Using Comic Strips as a Teaching and Learning Tool

Editor's Note: At the 2008 International Conference on Education and Technology, held in Calgary,
Canada, Jan Lay learned about Pixton Interactive Web Comics. She immediately recognized the new
program as a tool that would be of interest to some employees and students at Clemson. After
demonstrating the program to the Teaching with Technology Community (http://pixton.com/trailer), Jeff
Appling, Barbara Weaver, and Lay decided to explore the program's usefulness in teaching and learning,
as well as a communication tool for technical information.
Using Pixton in an Honors Course, Enlightenment through Scientific Skepticism
By Jeff Appling
I have for some time required students to turn in a creative project as part of their grade in my Scientific
Skepticism course. In the past students have used various media, both electronic and paper, to present an
idea related to the course topics, many of which involve pseudoscience. In the fall semester of 2008, I
decided to have all students try to use the same medium to see if there might be a benefit to "leveling the
playing field" and to give them a common creative experience. I asked the class to produce two comic
strips using the online program Pixton, with the restriction that the theme must be related to a topic
studied in the class.
Like me, no one had ever tried to create a comic strip, so we all experienced some interesting challenges.
I put the limitation that the comic strip should have no more than four panes, which quickly becomes a
guiding issue - how do you tell an effective story in only four scenes? The topics chosen by the students
ranged throughout many of the issues we had discussed in class, such as witch hunts and alien abductions.
This comic strip about psychics was the class favorite.

I think the class attained the pedagogical goals of the activity, as all students were challenged by the need
to distill an idea down to a few frames while retaining some sort of storyline or interesting point. Many of
the comic strips were entertaining, to boot. The students reported that the process was relatively easy and
they generally enjoyed working with the program itself. There was a great deal of sharing of ideas and
techniques among the class members, and I think the activity promoted a sense of camaraderie. Students
found the process more stimulating than the typical assignment, understanding that it wasn't aimed at
measuring their depth of knowledge (and consequently not worth much of their grade). Students did
benefit from the process of analyzing potential class topics, particularly from the perspective of how to
relate them to everyday life. I will likely use the technique again with students in this class. It gets them
talking to me and to one another about the class material, and the results can be appreciated by the whole
class.
Using Pixton in a Sophomore Literature Course
By Barbara Weaver
I decided to use the comic strip program in several ways.
First, I created my syllabus as a comic strip and sent the link via email to enrolled students well before
classes began. I often receive emails from students who want to know more about the class and, while I
grow weary answering their questions sometimes, I would rather they drop before classes begin than
after. The comic strip seemed like a fun way to get the information to all the students so that those who
don't want to read a lot and use technology a lot can go ahead and drop. As some dropped and others
registered, I could simply send the link to the newly registered. My fall 2008 syllabus took me several
hours to create, but I did it in the evening while watching TV and had fun creating it. Thanks to the
remixing Pixton allows, my spring 2009 syllabus took me less than 15 minutes to create. The first day of
class when I went over the standard syllabus in Blackboard, students had very few questions as they had
already read the comic strip version. And the best news was that I had only a couple of students who
enrolled late and then dropped.
Two assignments using Pixton were consistently successful. For one, the students both semesters created
comic strip reviews of the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This assignment counted as a
low-stakes quiz grade. Julia Schmidt's review is a good example:http://pixton.com/comic/a0bik2tt . For
the second, spring 2009 students created comic strips to introduce themselves to the class. For an
example, see Lanie Mason's introduction athttp://pixton.com/comic/gl0ae5t9. The assignment gave them
an opportunity to learn how to use the program before they had to use it for a graded assignment.
A few students chose to use Pixton to complete the creative project assignment that is due at the end of
the semester. Kathryn Keller developed comic strip frames in Pixton and then inserted them into a
PowerPoint slide show to compare and contrast her life with Marjane Satrapi's as presented in her
novel Persepolis. Here is an excerpt from her project:KathrynKeller_excerpt.pdf.
Students both semesters used Pixton to complete their poetry projects. They had to include a brief
biographical sketch of the poet to set the historical context and one poem or excerpt of a long poem with
an analysis of the poem. The results were mixed. I do not plan to use Pixton for the poetry projects again.
When I surveyed the fall semester students about their experience with Pixton, only two of them said the
program was too difficult to learn and took too much time to complete an assignment. All the other
students said I should continue to use Pixton with my students and should recommend its use to other
faculty.
Using Pixton in CU101, and to Communicate CCIT Messages to Students
By Jan Lay
Because I know that one of Clemson University's goals is to have students develop artifacts of
competency for their electronic portfolios that are not merely written documents, I was excited about the
creative potential of Pixton to merge written understanding with visual communication of the
understanding.
For the past two fall semesters, I have taught one section of the freshman Academic Success course,
CU101. One of the student's first assignments is to gather advice from upperclassmen on what it is like to
be a college student. The first semester I made this assignment, the students were instructed to list a few
of their favorite pieces of advice in a public blog (visible to all of the students). Last fall I had the students
gather the same information, but instead of blogging about their favorites, I asked them to make a Pixton
comic illustrating their favorite piece of advice. Through web links, these comics were shared with the
whole class. Here's an example: http://pixton.com/comic/zcf1nd8m
Along the same lines as the advice, I also asked the students to think about their first week at Clemson
and illustrate one positive thing they had experienced (see http://pixton.com/comic/5s1n7j7l for an
example), and one negative thing (see http://pixton.com/comic/t4vsngdm for an example). I thought this
assignment would be a good way for the students to express their initial feelings about being at Clemson
University in a humorous venue.
A third classroom assignment was to illustrate a valuable (to the individual student) take home message
from each of the first three chapters. By noting which subject areas were chosen and illustrated by the
students, I got a feeling about what the whole class felt were the most important aspects of each
chapter. http://pixton.com/comic/23f99h0m
At the end of last fall semester, I developed the following table to summarize my experience with Pixton.
Since then, the programmers have continued to improve the software based on comments from the users;
however, these observations are still relevant for anyone interested in using the program.
Pros Cons
Colorful, expressive, creative
People oriented
Wide emotional range; preset expressions
Wide range of increasingly realistic
characters which can be easily modified
Props are numerous and keep increasing
Can use templates or start from scratch
Can remix comics to create new ones
Can easily create series
Panels must be same width
Although the props are increasing in number and
variety, they still are
lacking http://pixton.com/comic/wqj2fo6k
"Bad" props can cause comics to be rated "mature"
and not visible to the general public
Updates must be done manually
Evolving tools can be buggy and this can be
frustrating to instructors and students

Student Specific issues
Titles and keywords are necessary to browse for comics
Students need to pay attention and finish scenes so they match throughout a whole comic
Left to right reading pattern must be emphasized
Spelling and grammatical errors are common
Needs
More objects or better drawing tools
Ability to add non-Pixton graphics
Spell checker for the text

Outside of my CU101 class, I also found that Pixton was a good way for me to communicate messages to
students about what services were available at the Customer Support Center. I used Pixton comics to
illustrate panels containing information that we wanted the students to be aware of, then I inserted these
comics into a digital display that we installed at the main desk of the Support Center located in the old
Student Union. http://pixton.com/comic/l45up3l3 Because of the comic-strip nature of the messages, I
thought they would be noticed more than non-illustrated text.
Pixton is an easy to use, creative tool that can be utilized in many different classroom situations, as well
as for creatively conveying information outside of the classroom. If you are interested in learning more
about Pixton, you can visit their website at www.pixton.com, or register for a Pixton training class by
visiting the "Instructor Led Training" link on the CCIT Training Resources
page: http://www.clemson.edu/ccit/support services/it_support/computer_training/index.html. In addition,
if a class is not currently scheduled, you can submit a ticket to ITHELP@clemson.edu to inquire about
adding a Pixton class to the schedule.
Jeff Appling is Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies and a professor in the Department of
Chemistry at Clemson University.
Barbara Weaver is Senior Consultant for Faculty Relations and Innovation in CCIT and usually teaches
one class each semester for Department of English at Clemson University.
Jan Lay is an educational technology trainer for Teaching and Learning Services and enjoyed teaching
CU 101 for several semesters at Clemson University.