Professor uses comics to teach nonmajor biology class

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Not every class begins with a cartoon professor arguing with a talking globe about what the class will cover.

But for zoology visiting assistant professor Stephen Thomas, that’s a normal lecture.

Thomas draws his own comic strips for ISB 202, an online environmental biology class for nonscience majors. He said he tries to use the comics to make students more comfortable.

“Mostly these (comics) are used like a soft intro to the topic. (ISB 202) is a class for nonmajors, so there is some subject anxiety,” he said. “(Studies) have shown that comics actually reduce anxiety about subjects.”

The first comic featured a cartoon of Thomas and his sidekick Globie fighting about whether they will be studying the planet’s “peculiarities” or how humans are “messing up” the environment. In the last frame, the cartoon professor told the students all views would be respected.

Media arts and technology junior Matthew Law said the comics didn’t teach much about ecology but made the subject more enjoyable.

“It was nice, because it kind of put a funny perspective on a normally very dry subject,” he said. “It kind of made it seem like not so much a straightforward book class.”

Thomas, who minored in art as an undergraduate, also uses paper cutout animation to help display concepts in ZOO 355, an ecology class. Thomas said it takes about three hours of work to draw the comics and three days to write, draw, record and edit the videos.

“(The videos have) got all of these aspects of origami and pop-up books,” he said.

One video on rainforests becoming grasslands when humans clear them for farming starts with Thomas cutting a drawing of a jungle. He then burns the cutout rainforest, revealing a drawing of a grassland underneath.

Elizabeth Cusick, a biological sciences junior, said she learned better from having visual examples.

“They were kind of funny. They made kind of difficult topics easier to understand,” she said.

Thomas said before teaching online classes he had used some movie clips and exercises in his other classes.

“I think probably my face-to-face teaching has always been very standard,” he said. “The online situation kind of freed me. If you don’t think that people are understanding a certain aspect … you can come up with ways to creatively interact.”

William Hart-Davidson, co-director of the MSU Writing in Digital Environments Research Center, said professors sometimes try to make their classes more like what students do for fun, particularly if they’re teaching nonmajors.

“(There’s) a sense that students today are more engaged when they have more hands-on means,” he said. “It’s generally challenging to keep students motivated to study something that isn’t their primary area of interest.”

Hart-Davidson said research on using new technology to teach isn’t definitive.

“There’s been some compelling research that shows when you’re teaching nonscience majors complex concepts such as algorithms, visualizing the concepts can be more effective than just numbers on a page,” he said.

To see Thomas’ videos, visit www.youtube.com/user/Evolartist.

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