Our Minibook of Adventures: Humanizing Digital Spaces via Vision Boards

Hatice Karaaslan, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University
Yazgülü Gökgöz, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University

Abstract
This reflective narrative offers a suggestion for one way to humanize digital spaces: designing and presenting a vision board at a hybrid “vision board party.” The activity is aimed at integrating a popular social media tool, YouTube, while allowing students space to practice vision boarding as well as enhancing their social-emotional capacities, including self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness and relationship skills. As such, this paper illustrates how technology and digital resources can be used to bridge language learning in the classroom and beyond, with a consideration of varying learning styles and preferences. Accordingly, I invited one of my students in a four-skills general English training course I was offering to join me and zoom into her vision-boarding experience and narrate and reflect on her story in order to help scaffold the process for interested readers, which might include educators and learners desiring to promote social-emotional skills and autonomy and engage in English-medium digital spaces that encourage learning beyond the classroom.  

Keywords: humanizing digital spaces, social media tools, vision boards, learner stories, teachers’ job crafting 

Technology has become an integral part of our lives, and this integration extends to language learning, where it can support learner autonomy development. Today, a wide range of language learning apps and platforms are available to engage in online collaborative projects, language exchange or immersion in simulations, adaptive learning, games, journaling, portfolios or storytelling.

However, it is essential to remember that at the heart of digital learning are human learners. By emphasizing collaboration, communication and creativity, we can foster authentic interactions in digital spaces and create engaging, inclusive and human-centred digital learning environments. To this end, this reflective paper narrates and demonstrates the integration of a “vision board party” with YouTube as a social media tool to enhance language learning and foster social-emotional skills in students.

Digital Vision Boards
A vision board is a collage manifesting our goals and big dreams. As a cognitive self-advising tool, it provides learners with the opportunity to think more deeply about themselves and their learning (Kato & Mynard, 2016). The goals within could be related to life, home, school, relationships, experiences, situations or career. This sort of imagery-based goal-setting helps people determine what is important to them. The board can include words or images representing our goals or where we would like to be in the future. It helps with self-reflection, self-awareness and clarifying values and goals (Burton & Lent, 2016; Kato & Mynard, 2016); hence, it is a great tool for self-advising and keeps one focused.

As a learning advisor for the past 5 years, I (Hatice) have been using vision boards with my classes, and my students love it. This is one way I reframe the tasks, relationships and roles in my job—in other words, job crafting (Falout & Murphey, 2018)—and the reasons for doing this job for a more meaningful experience (Seligman, 2013). At first, the students are slightly confused or maybe do not know how to start; nevertheless, after some explanation and structuring of the steps together, they cannot wait to design one. Vision boards are fun, and digital vision boards (which are created online) are even more fun and highly user-friendly, considering the wide variety of free software available.

In digital vision boards, participants get the chance to explore and express their beliefs, values, emotions, thoughts and actions as they reflect on themselves from an alternative perspective using visualization (Kato & Mynard, 2016). Becoming aware of their potential, options, resources and limitations as well as those of their classmates, they draw a more authentic and achievable roadmap for their future and language learning journey and develop a sense of belonging through hybrid vision board parties. These parties are events where participants can engage in the activity in a flexible and inclusive manner. As such, face-to-face interaction in a classroom setting, with the option for online participation for those unable to attend in person, is a key design property regarding the medium and interactional patterns, catering to a wider range of learning styles and preferences.   

During the party, I go through the steps involved, in order to guide the participants: 

1. 1. 1. Introduction and purpose: We discuss the what, why and how of vision boards in an effort to understand their purpose and benefits with respect to goal setting and language learning.
      2. Self-reflection activities: Participants engage in activities that help them become aware of and reflect on their beliefs, values, emotions, goals and aspirations.
      3. Digital board creation: Participants use online tools and resources such as Canva (https://www.canva.com), Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com), Slidesgo (https://slidesgo.com) or similar image or video editing programs to find templates or create their own vision boards from scratch. I also refer them to some vision board examples on Youtube or explanations of vision boards (for an example, see Camille Styles’ illustration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68LbxdIlYKs). This can be done either during the party or independently.
      4. Reflection and refinement: Participants are encouraged to take time to reflect on their completed vision boards, identifying deeper connections between the elements they have chosen and how they contribute to their overall goals and refining their boards to further solidify their vision. 

Upon the completion of these steps, I ask the participants to share what they have discovered about themselves by referring to the tool and presenting it either to the class and/or to me, live in real time or recorded and shared via our school’s internal learning management system. They can share their content in more public, social media spaces as well, if they feel comfortable with the idea. I tell them that by presenting their design before their classmates (or to a wider audience), they will get feedback and reflect on the experience. This is meant to provide them with emotional, strategic and linguistic support, leading to autonomy (Beseghi, 2018). Then I congratulate them on taking the time to discover more about themselves.

In our application, a vision board can be designed in a couple of ways: 

Figure 1. Example of a Digital Vision Board With Broad Categories

A vision board may be a space where one exhibits their values, goals, emotions and actions more broadly, as in Figure 1. Alternatively, one may present a more detailed picture of their vision with spaces, people, situations, tools, methods and media, as in Figure 2. What follows are sample vision boards from our own experiences: Hatice’s and her student, Yazgülü’s.

Figure 2. Example of a Detailed Digital Vision Board

Hatice’s Vision Board
I often present my own digital vision board to my students. As seen in Figures 3 and 4, parts of my vision board illustrate my vision, with “My Values” and “My Actions,” respectively. My values include being honest with myself and everyone, cooperative, loving and approachable. And the song playing on my vision board is “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz!

Figure 3. Hatice’s Vision Board: Values

Regarding my actions, currently, I am doing what I have dreamt of as a learning advisor and a peer mentor. I teach classes, and I invite the students who are having problems to my advising sessions, where I do my best to encourage them to discover the root causes of their issues and heal themselves. Additionally, I would like to design a TV series titled A Tale of Two Travel Bloggers, in which the main characters engage in reflective dialogues to solve their issues and set great role models for the audience of all ages.

Figure 4. Hatice’s Vision Board: Actions

Yazgülü’s Vision Board and Story
If someone asked me what I want to be in the future, I would immediately say I want to be an artist without thinking twice, because I am the student of an artist. My teacher (Hatice) is one of the rare people who reflects the sparkle within me and shares her happy and complete world. Hatice has been my biggest supporter, not only in my academic development, but also in my holistic development as an individual. I liken this development to a painting—a painting that people do not want to take their eyes off of, where independent colors combine and complement each other harmoniously. Even if at first glance, the colors on the artist’s (Hatice’s) palette seemed independent of each other, they blended smoothly on the canvas with the right brush strokes. We students began to take our place in the painting together with our teacher, Hatice.

Hatice was a guide, a supporter and an inspiration. In class, she provided many opportunities for us to realize our individual strengths. Under her guidance, we discovered ways to reveal our strengths and developed a more positive perspective about things. She was always there to celebrate our successes, help us learn from mistakes and encourage us. In those moments, I personally realized that the light in me was growing (see Figure 5, especially the text in the figure, illustrating the perspective that we hold the potential to grow inside all the while; it only takes some effort and support to reveal it). With empathy, tolerance and love, she made students feel that they were individuals with their unique perspectives and potential!

Figure 5. Realizing Inner Light

By openly sharing her own flaws and challenges, she made me realize that it was not necessary to be perfect. During the summer vacation, my teacher offered me an excellent opportunity: to revise and present my vision board at an international conference. Honestly, it was a very proud moment for me because it was the first time I was going to take part in such a project—and not in my mother tongue, Turkish, but in English, into which I had put a lot of effort to learn.

My teacher Hatice presented the whole plan and helped me follow the steps. My task was to prepare a digital vision board using Canva. Canva is a free application for designing images or videos and offers a variety of design elements to choose from. My first draft was quite complicated and difficult to follow as I wanted to include many colorful elements. However, upon feedback, my later versions became more focused on the overall story, and I limited my content to the most relevant items.

Designing a vision board is a worthwhile activity as it helps you to discover more about yourself. I would like to explain you the process just in case you might want to design one yourself. First of all, you need to know that the vision board is your story. This will be your journey of self-discovery. First, think about the values that bind you to life. Put them on a board under the title “My Values,” adding photos that reflect you (see Figure 6). For example, my values are freedom, equality, friendship and success, and for me success means making my name in history, like Adile Ayda, the first Turkish female diplomat.

Figure 6. Yazgülü’s Vision Board: Values

Then think about your purpose in this life, and put a photo of your purpose in the center of the board, just as your purpose is at the center of your life. For example, my life’s purpose is to learn, because I believe that knowing and accepting is the source of happiness. Then, under the heading “My Plans,” post photos representing plans that pave the way to your life’s purpose, and your vision board is ready. My plans were appreciating art, reading books, listening to podcasts and sharing (see Figure 7 below).

Figure 7. Yazgülü’s Vision Board: Plans

Art was my safe harbor because I couldn’t tell anyone when I was sad, so I would draw my feelings. Books were a way for me to learn about life because I wasn’t social enough to communicate with people in a healthy way, and I learned a lot about people from the literary characters in novels I read. Even though I am not a social person, I love to share what I know and what I am curious about with my close friends and teachers, and I think this communication is very beneficial for both sides. Finally, even though I made a digital vision board, I also made a traditional, paper vision board to hang right in front of my desk, to remind myself that no matter how hard life can sometimes be, I now have a corner that gives me hope.

Upon further reflection, I realized designing a vision board meant more than just preparing an ordinary presentation. As the project progressed, I realized how little I actually knew about myself: What did I like? What made me sad? What were the things that kept my mind busy for hours, and for what did I wear myself out? Most importantly, what did I want most in this life? This is how my process of really getting to know myself began.

Of course, this process of getting to know myself better did not just happen within this project; it had all started before, in October 2022, when the academic year started. I saw a psychology student’s post advertising a “free counseling service” on Instagram. I immediately messaged her and signed up. That semester was a bit depressing for me as I was living in a single room in a dormitory, and such solitary life had not been as good for me as I had thought it would be. The support I received from this psychology student was very effective; I was listened to without being judged, and I was able to focus on my most important issues. I had the opportunity to realize many things that I had not realized about myself until then. This all took place in the fall term of 2022.

When the spring term started, at school, I was in a new class and I had new teachers. One of my new teachers was Hatice. We first met in online classes because of the February 2023 earthquake in Türkiye that destroyed 11 cities and because of which most universities decided to offer their classes online for convenience. Online classes had always been more efficient for me compared to traditional face-to-face classes, but here they became even more interesting, as my teacher brought a breath of fresh air to online classes. I think she used techniques that many other teachers did not, and we did not just go through the textbook. For example, every morning before we started the lesson, we would have small conversations about the topic of the lesson, or we would use some online applications, games or platforms to spice up the lesson. Then we would split into groups of two as students, answer the questions given to us in the chat rooms and then discuss our answers. I think it was a good way to encourage students to speak English, because I have always been a bit shy about speaking. It also allowed us to make friends from the class during the online period.

My teacher Hatice was also conducting independent learning advising lessons, and these sessions were very productive, as they showed me that if we cannot see something, we should learn to look at it through the eyes of someone who can. After the online classes continued like this for a while, it was decided that face-to-face education would resume. I was very happy about this news because no matter how efficient online education is for me, face-to-face education is a completely different experience. In face-to-face education, we can be more social, and participation is higher because some students do not participate in online classes. I was happy to finally have the opportunity to meet my teacher Hatice and classmates face to face. They were all unique people, and they all had different fears and strengths in language learning.

During the face-to-face lessons, my teacher Hatice also taught us to learn from each other. For example, one of our friends was having a hard time speaking, or rather, she had the hardest time taking the first step and insisted on waiting. One day we were improving our speech with a fun game. The game was as follows: We would choose three cards, make up a story about the pictures on these cards and share our story with the class. That friend stated that she could not speak. In an effort to ease the process and help her relax, Hatice, wanting to draw our attention away from her briefly, told us (the other students in the class) to play with some pine cones that she had brought from the school garden, like clowns do with balls, and that helped our friend, who was hesitant about speaking, to feel more comfortable and take the first step.

Hatice also encouraged us in extracurricular activities. After school, she would tell us to sit as a class in the canteen and chat over coffee using English, and sometimes we would use this concept in our lessons. It was a fun way to get out of our comfort zone and socialize. This is how we ended the semester, and by the end I was able to speak English and understand the podcasts I was listening to. It was also a rewarding experience to be able to observe my own progress.

Regarding this digital vision board project, at the beginning of the summer vacation, my teacher told me about this project and encouraged me to accompany her. During the project, as I said, I got to know myself better and started to create my career plan that I had been postponing. In other words, I took the first step. In this period when my awareness was increasing day by day, this project, which helped accelerate the process, became the first sentence of a new story for me, “The first sentence is the compass of the story.” As a result, during the time in which we carried out this project, I experienced many changes and developments in this story in which I was the main character. The guidance and vision of my teacher Hatice helped me discover my own potential and understand that mistakes are there to learn from and to test the limits of my own nature. 

In the future, I will continue to overcome my limits and use my potential at the highest level with the experience this project has given me. I sincerely thank my teacher Hatice and everyone who contributed to this project. 

Postscript
We wish you a life full of hope, and we would be happy to invite you join our vision-board partying event, which will take place on September 7, 2024 and on the same day every following year. Please contact for details: <gokgozyazgulu01@gmail.com>.

Figure 8. Authors’ Invitation to Vision Board Partying

Notes on the Contributors
Hatice Karaaslan, PhD in Cognitive Science, works as an EFL instructor and learning advisor at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Türkiye with experience as a guest instructor for the Research Institute for Learner Autonomy Education at Kanda University of International Studies, Japan.

Yazgülü Gökgöz is a freshman in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration in Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Türkiye.

References

Beseghi, M. (2018). Emotions and autonomy in foreign language learning at university. Educazione Linguistica. Language Education, 7(2), 231–250. https://doi.org/10.30687/ELLE/2280-6792/2018/02/003

Burton, L., & Lent, J. (2016) The use of vision boards as a therapeutic intervention, Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 11(1), 52–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/15401383.2015.1092901

Falout, J., & Murphey, T. (2018). Teachers crafting job crafting. In S. Mercer & A. Kostoulas (Eds.), Language teacher psychology (pp. 211–230). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783099467-017

Kato, S., & Mynard, J. (2016). Reflective dialogue: Advising in language learning. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315739649

Seligman, M. E. P. (2011) Flourish: A new understanding of happiness and well-being—and how to achieve them. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.