Abstract
Data visualization and visual storytelling are increasingly common terms when institutions and scientists want to introduce people to their research and science through stories. Yet institutions mostly teach and train their scientists in the language of science and scientific journals, whereas research dissemination calls for other forms of communication. A new university course introducing such a new form of communication is proposed to postgraduate students at Université de Sherbrooke since January 2020. Its main objective is to help students develop their general interest and skills into science communication using comics as a working medium. While following a simple path, this course has generally led to results beyond initial expectations and large engagement from students. This study describes the general context and structure of the course, analyzes feedback from participants, presents some results, and summarizes lessons learned to help the diffusion of such a cross-disciplinary course.
Highlights
The great majority of scientific work is generated and communicated in the form of academic studies
The general knowledge level concerning science communication, evaluated in Question 1, is nearly normally distributed around the median answer, with 54% of answers. It appears from the results of Question 2 that the great majority of attendants consider that they have an overall very low or low level of knowledge concerning the use of comics for science communication (46% “Very low” and 46% “Low”)
This study described a university course which main objective is to help postgraduate students develop their general interest and skills into science communication using comics as a working medium
Summary
The great majority of scientific work is generated and communicated in the form of academic studies. While guidelines or instructions for using this medium are provided in the form of academic works (Friesen et al, 2018; McDermott et al, 2018), concrete initiatives to train graduate and postgraduate students to the use of comics in their research project remain scarce. All these initiatives are mostly held by external facilitators (de Hosson et al, 2018) and rarely by academic institutions. Lessons learned and future directions of this course are discussed, together with the possible uses for student’s works
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