Crafting Stories and Cartoons to Boost Student Engagement and Deepen Understanding Through an Interactive Experience
Dear colleagues,
Have you ever used stories, cartoons, or images in your classes? Have you ever created any stories or cartoons for teaching? Are you interested in learning more about how to create stories in your discipline? Then this is the right workshop for you to attend.
This workshop, held on Wednesday 6 November, aims to explore how storytelling based on the principles of analogies pioneered by Gentner (1983) can be effectively integrated into our teaching to boost student engagement, curiosity, and participation through an interactive session.
I will share my stories related to microeconomics, macroeconomics, statistics, and econometrics; however, we strongly encourage colleagues from other disciplines to join the session, as understanding this approach will help you create your own stories relevant to your disciplines through participation in interactive activities during the workshop.
What to expect from this workshop:
Can you imagine that price determination in a monopoly could be digitalised through an elaborately designed narrative, illustrating each curve in the graph with a human character, along with a penguin character?
Or could you imagine that the impact of consistently increasing the money supply under a fixed exchange regime could be easily taught to undergraduate and postgraduate students by incorporating a battery-powered boomerang?
Have you ever thought that the distance from a person’s belly button to the side of their waist could be illustrated to teach standard deviation?
Even more complicated topics, including the illustration of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and the 2007 financial crisis through imaginary fairy tales, will be introduced to you in this workshop.
In the interactive part of the session, participants will be guided to create their stories by focusing on the principles of analogies.
If you would like to view these examples and learn more about how to create similar stories in your discipline through our interactive session, please reserve your place in our upcoming hybrid workshop by filling out the following MS Forms link: https://forms.office.com/e/gFmEWHcCi4
If you have any questions or queries, please contact me at Edemirbas@lincoln.ac.uk.
Dr Erkan Demirbas
Senior Lecturer, Programme Leader, SF HEA
Economics Group, Lincoln International Business School
University of Lincoln, England
Venue: DCB 1102 (David Chiddick Building)
Date and Time: Wednesday 6 November, 2pm – 3.15 pm (UK Time)
Note: Erkan Demirbas’ project, Creating Stories and Cartoons to Effectively Teach Economics and Statistics with Students, has been shortlisted for the 2024 QS Reimagine Education Awards in the Blended and Presence Learning category. The 2024 awards received over 1,300 submissions across 18 categories. The first round of evaluations, conducted by more than 800 international judges, was highly competitive, showcasing an exceptional array of innovative projects. It is truly inspiring that this project ranks in the top 25%, securing a spot on the 2024 Shortlist!
Background of our Cartoon Project:
This project is led by Dr Erkan Demirbas and funded by the University of Lincoln. According to the preliminary findings of our research, the experimental group of students outperformed the control group. These cartoons have been highly appreciated by both undergraduate and postgraduate students, significantly aiding their understanding of complex topics in economics and statistics. Furthermore, these stories were highly appreciated by students with diverse needs, including PASS plan students as follows “Thankfully, Erkan offered an alternative, optional, learning method which utilised cartoons to demonstrate economic theories. This helped quite a bit with my course since I learnt a topic within one hour which came up in my next semester and took some of my friends ages to fully grasp.”
Please take a moment to review the case study linked below, which highlights how my team and I, along with our students, collaboratively produced cartoons and animations. This will give you an insight into our joint efforts and the innovative approach we’ve taken:
https://economicsnetwork.ac.uk/showcase/demirbas_cartoons
Gentner, D. (1983). Structure-mapping: A theoretical framework for analogy. Cognitive Science, 7(2), 155-170. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog0702_3
Story submitted by Erkan Demirbas
Edemirbas@lincoln.ac.uk