Narrative, visual, and didactic choices in the Supertroupers Project: designing a digital comic on energy

AGATHE CHIRIER, LAURENCE BORDENAVE, VICTOR LOPEZ, VALENTIN MARON, PAULO MAURICIO, LIONEL PÉLISSIER, CÉCILE DE HOSSON

Abstract

This paper reports on the design of a digital comic episode for teaching the concept of energy in secondary education. Developed through a collaboration between physics education researchers, a scriptwriter, and an illustrator, the episode introduces energy-related key ideas—such as physical state, transfer, conservation, and sources—through a fictional narrative centred on the construction of an hipotetical energy-generating device. The design was guided by a combined framework of Design-Based Research and the Model of Educational Reconstruction, allowing for alignment between scientific content, student conceptions, and didactic structuring. Classroom testing of a prototype in France and Spain informed several revisions, including clearer sequencing of environmental issues and enhanced narrative coherence. The final resource remains to be tested. It is part of a multilingual series and is accompanied by teacher support materials. This case illustrates the affordances and boundaries of DBR and MER for designing multimodal educational artefacts in international contexts.

Keywords

Digital comics, energy, design-based research, model of educational reconstruction

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References

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.26220/rev.5516

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