How a Comic Book Assignment Can Help Students Learn the Value of Research Evidence - Paper Discussion

Oct 15, 2026

The article explains how using comic books as a writing assignment can strengthen first-year composition students’ understanding of argumentative research and the value of evidence. It describes a course redesign influenced by reading graphic narratives for purpose, audience, and rhetorical appeals, and then details how a multimodal comic project was developed through library support and the Comic Life tool. The discussion emphasizes moving from personal anecdote to formal academic claims supported by research, while also highlighting benefits for visual and textual literacy, engagement, and empathy.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages22

Reading Time34 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Designing a Comic Book Writing Assignment

Comics and Academic Discourse

Evidence, Claims, and Research

Responses to Scholarly Objections

How a Comic Book Assignment Can Help Students Learn the Value of Research Evidence Mary K. Assad Case Western Reserve University “Do your students write their own comic books?” When an audience member asked me this question after my conference presentation, I paused, replied with “no,” and then began to articulate reasons why I focus my students’ attention on reading, rather than producing, comic books. This moment at the 2014 Conference on College Composition and Communication has stayed with me as I redesigned my first-year composition (FYC) courses in subsequent semesters. My conference presentation had focused on how I provide graphic narratives as reading assignments for my students. My goal has been to show students that arguments are not only found in formal academic papers, but also in a variety of genres including those that are creative, entertaining, and emotionally engaging. By reading graphic narratives with attention toward purpose, audience, and rhetorical appeals, students consider how arguments are constructed through both words and images, and how an author may persuade his or her readers without an overt thesis statement. Over the past several years, incorporating multimodal argumentation into the FYC classroom as well as the upper-level writing classroom has allowed me to promote visual and textual literacy among my students while also engaging their interests in topics such as eating disorders, personal illness, and mental health. Since graphic narratives often tackle important topics that students may have on their minds but rarely have a chance to discuss with peers in an academic context, I have believed in this genre’s potential not only for promoting language skills but also for fostering empathy and awareness of social issues. However, I previously had not assigned a graphic narrative or comic book as a writing assignment. Partly, this hesitation stemmed from the anticipation of students’ objections (“I can’tdraw!”), and partly, I was concerned that the task might not be the most effective option for supporting students’ academic writing skills. Then, in the Fall 2016 semester, I met with a media specialist at my university’s library with the intention of developing a multimodal assignment. He immediately suggested a comic book and introduced me to Comic Life, a computer program that allows students to create comic books without concern for drawing ability. After extensive discussion, he and I developed a prompt that fit with my course theme, helped to promote the FYC course outcomes for academic writing, and would be manageable within the semester’s time constraints. That semester, I began asking students to produce comic books as a writing assignment and my pedagogy in this regard has continued to evolve ever since. In this article, I will discuss this assignment in greater detail to demonstrate the pedagogical benefits of teaching comics in the writing classroom. I argue that by assigning students a comic book project, writing instructors can promote competence in academic discourse by helping students learn and evaluate different forms of evidence. As a common outcome in FYC classes, the ability to assess and use evidence often presents a challenge to students who struggle to distinguish between academic sources and anecdotal evidence drawn from personal experience or conversations with others. I suggest that a comic book assignment recognizes and deems important the stories and personal experiences students bring to the classroom. It gives them a space for writing and sharing these stories, but it also guides them toward adapting the claims they make in the comic book to a formal academic paper that draws upon formal academic research. In this way, the comic book makes apparent the difference between the statements “this is the case because I believe it” and “this is the case because research tells us so.” At first glance, a comic book does not appear to be a tool for helping stu

FAQs

Why did the author start using graphic narratives in composition courses?

To help students see that arguments appear not only in formal academic papers but also across genres, and to examine how words and images together can persuade without an overt thesis.

What prompted the author to adopt comic books as a writing assignment?

Concern about student objections and effectiveness shifted after the author met a media specialist in 2016, who recommended a workflow using Comic Life to make the task manageable without needing strong drawing skills.

How does the comic book assignment help students distinguish evidence from anecdote?

It creates space for students’ personal stories, then guides them to reshape those claims into formal academic arguments grounded in research, making the difference between belief-based statements and research-supported claims explicit.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Indoniesian Boy