Graphic Novels and the Future of Education

In the same way that stand up comedy provides a useful model for thinking about lecturing, graphic novels provide a useful model for education as well. But, whereas stand up comedy only provides insight into lecturing, graphic novels provide insight into writing educational books and presenting educational content. Further they provide insight into presenting both in class and online. 

There are three ways in which the format and design of graphic novels can be applied to education:1) better books, 2) better lectures and presentations; , and 3) more compelling content in distance education classes.We have already seen the beginings of this move toward better books. For example, Icon Books has an "Introducing" series of books which present some pretty serious content in a graphic novel format. For example Introducing Philosophy: A Graphic Guide is, as the title says, an introduction to philosophy. I have read dozens of these titles and their graphic novel format allows the reader to come up to speed very quickly in a diverse range of topics. The last one of these I bought, which was only a couple years ago, did not have the title addition "A Graphic Guide" which suggests that Icon books is becoming more aware of the power of the graphic format, at least for sales.

One could easily argue that these "Introducing" books do not provide the depth that one needs to really become an expert in an area. And, I would agree. But that is not the point. As fields get deeper and deeper, we find that experts become silo-ed with a deep knowledge in their field but little understanding of adjacent fields. I believe that education in the future will require a general understanding of a wide variety of fields either in conjunction with or even without deeper knowledge in a specialized field. And the graphics novel format will help facilitate that.

Graphic novel design will also lead to better lectures and presentations. In the past five years or so we have seen a flurry of new books on presentation skills which condemn mind numbing linear PowerPoint presentations and raise the bar of expectations for people who do presentations. Much emphasis in these new books is placed on narrative reasoning or story line. Most books emphasize the importance of story but few provide much detailed information about how to create story lines. This is where the design theory of graphic novels comes in. Some of the biggest names in comics such as Will Eisner and Scott McCloud have written amazingly insightful works on how to design graphic novels. To be fair, they are focusing on comics. But, both readily recognize the potential application of this media in other areas. I would wholeheartedly agree.  Just like it was a small step from stand up comedy to better lectures, it is a small step from comics to better presentations.

Finally, the design techniques of graphic novels will lead to more compelling distance education. Just like Sesame Street realized decades ago, you can't teach anybody anything if you cannot, first, keep their attention. This is already a problem in classroom education but it will worsen when education is delivered in distance mode. At least in the classroom students don't have distractions (assuming that they aren't playing with their laptops or iPhones). But, at home where they are recieving instruction over the Internet the pedagogical content is competing with television, streaming video, music, kids crying, friends coming over and all manner of compelling distractions. Anyone who thinks that video recording of classroom lectures will serve this audience probably ought to get out of education and find a field they know something about.