Bi/multilingual Students Making Digital Comics: Rigorous Engagement Beyond Novelty

• In Event: Roundtable 1

Abstract

This study of 11th grade bi/multilingual students, most of whom were or still are EB, in a culturally and linguistically diverse Title I high school investigated the positives and negatives of student groups collaboratively transmediating (i.e. refashioning a work from one medium into another) traditional texts such as poems and novellas into digital comics. Findings determined that students and their teacher viewed this activity as engaging and enjoyable for academic reasons other than novelty or preconceived bias of decreased rigor. Given the deficit perspective by which the student participants and comics mediums are viewed in the US, the findings and conclusions may lead to further studies that improve views and the literacy learning spaces in which those views are prevalent.

Author

• Daryl Barry Axelrod, Florida International University