2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Traditional schooling fails to maintain STEM student interest for youth as young as 10 years old. Discouraged children self-eliminate from the pool of next generation scientists, emphasizing our need for engaging educational tools. Known to be a potential effective educational tool as early as the 1930s, comics combine imagery and written text to build a new type of educational reading. Visuals, dialogue, and diverse character sets can capture attention and diversify education as we know it. Our comics in collaboration with AIChE cover topics from chocolate to complex reactor design are developed to introduce chemical engineering concepts to K-12 audiences. Previous results from our group have indicated that integrating comics into educational settings increases student engagement and confidence, with additional potential to improve student understanding [luke citation here]. With an interest in expanding earlier studies to K-12 students, we developed an informal STEAM learning program designed to assess the impact of comics on participant learning carried out at various youth community centers in the city area (IRB # 24-06-32).

An interactive demo alongside simple surveys assesses student interest, engagement, understanding, and retention. Built to compare between a comic study group and a non-comic control group, we can consider participant learning preferences in combination with comic effectiveness. In this demo, participants learn the differences between chemists and chemical engineers, how to make paint from milk and the science behind it and utilize the developed tools to communicate artistically. To support the learning from the demo, a six-page comic describing the steps of making milk-based paint was developed and printed, with half of the participants receiving the comic as a take-home learning tool. While student learning will always be unique per individual, our research shows comics offer a broad promise as a supplemental tool for STEM education. These studies have the potential to establish groundwork for comics to be used as supplemental learning tools in the K-12 space.