Abstract:

One of the lessons learned about a significant part of the population is their preference to learn by employing visual aids and animations. Also, educators and researchers experience difficulties approaching and engaging their audience and learners through traditional communication.

The recent increased use of visual forms to communicate academic content, such as comic strips, animations, and other "non-traditional" platforms, is part of an outcropping of diverse and more visual methods traditionally incorporated in non-academic ventures such as entertainment, corporate training, and communications. Furthermore, those non-traditional platforms have recently reached scientific communities, commonly in research projects, industry journals, and publications. With the increasing popularity and prevalence in the dissemination of data and communications, the frequency of use of visual aids within literature and data collection is not a novel concept anymore. However, more needs to be known about the progression of certain less traditional visual forms in terms of their acceptance in the academic literature. This paper offers a characterization of the increased reach and understanding of employing comic strips and comic-based conveyances deployed in work products and tools that transcend many demographics, such as age, gender, experience, education, and even language and cultural barriers in all levels of academia. It also acknowledges the lack of an agreement on an academically accepted way for citing, cataloguing, and referencing these "non-traditional" sources. Also, it remarks on the early challenges due to the uniqueness of the non-textual nature of this material. The data collected for this paper's analysis results from search alerts and respectable search databases. The analysis is conducted by categorizing the material to be presented visually in search of commonalities.

This paper not only proposes a new medium that transforms the way academic communication occurs, which will initially meet some resistance from diehard traditionalists, but challenges the status quo given the increasing popularity and growth of non-traditional academic communication platforms. Finally, this paper offers insights for leveraging the viability and creative alternatives such as comic strips for educators and researchers to engage various audiences to the passion and joy of learning.

Keywords:

Applied comics, communicating in academia, non-traditional communication, non-textual communication, referencing comics, science popularization.