Teach a simple idea/concept with a comic

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MML Challenge #1: Educational Comics

Designer: ​Raquel Slotten Email: ​[email protected] Designer:​ Sarah Gauvin Email:​ ​[email protected] Phase 1– Understand (discover, interpret, & specify): (5 marks) 1.1 ​ Learning Challenge This comic strip aims to inform readers of the negative impact that single-use plastics have on the environment and how they can help minimize that impact by making small changes in their everyday lives. 1.2 ​ Project Context

In today’s world, there is an imperative need to find ways to make positive environmental impacts and sustainable changes; especially with regard to single use plastics. Currently, we are creating large amounts of plastic pollution which has negative consequences for biota (plants and animals of a given ecosystem) and the environment (Conchubhair ​et al ​, 2019). As such, it is important to find ways to inform individuals of all ages of the negative impacts that our actions can have on our environment and the organisms that live in them. Furthermore, it is of even greater importance that we are sharing solutions to these problems. Our passion to explore this topic was inspired by Raquel’s interest in marine biology and sustainable sciences and Sarah’s passion for teaching science in elementary schools.

When one considers that the children of today are the future of tomorrow, the need to

engage children in conversations about sustainability becomes obvious. Having worked with many grade 5 students, I (Sarah) firmly believe that elementary aged children have a wonderful capacity to make changes in their social, political, and environmental circles when they are empowered to do so. As such, this project is designed to be a teaching resource that can be used to engage elementary-aged students in a discussion about conservation, the interconnectedness of nature, and the importance of being environmental stewards.

Although this project will likely address topics that are relevant to many grade levels,

from K-12, it is specifically aimed to help cover two aspects of the BC science curriculum for grade 5, which are: sustainability, and First Peoples’ concepts of interconnectedness in the environment (British Columbia Ministry of Education, n.d.). We recognize that, within a classroom of fifth graders, students may come from a variety of different backgrounds. Some may come from families that are knowledgeable about the impact of pollution and why it is important to recycle, whereas others may have never heard of this concept. Thus, this comic will be a tool used to help ​every ​ student, no matter their knowledge level, understand the impacts of pollution.

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1.3 ​ Point of View Statement Young children need to learn the impacts of negative environmental practices so that they can develop an understanding of the importance of conservation strategies and strive to put them into practice in their day-to-day lives. 1.4 ​ Learning Outcomes and Sub-Outcomes Main Learning Outcome: At the conclusion of this activity, students will be able to recognize that our actions as humans have impacts on other living and nonliving things, thus we need to be empathetic and work together to find solutions to problems.

Sub Outcomes (Tasks):

This comic also helps children develop other more specific knowledge and skills. At the conclusion of this activity, participants will be able to:

● Use visuals and dialogue as a means of gathering scientific data. ● Summarize and analyze the key points of the comic (i.e. what interconnectedness

means, why single use plastics are harmful, and ways to reduce single use plastics). ● Discuss and brainstorm other ways to help reduce the use of single-use plastics. ● Make connections between the story and self in order to evaluate their own littering

practices and make changes if necessary. ● Identify and discuss the impact that single use plastic has on the ecosystem

Phase 2 – Plan (ideate, sketch, elaborate): (5 marks) 2.1 ​ Brainstormed Ideas

In order to help children understand the interconnectedness of all living and nonliving things and the importance of being environmental stewards, the goal is to create a comic that explores the impact of one single-use plastic item such as a non-compostable cup. 2.2 ​ Rough Plan

Rough Idea:

The comic will begin by having a human carelessly littering. In response, part of nature, such as a tree, will speak to the human and explain how that one small action can really hurt an entire ecosystem. To conclude the comic, the human will ask what he/she can do to help and together the human and the tree will come up with some solutions.

We hope this project will act as an excellent hook to a lesson or unit on conservation.

This comic could be read all at once to help students understand the impacts of single-use plastics and some ways we can help. Alternately, the first two pages, which will outline the problem of single use plastics, could be read and then students can analyze the situation and brainstorm their own solutions before reading the solutions offered in the comic.​ ​This comic strip could also be used as an example if you wish to have children create comic strips informing others about ways that humans are harming the planet and ways that everyone can help the planet.

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Comic Storyboard Plan:

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2.3 ​ Solution and Connections

The comic was created to address the negative impact single use plastic has when it enters the ecosystem, while also explaining the concept of interconnectedness, and introducing practical ways that everyone can help reduce the amount of single use plastics entering our environment. Thoughtful integration of multimedia principles was used throughout the process of creating this comic in order to make a more effective learning resource for children. With regard to the story itself, three of the multimedia principles were focused on. First, the “keep it simple principle” was used to keep the language, storyline, and content simple enough that they could be easily understood by children who do not have any prior knowledge of the topics explored. Secondly, the “character's principle” was considered when selecting the characters in the story. The human character was meant to be relatable to the children and the tree as a character was purposefully chosen to bring an element of fun and fantasy (as trees cannot usually talk), while also representing nature. Thirdly, the “structuring principle” was used to help create the storyline itself. When you read the comic created, you will notice that the story first introduces the problem, then explains some details about the problem, and finally concludes with some solutions (Pelton, 2017).

With regard to minimizing cognitive distractions and maximizing efficiency, the signaling

principle and multimodality principle were primarily used. The signaling principle was what encouraged the use of speech bubbles that are different colours and shapes as this helps cue readers as to which character is speaking. The modality principle can be seen primarily in the use of images that connect directly to the dialogue in some frames. When thinking about designing, storytelling, and problem solving, the most influential principles for our process were the ideation and plan script and storyboard principles. These principles guided our process in collaboratively brainstorming relevant issues of interest to both of us, selecting one we felt most passionate about, coming up with a possible storyline, and adapting it several times in response to each other's thoughts and ideas before coming up with a final storyboard to guide the creation of our actual comic (Pelton, 2017).

Finally, we used a few of the practical consideration principles to tweak our comic once it

was created in order to improve its overall quality. For example, we used the interactivity improves affective response principle, by including a student challenge at the end of our comic. Lastly, the copyright principle guided our actions in selecting and referencing the open-source online images that we used in our comic (Pelton, 2017).

Phase 3 – Carry out the plan (build a prototype & post on the Challenge Forum): ** See forum posts Phase 4 – Engage in Peer Feedback on Challenge Forum (part of forum assignment): ** ​See forum posts

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Phase 5 – Look back (reflect and refine): (5 marks) 5.1 Reflections Raquel’s Reflection:

I think that having the opportunity to work on this project with a partner was a great way to build collaboration and communication skills. Being able to brainstorm a topic and bounce ideas off of one another was a useful tool to narrow down a topic that interested both myself and my partner. It was wonderful that Sarah and I have similar educational backgrounds in science and education so that we could make a comic of interest to both of us. Moreover, using a comic as an educational tool is a method I have not yet used, but I enjoyed learning how effective this media can be in an educational setting. On the other hand, one thing I would want to change in our comic would be adding in a bit more detail. The comic was meant to be a brief overview of a small conservation topic, such as the impact of plastic. In the future, I think it would be beneficial to expand on the topic and dig deeper into the multiple effects this has. One solution to this is to provide the students with an addition sheet providing more detail on the impact that single use plastic has.

Our peers provided a lot of positive feedback which was nice to read and reflect upon. In

an educational class and institution, I believe that it is important to provide both positive and constructive feedback. In general, I find that when you edit someone's work, people focus on what needs improvement and not what has been done well. With that said, it is nice to have the opportunity to share both positive and constructive feedback to help our classmates grow and be recognized for their great work. One of our classmates had a good suggestion on our background colour. Originally the background was a bright red, however after reading that this made the comic hard to focus on, we were able to make revisions to ensure the comic is appealing to many students. Furthermore, another classmate mentioned that we could also educate students on the effects of plastic in terrestrial environments. In my opinion that was a great suggestion. Unfortunately for the assignment we had to narrow our topic down to the effects of plastic in the ocean. However, for the future I think that this comic could be used as a basis for a class project. For example, students could make their own comics on the effects of plastic in many different types of ecosystems and settings, using our comic as an idea of what they can do. Overall, it was wonderful to have our peers write many nice words about our comic while still providing some ideas on how we could change our comic to make it an effective learning tool for the students.

There are many strengths that this form of multimedia has. One strength is that it allows learners to learn through both imagery and text, allowing them to use two different learning strategies. Furthermore, this media is also a fun and unique way to get students engaged with the topic. Moreover, I like that this multimedia encourages concise writing, allowing it to be easily followed and understood. Lastly, this comic allows the teacher to create many assignments such as group analysis, creating their own comic, listing the main topic and so forth. One of the limitations from this assignment is that it takes a lot of work to create a comic. This is because you have to plan out the story line, the photos, the message and ensure that the comic is both educational and entertaining. This would not be a manageable educational tool to use for every topic in the BC curriculum. However, if this is used after every few topics then that would be manageable and an effective learning tool.

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I think Sarah was an amazing partner to work with and I was grateful for all her effort throughout this project. She had a lot of ideas and had previously used “comic life” before which was beneficial to have her teach me how to use the different aspects. Furthermore, Sarah did a great job at providing an outline for each section so we could work together and independently on this assignment. One suggestion for the future would be to plan out who was going to do which sections at the beginning to make the preparation easier. One challenge was communicating through online media. As this is an online course, it is hard to work face to face as Sarah and I live in different places. To overcome this challenge, I think it would be beneficial to utilize online platforms like Skype to help with the communication. Although, I think this was a great opportunity to work on effective communication, and I believe Sarah and I were able to effectively communicate using Facebook and Google Docs. Overall, I was grateful to have such an amazing partner throughout this project and I would be grateful to have the opportunity to work with Sarah again. Sarah’s Reflection:

I learned a great deal from collaboratively creating a digital comic these past 2 weeks. All in all, it was a positive experience. Creating this comic alongside Raquel was helpful because together the two of us possess knowledge about elementary education, the BC curriculum, marine biology, and modern-day conservation issues. This enabled us to bounce ideas off of one another and explore the complex, and highly relevant scientific conversation concepts in a way that we feel will be attainable for children. I also found it helpful that I have experience working with grade 5 students, as it gave me context and understanding of the average comprehension and reading abilities of children of our target age demographic. Furthermore, having had a little bit of experience working with comic life before made the creation of the comic itself much simpler.

After receiving feedback from our peers, I gathered that our comic was fairly effective in informing readers about some of the harms of single-use plastics. However, there were some things that we improved upon. For example, we added our names to our comic in order to identify ourselves as the authors and illustrators. Secondly, we received a few comments that the background color we had originally chosen was too visually distracting. This identified that we had not taken into account the coherence principle which explains that you do not want to include extraneous detail that distracts the intended audience. As such, we changed the background to a simpler one. In addition, we bolded the key vocabulary in order to help readers more easily identify the key ideas within the story. Some other changes that I would consider making, given more time, would be to explore digitally creating our own images. At times I found it challenging to capture the exact images we wanted through photography. By making our own digital images, we would have taken away the need to cite sources and had more freedom to include the exact images to best convey the story. Finally, if using this comic in a classroom setting, I think it would be helpful to create a few more comics to go alongside it, either exploring other ways that single-use plastics harm the environment (i.e. hurting animals, polluting the soil, etc.) or exploring other negative human impacts on the environment (i.e. creation of carbon emissions and non-compostable wastes, overfishing, invasive species, etc.). These comics could be used as provocations to stimulate student thinking before a more complex unit on conservation. However, I do believe this comic could be used in isolation, as it introduces a lot of great points and could be a starting place for students to come up with their own wonderings about human impacts on the environment. This could, in turn, be the start of an inquiry unit in

Note, groups should create a common reflection for 5.1, and then add separate paragraphs for 5.2. Although both were great!

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which students research and explain environmental problems and solutions in a comic or in another format such as a short video.

Although working with comics can pose some challenges such as not being able to fit a lot of information on a page, I see so many benefits to not only using them as a means to share information but also as a way to have students express ideas. By limiting the amount of written text you can include, creating comics forces you to think about other forms of communication including visual, sound effects, body language, etc. In turn, comics can make content more accessible to less proficient readers and encourage students to analyze more than just words. One potential challenge I can see with using comics as an educational tool is that the non-formal, colloquial language often used in comics can be challenging for non-native English speakers to understand and even more challenging for them to produce. This is an important factor to be aware of, especially if a large portion of your class has learned English as an additional language. If this is the case, you may need to spend more time explaining the comic and/or scaffolding the comic creation process.

Finally, I really enjoyed working with Raquel on this comic as she offered many great ideas and contributions throughout the process. Of course, when working alongside others, there are always challenges, one of the main ones in this assignment being that we do not live in the same city or have the same time schedule. Thus, we had to make use of online communication tools such as Google Apps and Facebook to communicate. Nevertheless, I feel we worked well as a team. After brainstorming together, I created the first part of the storyboard and Raquel completed the remaining portions. This was a really effective way to meld our ideas together via distance. We then drafted a good copy storyboard which gave a clear idea of the images we needed so that Raquel could take the photographs required. After this, I combined the photos into a comic using comic life and we made edits and revisions until we were both happy with the prototype. I think this approach worked fairly well because we were both keen to share ideas and take feedback from one another. In the future, some things I think we could do to make collaboration more effective would be to set up a clear schedule of when we are doing each portion of the assignment and who will do which parts. In addition, I think it would have been helpful to individually brainstorm ideas early on and then video chat to share those ideas and make a decision on the best ones, as it is hard to fully share and understand ideas over messenger apps. All around I really enjoyed working with Raquel and I would be happy to work with her again.

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References British Columbia Ministry of Education. (n.d.). ​BC’s New Curriculum: Science 5 ​. Retrieved from

https://guides.library.ualberta.ca/apa-citation-style/curriculum Conchubhair, D., Fitzhenry, D., Lusher, A., King, A., Van Emmerik, T., Lebreton, L., O'Rourke,

E. (2019). Joint effort among research infrastructures to quantify the impact of plastic debris in the ocean. ​Environmental Research Letters, ​14(6), 65001. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab17ed

Pelton, T. & Francis-Pelton, L. (2017). Multimedia, Design, and Storytelling Principles

Supporting the Creation of Learning Resources. In P. Resta & S. Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2017 (pp. 900-905). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

Rhodes, C. J. (2018). Plastic pollution and potential solutions. ​Science Progress​, 101(3),

207-260. doi:10.3184/003685018X15294876706211