Proof that comics is good fer learnin’

[Jay Hosler]

Hi everyone,

I just thought some of you might find this interesting.

The journal CBE-Life Science Education just published my article Are Comic Books an Effective Way to Engage Nonmajors in Learning an... Although there have been a number of academic papers published that have advocated the use of comics for student literacy, but this one systematically evaluates comics used in teaching. My result show that a) students learn just fine from comics and b) comics can change student opinions of a subject (in this case biology) for the better. This is the culmination of a project that started in 2004 with a grant from the National Science Foundation to create Optical Allusions.

The paper is available for download for free at the journal’s website (click on the title above). This might be useful if you are looking to use comics and need some ammo to convince the administration that comics are worthwhile. We've had that problem at a few our our local schools.

P.S. the answer to the question in the title is “yes”

[Stergios Botzakis]

Thank you for sharing this article. I will definitely use it in my work! :)

[Marek Bennett]

Yay Jay!  Thanks for posting this link!

[KellyAnn Bonnell]

Hey Jay,

We'd love to share your findings with regular classroom teachers on www.popgoestheclassroom. just email me a blog post similiar to this and we'll get it up. [e-mail]

[Ryan Goble]

Jay, thrilled you share this here! Thank you!