(395f) Developing Comics to Teach Mass and Energy Balances

Comics represent a growing effort in broader STEM education to utilize a visual-component to improve student interest, confidence, and understanding in the subject matter, and have been used in both formal and informal learning environments. As part of an broader effort to develop and integrate comics into chemical engineering education, a series of comics dedicated to focusing on all topics over a full mass and energy balances course have been created in collaboration with a team of professional artists and prepared for implementation in multiple universities around the country. Comics have been previously shown in smaller studies to have beneficial impact on student engagement, confidence, and understanding, and this project seeks to more fully investigate comics' potential at the undergraduate level of instruction. This poster will discuss current efforts in this research effort while sharing best practices for developing similar tools in other fields.