Unleashing “currents of curiosit”: Reconfiguring learning design using academic comics in higher education

Abstract

This paper considers the experience of developing an online, blendedlearning approach for use within university education. It explores the learning design process for the delivery of learning and teaching across three academic ‘worlds’, each of which has a human factors component. These are management, medicine, and psychology, where the common teaching elements across those three disciplines include: risk and uncertainty, human error, systems failure, and the role of information and expertise in decision-making. The approach to learning design reported here is based on a systems approach which integrates the use of visualisation, bespoke academic comics, and animations in addition to more traditional academic publications. The affordances associated with each of those technologies provides students with the opportunity to support their learning in ways that suit their preferences and, because of the synergistic nature of the materials in a student-centred approach, allows them to develop a deeper understanding of the issues.