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DESIGNING ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION COMICS: A REPLICABLE SIX-STAGE MODEL
Abstract
Many environmental topics are hard to master through text-only materials. Comics can present the same information more succinctly and engagingly, but impact depends on design quality. This theoretical paper advances a design theory and replicable process for creating environmental education comics. Synthesising multimedia learning principles, cognitive load management, and Universal Design for Learning, we formalise a cyclic model with six stages. Stages 1 2 establish a stable content baseline: a subject-matter expert defines the idea-unit map, and a canonical text is produced with matched readability. The text is then reviewed by educators to reach curriculum-credible and age-appropriate baseline. Stages 3 5 form the iterative design loop: a comic prototype is created from the same idea units (3), evaluated via expert heuristic review and learner walkthroughs (4), and revised (5). Stage 6 acts as a gate with explicit acceptance criteria. If criteria are unmet, the cycle returns to Stage 3, if met, the comic is released. This separation of baseline (1 2) from the design loop (3 5) supports controlled, replicable improvement without altering the underlying content. The contribution is a transferable, transparent method that educators and researchers can adopt to produce scalable, high-quality environmental comics, while enabling consistent reporting and future empirical evaluation without claiming prior empirical superiority of comics over text.
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References9
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