Challenge A: Comics

Your goal for this challenge is to individually create an educational comic: an original, 12 – 20 panel comic to teach the reader about some idea or concept through the use of text and image. The subject of the comic can be about anything you want so long as it is educational. Utilize the template here to document all your work

As you complete this project, you will be able to:

• Utilize text and imagery in a complimentary manner
• Evaluate educational comics and make suggestions for improvement
• Iterate on your project with peer feedback to refine and improve your work.
• Engage in design thinking to create multimedia learning projects
• Apply storytelling principles in creating effective learning opportunities

Important Dates

Sharing and helping discussion (5%)

As you work through your project and engage with resources, you will learn a lot that is worth sharing with others.

You are to create a substantive contribution (~250 words) that outlines your discoveries. This can include insights from the readings, other resources, apps, tutorials, or tools. Be sure to explain why what you are sharing is relevant to the project. Please format your contribution as a blog post or document and share it in our Mattermost Sharing and Helping channel.

Participation beyond your substantive post is important, so please engage with others by asking questions, offering help, and responding to posts.

Sharing your prototype

Your prototype is the first draft of your final project. You can share it as a web page, a document with clear project documentation, or a blog post.

The prototype can be a rough sketch of your comic—it doesn’t have to be perfect—or a detailed text description of the words and images. The key is to clearly get your point across.

Along with your prototype, please include your “Understand” and “Plan” phases. These don’t need to be perfect or complete; you’ll have a chance to refine them later. Please utilize this template.

Once you have everything ready, share your prototype with your peers in the Mattermost chat.

Providing Peer Review (5%)

You will be assigned two of your peers prototypes to provide feedback to (~200 words each). The instructor will setup a private channel so only the reviewer, reviewee, and instructor can see the feedback. One of the best ways we can grow individually and as a team is through the process of feedback. Both offering and receiving peer feedback can be hard, scary, and emotional – please consider your words carefully for constructive and actionable comments. Please reach out to your instructor at anytime for any kind of support.

Some prompts for feedback:

Project submission (20%)

This is the final project submission that includes your entire design process from understanding the challenge through planning, peer feedback, and revision. Please share your final project

The components of the final project submission include:

• Understand (Discover, Interpret, Specify) (5%)
  • Define the challenge, context, audience, and learning outcomes
• Plan (Ideate, Sketch, Elaborate) (5%)
  • Develop a solution plan, including a hand-drawn storyboard, script and connections to multimedia theory
• Reflect and Refine from Prototype Feedback (5%)
  • Critical reflection on the peer feedback and the design process as a whole
• Project Artifact (5%)
  • Create a multimedia artifact prototype based on the plan

The process you follow to create your project is where most of your learning occurs, and as a result, the vast majority of your grade will be based on that process. So it is crucial that you record all of your design decisions. The key to success is to work through a clear design process and to justify your choices by referencing class readings and other literature.

Here is a template for you to document your work. This template is designed to guide your team through the design and creation of your project and includes the expected phases listed above.

Examples: Please view past examples here (shared in the course Brightspace shell for privacy reasons).

Resources

You can use any tool or method to create your comic. It can be hand drawn or it can be done digitally. (It does not matter if the program you use has a watermark). If you are creating your comic digitally, you can use any graphics program and know there are comic specific programs available such as Comic Life 3. There are many how-to videos online to support you in making. Please be aware of any privacy concerns when using software and services, see here for more info: FIPPA, Privacy, and Consent Resources.

When using images in your comments, ensure you are meeting copyright.

Why Comics?

Assessment Rubric