Comic books employ a complex interplay of text and images that gives them the potential to effectively convey concepts and motivate student engagement. This makes comics an appealing option for educators trying to improve science literacy about pressing societal issues involving science and technology. Here, we report results from the first systematic assessment of how a science comic book can affect student learning and attitudes about biology. We used pre- and postinstruction instruments to measure students' attitudes about biology, attitudes about comics, and content knowledge about evolution before and after using the science comic book Optical Allusions in their classes. On the preinstruction instrument, nonmajors reported the lowest scores on the content test and attitude surveys relative to the other groups. However, on the postinstruction instrument, nonmajors' content scores and attitudes showed a statistically significant improvement after using the comic book, particularly among those with lower content knowledge at the start of the semester. The improvement in attitudes about biology was correlated to attitudes about comics, suggesting that the comic may have played a role in engaging and shaping student attitudes in a positive way.

Are comic books an effective way to engage nonmajors in learning and appreciating science

Visual narratives, such as comics and animations, are becoming increasingly popular as a tool for science education and communication. Combining the benefits of visualization with powerful metaphors and character-driven narratives, comics have the potential to make scientific subjects more accessible and engaging for a wider audience. While many authors have experimented with this medium, empirical research on the effects of visual narratives in science communication remains scarce. This review summarizes the available evidence across disciplines, highlighting the cognitive mechanisms that may underlie the effects of visual narratives. Abstract

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The potential of comics in science communication

Data comics for data-driven storytelling are inspired by the visual language of comics and aim to communicate insights in data through visualizations. While comics are widely known, few examples of data comics exist and there has not been any structured analysis nor guidance for their creation. We introduce data-comic design-patterns, each describing a set of panels with a specific narrative purpose, that allow for rapid storyboarding of data comics while showcasing their expressive potential. Our patterns are derived from i) analyzing common patterns in infographics, datavideos, and existing data comics, ii) our experiences creating data comics for different scenarios. Our patterns demonstrate how data comics allow an author to combine the best of both worlds: spatial layout and overview from infographics as well as linearity and narration from videos and presentations.

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Design Patterns for Data Comics

It is increasingly important for all citizens, and especially youth, to understand how vi- ruses impact our health, communities and environment. Particularly for youth less interested in tra- ditional science learning materials, comics may provide a way to engage teenagers with scientific in - formation about viruses. We compared the impacts of different formats of educational materials on teenagers' knowledge of, attitudes toward, and engagement with information about viruses. High school students (N = 873) were randomly assigned to read either a high quality comic or essay about viruses. Latent class analysis grouped youth into one of four categories that captured a range from low to high science identity. We compared material type (comic/essay) and science identity (low to high) on knowledge, attitudes and engagement. There were no comic/essay differences on knowl- edge, nor on attitudes about the importance of or interest in viruses. Across all levels of science iden- tity, however, teenagers in the comic group were significantly more likely to want to read more sim - ilar materials than teenagers in the essay group, thus indicating more engagement. This effect was more pronounced among youth in the low compared to the higher identity categories. Our findings support the notion that comics can appeal to a wider audience of learners than traditional essays while still resulting in similar knowledge scores. This suggests that comics can be an important and effective tool to engage a broad spectrum of youth with science learning materials.

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Engaging Teenagers with Science Through Comics

In this paper, we explore graph comics as a medium to communicate changes in dynamic networks. While previous re- search has focused on visualizing dynamic networks for data exploration, we want to see if we can take advantage of the visual expressiveness and familiarity of comics to present and explain temporal changes in networks to an audience. To understand the potential of comics as a storytelling medium, we first created a variety of comics during a 3 month structured design process, involving domain experts from public education and neuroscience. This process led to the definition of 8 design factors for creating graph comics and propose design solutions for each. Results from a qualitative study suggest that a general audience is quickly able understand complex temporal changes through graph comics, provided with minimal textual annotations and no training.

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Telling Stories about Dynamic Networks with Graph Comics

Comics are a popular art form especially among children and as such provide a potential medium for science education and communication. In an attempt to present science comics in a museum exhibit I found many science themed comics and graphic books. Here I attempt to provide an overview of already available comics that communicate science, the genre of ‘science comics’. I also provide a quick literature review for evidence that comics can indeed be efficiently used for promoting scientific literacy via education and communication. I address the issue of lack of studies about science comics and their readers and suggest some possible reasons for this as well as some questions that could be addressed in future studies on the effect these comics may have on science communication.

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Science comics as tools for science education and communication: a brief, exploratory study

Stacking long short-term memory (LSTM) cells or gated recurrent units (GRUs) as part of a recurrent neural network (RNN) has become a standard approach to solving a number of tasks ranging from lan...

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Rotational Unit of Memory: A Novel Representation Unit for RNNs with Scalable Applications

The rise of artificial intelligence has recently led to bots writing real news stories about sports, finance and politics. As yet, bots have not turned their attention to science, and some people still mistakenly think science is too complex for bots to write about. In fact, a small number of insiders are now applying AI algorithms to summarise scientific research papers and automatically turn them into simple press releases and news stories. Could the science beat be next in line for automation, potentially making many science reporters — and even editors — superfluous to science communication through digital press? Meanwhile, the science journalism community remains largely unaware of these developments, and is not engaged in directing AI developments in ways that could enhance reporting. Abstract

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AI writing bots are about to revolutionise science journalism: we must shape how this is done

Science magazines have an important role in disseminating scientific knowledge into the public sphere and in discussing the broader scope affected by scientific research such as technology, ethics and politics. Student-run science magazines afford opportunities for future scientists, communicators, politicians and others to practice communicating science. The ability to translate ‘scientese’ into a jargon-free discussion is rarely easy: it requires practice, and student magazines may provide good practice ground for undergraduate and graduate science students wishing to improve their communication skills. Publishing research articles in peer-reviewed journals is also an acquired skill and many undergraduate students lack the knowledge, confidence and skills to publish their work. Once again, practice is available in student peer-reviewed journals. These are popular in the USA and have recently become more popular in Europe, especially at the UK universities. These journals are usually aimed at undergraduates interested in staying in academia, and give them the opportunity to publish their research while learning about science publishing and science research at the same time. In this paper I report on the exploratory results of an Internet search made for student science journals and magazines in the USA and Europe. I describe these publications and discuss their role in the communication of science and science education whilst acknowledging the current lack of academic studies about such publications. I also note the recent rise in their popularity in Europe and predict an increase in such publications in the near future.

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Student science publishing: an exploratory study of undergraduate science research journals and popular science magazines in the US and Europe

Merkati (Suricata suricatta) su mali, dru{tveni sisavci mesojedi u ~ijim dru{tvenim grupama jedna ili vi{e `ivotinja stoji na 'stra`arskoj du`nosti' na povi{enoj podlozi, pretra`uju}i okoli{ zbog predatora, dok ostatak grupe traga za hranom. Ovdje po prvi put kvantitativno opisujem na kakvim mjestima i koliko visoko merkati stra`are. Klju~ne rije~i: stra`arenje, stra`arska du`nost, merkati, budnost, pretra`ivanje okoli{a, dru{tvene `ivotinje

/pdf/first-quantitative-description-of-sentinel-posts-in-wild-3hn544riz9.pdf

Mico Tatalovic

Papers

Science comics as tools for science education and communication: a brief, exploratory study

Rotational Unit of Memory: A Novel Representation Unit for RNNs with Scalable Applications

AI writing bots are about to revolutionise science journalism: we must shape how this is done

Student science publishing: an exploratory study of undergraduate science research journals and popular science magazines in the US and Europe

First quantitative description of sentinel posts in wild meerkats