Poverty in Muncie, they chose to present the content as a book because of its longevity. A book lasts. And the stories in it retain their power. Our book now exists in doctor office waiting rooms, with school guidance counselors, and with health professionals. A book also does not require hardware (such as a computer or mobile device) or software (such as an App) to load and/or view its contents. Technology gaps still exist, and we wanted our stories that comprise this project to get “out there”, as that is the primary project objective: To allow people’s stories about depression to be heard.

While the book is the primary medium through which we disseminate our content, we also generated a website that shared certain stories and statistics about depression in an effort to broaden our reach. Finally, we scheduled a monologue-reading event at the local Civic Theatre. This provided actual voices to the stories, giving our community a free opportunity to witness the struggles and challenges associated with depression. This event also gave us a chance to debut our book, as we gave a copy to each attendee that night.
All of these presentation formats — the book, the website, the live monologue event — allowed us to share the stories and inform as many people as possible.

11. Please reflect on the strengths and limitations of your product. In what ways did community and academic/institutional collaborators provide feedback and how was such feedback used? Include relevant evaluation data about strengths and limitations if available.

Facing Depression in East Central Indiana celebrated many successes along the way, and also met a few challenges. With any product that is developed as a collaborative between the community and the campus, there are learning curves and growing pains.

One of the biggest strengths of the overall product was the well-tested model of The Facing Project. The organization was able to provide the Ingelhart Scholars with their Toolkit of resources that helped the students develop the project. The model itself is flexible, which allowed the students the opportunity to add their own sense of flair to the overall product. Part of the model requires community partner feedback and collaboration, and this was done from the first planning meeting to the book launch and theatrical event seven months later.

The book launch and theatrical event was another major success. More than 250 community members, including storytellers and community partners, turned out for the event to receive a copy of the book and to hear the stories performed live on stage. Media coverage, both pre-and-post event, included an interview and feature on WISH-TV 8 (a CW Television Network affiliate) and two newspaper articles in the Muncie Star Press and the Ball State Daily News. In addition, our community partners at The Facing Project, as well as Ball State University and the Muncie Civic Theatre, continually posted book and event details on their social media outlets.

Moreover, the founders of The Facing Project and the Facing Depression in East Central Indiana project lead, Dr. Adam Kuban, developed a proposal to present at the Engaged Scholarship Consortium Conference at Penn State in September, and the proposal was accepted by a group of blind peer reviewers. This further illustrates that the project goes beyond the impact it has had in the local community as a collaborative between community and campus, and has its own teeth in the academic world as a shared initiative of community-campus partnerships.

Reflecting upon the limitations of the project and product, there were a few challenges.

First, The Facing Project model was initially developed for nonprofits, community activists/organizers, and staff/students involved in student volunteer organizations on college campuses. The Facing Project has college chapters at various institutions across the country, but few project have actually existed as strictly course-based. Because of this, the Toolkit had to be adapted to fit within the confines of 16-week semesters. However, this has helped inform the Toolkit updates that The Facing Project has included in their 3rd Edition of the Toolkit (released in May 2015).

Second, funding was a major challenge. The Facing Project model provides ample, creative suggestions for fund development; but the Project itself does not fund Facing Project communities because the model exist to create local community collaborations -- with funding being at the center of those partnerships. The university provided some funding and in-kind support toward the project, but many external grant opportunities could not be applied for due to policies within the university’s foundation on who can and cannot go after certain funders. One funder that has supported other Facing Projects has been the Community Foundation; however, due to university policy, they could not become funding partners on the project. The students did set up a GoFundMe account, which garnered enough resources to cover a first-round print of book and the monologue event. Funding definitely impacted the amount of books we could spread throughout the community as a resource. We are, however, beginning to forge partnerships with organizations that want to utilize the books to do a print on demand. This will continue to get the books out into the community until we can find another funding source to do another large-scale printing of the book.

12. Please describe ways that the project resulting in the product involved collaboration that embodied principles of mutual respect, shared work and shared credit. If different, describe ways that the product itself involved collaboration that embodied principles of mutual respect, shared work and shared credit. Have all collaborators on the product been notified of and approved submission of the product to CES4Health.info? If not, why not? Please indicate whether the project resulting in the product was approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) and/or community-based review mechanism, if applicable, and provide the name(s) of the IRB/mechanism.

For Facing Depression in East Central Indiana (ECI), our primary partner is the national “umbrella” The Facing Project, whose mission is to connect people through stories to strengthen communities. To date, The Facing Project has spread to over 75 communities nationwide, resulting in books centered on issues such as autism, addiction, and poverty. Facing Depression in ECI represents an iteration of the Project that blended efforts from campus and the community, aiming to tell the stories of those who struggle directly and indirectly with depression and to create ongoing dialogue about the topic.

From this project, partners received more media exposure for another iteration of their national “umbrella,” and we have submitted our book for review in CES4Health, a peer-reviewed entity for creative scholarship.

For Facing Depression in East Central Indiana, the community partners worked with me to submit an accepted conference proposal to the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, hosted by Penn State University in September 2015. The partners presented with me. We also worked together toward this submission of our 44-page book for a CES4Health review. The partners edited the stories in this book, offering students advice on how to improve the narratives. They also helped us look for grants for external funding for this project.

Additionally, storytellers who were recruited for the project worked hand-in-hand with student and community writers on the creation of each story. Following The Facing Project model, storytellers had so sign off on their story before it could be put forward for inclusion in the book. This provided opportunity for negotiation between storytellers and writers, and, in more cases than not, writers had to make edits to their stories to better capture the voice of the storytellers based on the storytellers’ recommendations. This phase of the project allowed for a power shift, giving ultimate control of the product to the storytellers who faced depression.

In general, open communication lines (e.g., email, phone numbers, text messaging) and clear organization (e.g., content outline in Question #7) augmented trust and respect among all involved with the project: partners, students, storytellers, and monologue readers. Sound communication and organization skills seemed to have the most impact on the success of this — and any — Facing Project.

The product under review — the book for Facing Depression in East Central Indiana — was not submitted to our Institutional Review Board because, while it does involve human subjects, it is not research. We did receive formal consent from our storytellers, indicating that they were willing and able to share their personal accounts and anecdotes about depression. All collaborators are aware of our intent to submit this product.

This project (& its product) were more journalistic in their origin. While scholarly concepts (e.g., project-based and experiential learning) provided a pedagogical framework, the project itself was not research-based. We weren’t measuring anything; rather, we were trying to share stories and communicate them to wider audience, which is more indicative of journalism. Thus, we see this project as a hybrid. It can appeal to educators who wish to conduct a similar project and create similar products with their students; however, it also has community benefit. This is why we decided to submit it to CES4Health, a venue that reviews creative work.