Comics in Education: Engaging Visual Narratives for Learning

Education should be anything but monotonous. Finding different ways to engage and motivate your students should be the responsibility of all teachers and educators. You must approach different subject matters through different teaching aids, tools, and strategies. Not to mention that you should pay attention to those who are visual, kinesthetic, and auditory learners.

Comics can be a brilliant resource in education, and not just for visual learners. Everyone enjoys breaking the monotony of the typical learning environment and using something atypical to learn and acquire skills. Below, we’ll show you how comics in education can make a difference as a visual narrative for learning.

• Tell a Story

Any new subject matter or unknown teaching material needs to be introduced carefully. If you don’t catch the students’ attention immediately, you might lose them for good.

Comics can be used to introduce virtually any new topic or subject matter in a fun and engaging way. Presenting a story about the class materials through comics will make it:

• easier to understand
• simpler to memorize
• more interesting
• more engaging

Studies have shown that learners manage to retain 65% of what they’ve learned visually, as opposed to just 10% of what they’ve learned through listening or writing. Students will be far more involved in reading or listening to a comic than having their teacher present the lesson, just like dozens of times before.

• Presenting a Chronology

So many school subjects require the students to understand how certain procedures go or what is the chronology of events. In what order did things happen in a historic battle? What are the steps to cause a chemical reaction? What are the steps to complete a mathematical operation correctly?

All of this, and so much more, can be explained using comics.

Not only will the material be more fun to learn, but the students will find it way simpler to memorize the necessary information. 

Teachers can even encourage students to use this strategy when they’re studying on their own. They could draw little comics as study notes and use them to store information.

• Learning Vocabulary

Comics can work wonders for language learners who need to acquire new vocabulary quickly. It can be hard just to remember these new words by heart, especially when there’s no context. 

But comics give the learners a chance to create actual conversations and narratives in which the new words can be used. After the students memorize the words, they can use them in more complex settings, like essays and academic papers. WritingUniverse is another great resource for learning how to best write an essay.

In addition to language learning, comics can be used the same way for profession-specific vocabulary that people learn in their native language. For example, there are so many new words for students of medicine, finance, or law. So much new terminology can get overwhelming. Comics can do the trick here as well.

• Role-Play

For younger students, role-play is an activity that makes the whole class engaged in the lesson. Role play implies that students take on different roles and play various characters in front of the class. The goal is to learn through drama activities and immerse yourself in the subject matter.

Comics are a great foundation for role-play. Either the teacher can present the students with a ready-to-use comic, or the students can create their own. Alternatively, teachers can leave a comic with an open end and ask the students to finish it.

Once they do, they get to act it out to the rest of the class and help everyone better understand the lesson.

• Boost Creativity

Finally, creativity is a valuable skill for learners of any kind since it makes the brain more active and alert. Awakening creativity, however, isn’t always a simple assignment. 

But, assigning your students the task of creating their own comic about the lesson you’re working on can be a brilliant way to shake them up. Make sure the assignment is age-appropriate, and no one feels like you’re underestimating them.

Students could work in pairs or even groups to come up with the best storyline and visuals for their comic. Then, the groups could present their work to one another and thus go through the materials seamlessly. These comics can then grow to become more serious presentations, and there are education themes that would be great for those students and teachers working in WordPress.

• Final Thoughts

Comics may not be the first thing that pops into your mind when you’re thinking about education aids. But, once you take a closer look, you can see that there are so many different ways in which comics can be used in a classroom. Teachers can choose the best methods to incorporate comics into their lessons based on the group and student preferences.

We hope this inspires you to follow through and bring more comics to classrooms everywhere.