1. Comics for Learning: Developing a Unique Instructional Technology
through Cross-Departmental Collaboration
Jennifer Poggiali
Instructional Technologies Librarian
Lehman College, CUNY
February 13, 2013

2. Why use comics as instructional technologies?

3. Why collaborate to create instructional technologies?

4. Why collaborate with artists to create instructional technologies?

5. Old Agenda Comics as instructional “technologies”
Case study: The Researchers Begins!
Read comic
Group work
How we did it
Wrap up and questions

6. Old Agenda Comics as instructional “technologies”
Case study: The Researchers Begins!
Read comic
Group work (groan?)
How we did it
Wrap up and questions

7. New and Improved Agenda
Project overview
Case study: The Researchers Begins!
Read comic
Group discussion
Collaboration—who brings what to the table
Future plans
Wrap up and questions

8. Lehman College City University of New York (Bronx)
Senior Liberal Arts College
~12,000 students
~9,600 undergrads

9. Art Department BA in Studio Art and Art History BFA in Art
BS in Computer Graphics and Imaging (CGI)

10. When Life Gives You Lehman…
First library web comic
Developed
Collaboration with Art Department and student intern

11. I like art! The last comic I read: Amazing Spider-Man #312?
February 1989!!!
I like art!

12. The Students
The Team
The Artists
The Librarians

13. Read / Pair / Share Online audience: take your pick!
Left side of room: Liz and her friends are hanging out on the Lehman campus when... Read:
Right side of room: Liz and Francisco speak with a librarian. Liz needs to research diabetes, because her mother has just been diagnosed with it. Read:
Online audience: take your pick!

14. Read / Pair / Share In-person audience: Find a partner and discuss:
Learning opportunities embedded in the comic
Learning opportunities enabled by the comic.
Online audience: share ideas in chat

15. A collaboration is working when you can’t remember
My one aphorism for you:
A collaboration is working
when you can’t remember
who came up with what idea.

16. What the artists brought:
Practical contributions:
Students
Equipment (computer labs, Creative Suite, Wacom Cintiqs)
Knowledge of comic art and conventions
Ability to guide students’ art-making

17. Totally different way of
thinking and working

18. What the students brought:
Student perspective
Fresh ideas
Enthusiasm
Artistic skill

19. What the librarians brought:
Material / purpose
Opportunity for experimentation
Respect

20. Up next? Increase collaborators Art history class CGI class
By Melissa Puma
Increase collaborators
Art history class
CGI class
Make the project sustainable
Grant funding
Administrative support
Assessment
Activities
Marketing
Animation…?

21. Other library and info lit comics
Tales from the Public Domain: BOUND BY LAW?
Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law School, 2006
University Libraries Comics
Bowling Green State University (Ohio), 2009
Library of the Living Dead
McPherson College (Kansas), 2011
Legends of the Library Ninjas
Kansas State University Salina & Kansas Wesleyan University, 2012

22. References
Draper, C. A., & Reidel, M. (2011). One nation, going graphic: Using graphic novels to promote critical literacy in social studies classrooms. Ohio Social Studies Review, 47(2), Herbst, P., Chazan, D., Chen, C.-L., Chieu, V.-M., & Weiss, M. (2011). Using comics-based representations of teaching, and technology, to bring practice to teacher education courses. ZDM Mathematics Education, 43, Hoover, S. (2011). The case for graphic novels. Communications In Information Literacy, 5(2), McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York, NY: HarperPerennial. Rapp, D. N. (2011). Comic books' latest plot twist: Enhancing literacy instruction. Phi Delta Kappan, 93(4),