ABSTRACT
Not only can we use comics to create instructions such as product manuals and safety warnings (Chapter 5), we can use them to create instructions in a broader sense-teaching, learning, and knowledge dissemination and construc - tion. Referred to as educational comics in this book, these comics are designed to teach various subject matter from economy to biology and address audiences ranging from young children, high school and college students, to the general public. Figure 1, an excerpt from an educational physics comic book, is an example. It targets a high school student audience, though a broader audience is likely to also find the book informative. Unlike instructional comics, educational comics are not focused on readers’ ability to instantly understand and accurately follow the actions portrayed in the comics. Instead, they are interested in helping readers to gradually build subject-matter knowledge and may not expect readers to take any immediate actions. Educational comics also differ from development comics (Chapter 6) in important ways. Despite their common goal to inform and educate, development comics focus on the larger issue of human development and are designed for underprivileged audiences. Educational comics, by contrast, deal with disci - plinary knowledge and target a broader range of readers. Educational comics are a highly relevant genre to technical communicators, whose work frequently involves describing concepts, explaining ideas, and facilitating knowledge sharing. Some technical communicators may not consider their work “education,” only training. But as Johnson-Eilola (2001) argued, online documentation (or other documentation for that matter) should provide more than functional information that satisfies users’ immediate training needs; it should attempt to provide conceptual instruction that acknowledges the complexities of communication and production and helps readers to think and learn. By understanding how and why educational comics facilitate learn ing, technical communicators can gain important insights to aid-or even recon - ceive-their work.
