Project Blueprint

Project Title (Media Type):
Be Independent and Stand Up Against Bullying (Educational Video Series)

Subtitle:
A 3-Part Educational Video Series on Confidence, Empathy, and Courage

Date Updated:
October 26, 2025

Authors:
Team Courage — Fan, Micky

Project Overview

We created this educational video series to help teenagers understand the importance of independence, self-respect, and standing up against bullying.
This topic is highly relevant to middle and high school students who are developing their identities and social awareness.

We chose this topic because bullying remains a serious issue in many schools. Through emotional storytelling and clear educational messaging, we aim to show that:

• You are not alone.
• Speaking up and seeking help are forms of strength.
• Independence and empathy can make our communities safer and kinder.

During the production process, our team realized how essential empathy, teamwork, and narrative clarity are to making educational media that truly connects with students.

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Understanding Phase

Challenge Description

Students often feel powerless or scared when facing bullying. They need to learn how to think independently, express themselves, and seek help bravely.

Context and Audience

Our target audience includes middle and high school students (ages 12–17) who may have witnessed, experienced, or participated in bullying.

Typical users: Students who experience verbal or online bullying in school settings.

Extreme users: Students who have faced severe exclusion, physical bullying, or long-term emotional harm.

Needs: To understand what bullying is, how to respond safely, and how to find support.

Motivations: They want to feel respected, accepted, and confident.

Psychologically, many students desire belonging and self-worth but fear confrontation. Behaviorally, they often remain silent or passive witnesses. This project aims to empower them to recognize injustice, speak up, and take constructive action.

POV Statement

A student who feels isolated or bullied needs to learn self-expression and help-seeking strategies so that they can stand up against injustice, maintain dignity, and support others.

Learning Objectives

Main Objectives

• Understand the definition and emotional impact of bullying.
• Learn appropriate strategies to respond to bullying (refusal, reporting, seeking help).
• Develop independence, confidence, and empathy.

Sub-Objectives

• Strengthen communication and self-expression skills.
• Recognize the role and responsibility of bystanders.
• Encourage the creation of supportive, inclusive school environments.

Hidden (Meta) Learning Goals

• Promote social responsibility and self-worth.
• Inspire students to see courage in many forms — speaking up, listening to others, and standing together.

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Planning Phase

Ideation

We brainstormed around keywords such as independence, courage, empathy, support, and change.
We decided to create three 1-minute videos, each representing a key stage of anti-bullying awareness and action.

Video Concepts:

Video 1 – Recognize Bullying
Show different types of bullying (verbal, cyber, physical, and social exclusion).
Learning focus: Recognize what bullying is and why saying “no” matters.

Video 2 – Find Your Voice
A student decides to speak up and seek help from a teacher.
Learning focus: Expressing and seeking help is a form of courage.

Video 3 – Build a Supportive Community
Students create an anti-bullying campaign together.
Learning focus: Independence doesn’t mean isolation; empathy creates change.

Prototype Description:
An animated short following one student’s story — from being bullied, to speaking up, to inspiring others to stand together.

Script

Video 1 – Recognize Bullying

Scene 1: A girl quietly wipes insults like “Ugly Duckling” and “Monster” carved into her desk.
Narration: “Sometimes, the cruelest words are carved where everyone can see, yet no one dares to erase.”

Scene 2: Three classmates mock and push her while others stay silent.
Narration: “Silence becomes survival, and cruelty hides in plain sight.”

End: A quiet classmate offers her a tissue and a candy.
Narration: “Kindness can come from the quietest corners.”
Text on screen: “Recognizing bullying is the first step to change.”

Video 2 – Find Your Voice

Scene 1: The same girl hesitates outside the teacher’s office, holding an anonymous report letter.
Narration: “Fear keeps us quiet, but silence doesn’t change anything.”

Scene 2: She finally hands the letter to the teacher. The teacher listens carefully.
Narration: “Speaking up takes courage, but it can begin the change.”

End: Her quiet friend smiles and gives her a thumbs-up.
Text on screen: “Speaking up creates change.”

Video 3 – Build a Supportive Community

Scene 1: Students hang posters and prepare for “Anti-Bullying Day.”
Narration: “Change begins when we stand together.”

Scene 2: The once-bullied girl now helps organize the event. She speaks on stage.
Dialogue: “Kindness is not weakness. Courage is standing up for others.”

End: The crowd cheers. She and her friend exchange smiles.
Narration: “Independence means not being controlled by fear. Courage is standing together.”
Text on screen: “Together, we can stop bullying.”

Applicable Principles

This project is guided by Multimedia Learning Principles frameworks:

Coherence Principle: Remove unnecessary visuals or audio distractions.

Personalization Principle: Use conversational tone and relatable characters to build empathy.

Contiguity Principle: Synchronize visuals and narration to reinforce understanding.

Segmenting Principle: Divide content into three short videos to manage cognitive load.

Emotional Engagement Principle: Use emotional storytelling to help learners feel and internalize the message.

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Final version

Storyboard

Video 1 – Recognize Bullying

Scene 1

Visual: In the quiet classroom, a desk was engraved with insulting words such as “ugly duckling” and “monster”.

Narration Voiceover: “Sometimes, the cruelest words are carved where everyone can see, yet no one dares to erase.”

Scene 2

Visual: The camera zooms in on the girl’s hands as she gently wipes the writing on the table with a wet tissue.

Scene 3

Visual: Three classmates walked into the classroom, pointing and laughing at the girl. The other students lowered their heads to do their homework, pretending not to see.

Narration Voiceover: “Silence becomes survival, and cruelty hides in plain sight.”

Scene 4

Visual: The girl sat alone with tears in her eyes. A quiet classmate came over and put down a tissue and a candy.

Narration Voiceover: “Kindness can come from the quietest corners.”

Scene 5

Visual: The girl wiped the writing on the table.

Narration Voiceover: “Every act of kindness can light a corner of the dark.”

Scene 6

Visual: The girl walked out of the classroom.

Text: “Recognizing bullying is the first step to change.”

Video 2 – Find Your Voice

Scene 1

Visual: The girl stood outside the teacher’s office, nervously holding a letter of denunciation.

Narration Voiceover: “Fear keeps us quiet, but silence doesn’t change anything.”

Scene 2

Visual: The girl took a deep breath, looked up at the sign on the door that said, “Teacher’s Office”, and knocked on the door.

Scene 3

Visual:  The girl handed the letter to the teacher, who was a little surprised but looked gentle as she read the contents of the letter carefully.

Narration Voiceover: “Speaking up takes courage, but it can begin the change.”

Scene 4

Visual: The teacher nodded and smiled, comforting her softly. The girl showed a long-lost look of relaxation and smiled.

Scene 5

Visual: Back in the classroom, her quiet friend gave her a thumbs-up and a smile.

Narration Voiceover: “Courage is not loud — sometimes it’s just one quiet act of honesty.

Scene 6

Visual: On the stage of the gymnasium, a banner in the background reads “Anti-Bullying Day.”

Text: “Speaking up creates change.”

Narration Voiceover: “Every small voice can make a big difference.”

Video 3 – Build a Supportive Community

Scene 1

Visual: Students put up colorful posters in the hallways that read “Be kind to others,” “Respect each other,” and “Stand together.”

Narration Voiceover: “Change begins when we stand together.”

Scene 2

Visual: On the stage in the gymnasium, a girl who had been bullied stood confidently in front of a microphone, speech in hand. A banner in the background read “Anti-Bullying Day.”

Scene 3

Visual: Girl speaking on stage.

Girl’s lines: “Kindness is not weakness. Courage is standing up for others.”

Scene 4

Visual: The students in the audience listened attentively, some nodding in agreement, others whispering encouragement. The teacher smiled, his eyes full of approval.

Scene 5

Visual: After the speech, the audience burst into applause. The girl walked off the stage and smiled at her quiet friend.

Narration Voiceover: “Independence means not being controlled by fear. Courage is standing together.”

Scene 6

Visual: Students wore “Together Against Bullying” clothing on the school playground

Text: “Together, we can stop bullying.”

Video

Video 1 – Recognize Bullying

Video 2 – Find Your Voice

Video 3 – Build a Supportive Community

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Reflect and Refine

Peer Feedback Discussion

Fan’s Feedback:

In the feedback we received, Emma felt that our subject matter was very relevant and resonated strongly with teenagers. She praised our application of the pretraining and personalization principles, believing that this narrative approach helped viewers better understand and empathize with the story. She also praised our approach of minimizing on-screen text and prioritizing narration. She suggested adding a call to action at the end and expanding our target audience, as bullying isn’t limited to teenagers; it can also occur among adults.

Kushank also praised our use of emotional storytelling in the video.
He suggested further personalization, adopting a more colloquial voiceover, and incorporating reflective questions to enhance audience empathy. He also suggested including a call to action at the end of the video (e.g., “What can you do for your classmates this week?”) and providing real-world resources (e.g., “Talk to a teacher or a friend”). He also raised a valuable question: how can we ensure our stories resonate across different cultures and school settings?

Micky’s Feedback:

The student who gave us feedback felt that our work had emotional depth and a clear structure, making it highly relevant to middle and high school audiences. He particularly noted our excellent application of multimedia learning principles. However, he suggested improving the transitions between videos, as the shift from “Understanding Bullying” to “Speaking Up” can seem abrupt. He suggested adding a brief text prompt or visual cue at the beginning of each video and a summary at the end to reinforce key learning points.

Team Reflection

Our team believes that the prototype effectively achieves both educational and emotional resonance. The combination of animation, narration, and concise text effectively reduces cognitive load, aligning with Mayer’s (2009) “Principle of Consistency.” Furthermore, the visuals and narration complement each other, strengthening learners’ emotional resonance.

Based on feedback, we plan to make the following modifications:

Since our videos are simple, complete stories, and based on the feedback we received, we needed to improve the coherence between each video, we decided to add some bridging content to the next video at the end of each video to achieve better continuity.

We decided early in the video’s development to minimize textual content, preferring to let the visuals speak for themselves. Later in the production process, we decided to incorporate text where necessary.

We also adjusted the voiceover’s tone, reducing it to short, reflective sentences to enhance personalization and emotional engagement.

Individual Reflection

Fan’s reflection

For this project, all members worked together on almost all parts. Although there were inevitable problems with efficiency, we believe that this can bring more ideas and optimization directions to the project. However, I still feel that we still need more feedback from others. After receiving feedback from other students,, I discovered many areas for improvement in the content our team had created. We’ve tried incorporating these suggestions, and along the way, we’ve discovered even more interesting ideas. However, many ideas never made it into our project, either because they took too long to achieve the desired results or because we lacked the expertise to implement them. Therefore, the submitted version still requires significant revisions. However, I don’t see this as a bad thing. The process of revising my project has taught me that good design and instruction require openness, adaptability, and a focus on meaningful learning outcomes. With each iteration of my project, I learn something about how to achieve excellent design. This feels similar to what I discussed in Substantive Post #2: rather than striving for “perfection the first time,” it’s better to view each version as an ongoing process—through testing, reflection, and refinement, continuously optimizing based on understanding learners’ needs.

Micky’s reflection

I found this project quite challenging, as we were required to produce three videos under one minute long. Although we had planned everyone’s tasks ahead of time, efficiency remained a challenge. We encountered some difficulties during execution and couldn’t quite complete the project as planned. Based on feedback, I feel our plan was somewhat lacking and we didn’t execute it perfectly. Our team’s ideas and content were still somewhat flawed and needed improvement. Due to time constraints, we couldn’t fully capture many of our ideas. Due to our lack of specialized expertise, we were limited to creating simple videos to illustrate our ideas. As the project progressed, our team encountered many disagreements, such as whether certain sentences should be added directly to the images or later in the captions, and whether the voiceover should be faster or slower. However, we ultimately reached a common goal and have been refining it. I believe that further refinement will help us create even better articles. Through constant testing and reflection, we are constantly refining our posts. While not perfect, we will continue to optimize our team’s collaboration and hands-on skills to achieve better results.

Reference

University of Victoria Educational Technology. (2025, October 6). Design Process. EDCI 337. https://edtechuvic.ca/edci337/2025/10/06/design-process/

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press

Adrian Granchelli. (2025, October 6). Design Process. https://edtechuvic.ca/edci337/2025/10/06/design-process/