Abstract:

This research studies the impact of visual narrative on entrepreneurship education. In recent decades, academics and teaching teams have been investigating new techniques that have an increased impact on learning and maximize the assimilation of concepts. Among the innovative methodologies, visual narrative stands out due to its narrative approach characteristics and its ability to use visual teaching. Comic books can combine texts and images through a sequence of artistic illustrations. This technique allow a story to be transmitted through sequences of panels to a viewer.

The objective of this research is to analyze in depth the advantages of visual narrative in entrepreneurship education. Thus, a comparison will be made between traditional methodologies (textbooks) and visual narrative (comic books) in terms of acquiring competences, considering conditioning variables such as student characteristics. A quantitative methodology analyzes the impact of education techniques depending on willingness, previous entrepreneurial experience of the students and degree of similarity between the comic book characters and the student based on personal data (age, civil status, etc).

An entrepreneurship training program was given to female students of the Business Administration degree during the years 2020 and 2021. One hundred and one learners enrolled on the program, 20 of whom used textbooks and 81 visual narrative (comic books). To analyze the acquired competences (concepts, skills and attitudes) through the two methodologies used, the students carried out two multiple-response questionnaires (pre- and post-course). A t-test was used to develop a comparative analysis between the competences (acquisition of concepts, identification of opportunities and entrepreneurial intention) achieved using comic books and textbooks.

The results obtained reveal that entrepreneurial intention can be fostered through courses based on visual narrative techniques (comic book). At the same time, the relationship between the motivation achieved in the course and the degree of similarity between the student and the characters in the visual-format story is shown. Teaching through storytelling achieves higher quality ratios due to its capacity for involvement and maintaining attention during the course. The visual narrative therefore allows a better transmission of concepts and capacities than the traditional texbooks.

Keywords:

Management education, teaching innovation, visual narrative pedagogy, comic books, entrepreneurship.