The Production of Science Comics To Improve Undergraduate Engineering

Lucas J. T. Landherr Department of Chemical Engineering

Northeastern University

Given the rapid expansion of the undergraduate chemical engineering student population, new educational tools are needed to maintain a high level of education. Larger class sizes have made it difficult for students to connect with their instructors; having multiple sections and multiple instructors has created the potential for varying quality of student learning. These problems are complicated by the highly theoretical nature of many complex course concepts, which are particularly difficult for visual learners to grasp. New means of addressing these challenges are necessary in order to continue to meet the needs of modern students and current university dynamics.

Through an internal Provost grant designated to advance undergraduate education, science comics were made to address concepts in multiple courses and implemented into the chemical engineering curriculum. The comics were written based on instructor lectures, common student questions, and current course curricula, then plotted out into dialogue. Professional artists were then commissioned to draw and produce the visual comics from the scripts. Completed comics addressed complex theoretical concepts including data analysis and uncertainty. The comics were provided in both print and digital form to students and utilized as an additional educational tool to supplement the instructors’ current teaching methods. The visual design was meant to present the interaction between a professor and a student in the form of a classroom lecture that was captured through both words and pictures and could be revisited at a later time as needed by the student.

Students were surveyed after reading the comic and given time to reflect on their experience in the course. Overall, student response was extremely positive to the science comics when used in the classroom. The surveys revealed students felt more confident in their knowledge and understanding of the course concepts after reading, and some cited the science comics when writing technical papers. Upon sharing the science comics to a wider audience, including educators at other institutions, over twenty colleges and high schools requested permission to implement the comics in their classrooms.

Initial use of the science comics has indicated that they are a popular and beneficial educational tool to use in the classroom, and, depending on the subject matter, have widespread appeal for use by professors and teachers across majors and courses.

Continued research is in development with further comics discussing matters of PID controls, heat exchangers, and fugacity.Corresponding Author: Lucas J. T. Landherr,l.landherr@neu.edu

Introduction/Background One of the major obstacles to current effective engineering education is the highly theoretical nature of some core concepts students must learn. While students

are traditionally provided with examples of real-world applications, in-class demonstrations, and/or hands-on experimentation in order to establish better connection between the students and the instructed classroom theory, the depth and complexity of the central

equations these concepts are based upon can cause traditional attempts to be unsuccessful. Further complicating the problem, some theoretical concepts do not have obvious visual representation that might be readily shown to students to deepen their understanding or provide a physical basis for the concept involved. It is important to note that the benefits to improving and broadening visual instruction in education are not just restricted to a small set of learners. In terms of reviewing written material, studies have shown that combining text with images improves retention of the information,1 and multimedia presentations of concepts allow for better transfer of the gained knowledge towards solving problems.2 So in seeking means to improve scientific education, developing better visual techniques will help better communicate the concepts to the students, and help all students become more engaged with the theoretical concepts.3-5 These problems can also be further complicated with the increasing class sizes of students. Within Northeastern University, the total population of chemical engineering undergraduate students across all five years of education has increased from 283 students in 2012 to 587 in 2016. This dramatic growth has induced substantially larger sizes as well as many more sections of each course needing to be offered. This problem is coupled with Northeastern’s co-op program, in which the majority of students take a co-op position every other semester; with half of the student body in class and half the student body working at any given time, every undergraduate course needs to be offered in both semesters. As a result, students receive education in larger class sizes from a wider range of faculty instructors, meaning that teaching styles can induce varying levels of quality of learning. Thus, new educational tools need to be developed that will allow for consistent education across multiple sections and allow for material to be effectively delivered to large class sizes. In addressing the problem of presenting complex equations and theory to large and differing class sizes, one of the best possibilities to incorporate visual media while still utilizing text is the production of science comics. With respect to the problem of improving visual learning, comics provide a graphic depiction and are presented with text to construct a full narrative; through dialogue between characters, description associated with the images, and/or captions of graphic art, deeper concepts and meaning can be presented in a novel manner with which students can directly connect.6 In fact, comics have been successfully used in science education before. Science comics have been implemented in classrooms to help explain medical

techniques,7-8 describe solar-terrestrial environment such as global warming and geomagnetism,9 and improve student attitudes and understanding of biology.10 Science comics have been produced address synthetic biology,11 nature,12 polymeric science,13 mathematics,14 and a wide range of other scientific disciplines. It can be thus inferred that science comics, if written and drawn effectively, could be effectively implemented and utilized in engineering classrooms at Northeastern, improving overall student learning and quality of visual learning.

Through the support of an internal Provost grant at Northeastern for Advancing Undergraduate Teaching and Learning, science comics were developed to address several advanced engineering concepts. The comics, written to address the engineering concepts and drawn on commission by professional artists, were utilized in multiple sections and classrooms to help supplement the undergraduate curricula.

Methodology

The science comics were written based on current chemical engineering instruction to address specific concepts that students had frequently found to be difficult to grasp. The comics were written with the purpose of establishing a lesson delivered by a professor or a discussion between a professor and students, as is traditionally utilized in the classroom as a means of disseminating course concepts, as well as the purpose of providing a visual depiction of instruction that students could return to at a later time. By creating or re-creating a lesson in the form of a comic, the student could combine the separate elements of classroom education and textbook learning. Comic scripts were blocked out with scenes described and dialogue written before they were provided to the professional artists. Consultation with the artists led to fine-tuning and an overall final product that maximized the conjunction of the visual depiction with the scientific conceptual text. The drawings were designed to be as eye-catching and expressive as possible, helping to hold onto a reader’s interest and create more of a connection for the reader with the scientific content. (Note: all comics were written under the creative pseudonym of the author of this paper.) Comics were developed for multiple chemical engineering courses at Northeastern, including Unit Operations Laboratory I and II (covering data analysis and uncertainty)16,17, Process Controls (covering PID controllers)18, Transport Processes II (covering heat exchangers),19 and Thermodynamics II (covering

fugacity)20. Examples of the data analysis and uncertainty comics are depicted in Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1. Page 1 of 5 of the “Data Analysis” science comic.16

Figure 2. Page 1 and 2 of 6 of the “Uncertainty” science comic.17

The comics were provided in class to the students, printed back-to-back and stapled in the style of a traditional comic book. This physical format was meant to create a presentation students might find approachable and fun, thus helping to supplement the learning within the traditional class format. The science comics were provided to students during lectures on the same topics to again help bridge a connection between the curricula tool and the class.

Analysis This report will focus specifically on the results from the “Data Analysis” and “Uncertainty” science comics. These comics were provided to students in two separate courses of Unit Operations Laboratory I and II, with a total of four sections of each course and approximately 15 students per section. Overall, students responded positively to the comics and found them enjoyable to read and use. In several sections, the students cited them within their references for their laboratory reports as documentation of certain principles and equations, particularly the uncertainty propagation equations. When asked about the implementation of the comics and their usefulness, students’ comments included:

§ “joyful to read” § “well suited to introducing the concept of data

analysis to students who are unfamiliar with this structure of (technical) writing”

§ “helpful, descriptive, not intimidating” § “made the material very easy to understand and

would be good for younger students just starting to learn about data analysis”

§ “very simple, and clear” Within one section, students were asked to evaluate their confidence with the subject matter before and after reading and utilizing the concepts presented within the comics. Students were asked to rate their confidence level on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being equivalent to ‘no confidence’, and 5 being equivalent to ‘very confident’. The responses from 17 students were plotted and are depicted in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Student responses to survey assessing the

quality of the science comics. In response to a separate question of “Do you feel that the comic helped improve your understanding of the subject matter?”, 94.1 percent of student respondents answered positively and encouraged the comics to be used in future courses. With respect to the student performance within the Unit Operations Laboratory I course, students finished the semester with a design project in which they were required to develop a proposal for an experiment that would address one of the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges. Within this proposal, students were required to determine a purpose for their proposed study, develop an experimental and an analytical design, and determine a plan for limiting measurement uncertainty. This proposal was communicated in the form of a written report evaluated by the instructor. Comparing the reports to those evaluated by the instructor in previous iterations of the course, some improvement in performance was observed. On a whole, the average grade increased from 83.0 ± 1.6 to 86.2 ± 1.2. This grade could be broken down into individual components evaluated on a scale of 1 to 10; ‘proper accounting for error/uncertainty’ increased from an average rating of 8.2 to 9.0, and the objectives’ ‘scope of experiment’ increased from an average rating of 8.0 to 9.4. Given the use of different rubrics between course sections, an evaluation of whether or not the science comics improved consistency between classes could not be determined. A shared rubric is currently now in place and will be used as a means of determine further and more detailed analysis over larger class sections in the future. Outside of use at Northeastern University, the comics were presented online and offered free of use to STEM

instructors at other institutions. Professors and teachers at over 20 institutions took advantage of the offer and have brought the science comics as curricula tools into their courses across a range of disciplines. This breadth of use provides the opportunity for a wider range of assessment to be conducted in the future.

Conclusions Initial results have indicated that the science comics have had a small but positive effect on overall student performance and understanding. Student response was highly positive and from self-assessment indicated that students personally felt their understanding increased. Further investigation is necessary to quantify and verify that the student performance and student confidence are equivalent. Current use of the comics in coursework has been to introduce them concurrently with the lesson material. Determining their proper implementation, such as concurrently, prior to the lectures addressing the specific concepts, or at the end of the in-class lectures, require further study. Further comics have been developed, as indicated by examples of the “PID Controllers” and the “Heat Exchangers” comics in Figure 4 and 5. These are currently being utilized in several courses at Northeastern, and student performance and understanding will be assessed in comparison to previous semesters and across different instructors.

Figure 4. Page 4 of 8 of the “PID Controllers” science comic.18

Figure 5. Page 1 of 6 of the “PID Controllers” science comic.19

While it might be perceived that the novelty of using the comics medium to help teach engineering would wear off and become less effective for student learning over exposure, previous studies have shown that students remain engaged and interested after reading and using comics multiple times in science courses.15 Thus, the science comics should remain effective even when used in several courses across students’ education. As a result, further comics will be developed for use throughout the chemical engineering curriculum at Northeastern. Given the continued growth in Northeastern’s chemical engineering undergraduate population and the expansion of the faculty, further implementation and assessment of the science comics on student understanding will be conducted. More cross-comparison between different semesters will be analyzed as well to determine if a more consistent level of education can be provided for all students.

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