(350a) Integrating Student-Created STEM Comics into Chemical Engineering Education

In order to meet the demands of a growing student population, with an increasing number of sections and instructors for every core chemical engineering course, new curricula tools have been developed to help supplement current instruction and provide a stronger and more consistent educational experience for all undergraduates at Northeastern University. Of particular concern has been the need to improve student understanding of more complex, theoretical course concepts that do not have an obvious real-world application or are not traditionally represented in visual form.

Comics represent a growing effort in broader STEM education to utilize a visual-component to improve student interest, confidence, and understanding in the subject matter, and have been used in both formal and informal learning environments. While our efforts on using comics in chemical engineering education over the last five years have observed significant improvement in student engagement with the concepts and moderate improvement with their understanding, dedicated projects for several semesters have shown student-created comics to have a significant impact as well. Student performance on exams has dramatically increased through the presentation of comics as additional learning tools, and further, students have indicated significant improvement in their confidence in addressing the topics. This poster will discuss current efforts in the research and further assessment.