Infographics as Pedagogy

Using infographics in the classroom (and community)

Infographics can be used as a pedagogical tool to teach students about the value of non-traditional genres of research dissemination and may help to improve students’ visual literacy skills. Because of the multimodal nature of infographics, students must interact with different images, data visualizations, and text to determine the most effective combination to represent research. Infographics can also be used for teaching accessible forms of academic writing, citation, and research summaries.

Infographics can tell many stories and thus take various forms depending on what your data is, how you present it, and what your intended argument or goal is. As a classroom assignment, these might take shape in any number of ways including (but not limited to) the following:

A timeline of particular events relevant to a specific topic
- Example: The Rambert History Infographics consist of nine infographics divided by decade (1920-2000) of the history of The Rambert dance company in the UK. These were produced by A-level students in nine different workshops and are free to download as posters and learning materials.
- Example: The History of Pandemics visualizes the history of infectious disease outbreaks from the Antonine Plague to Covid-19.
The comparison/contrast of an issue or topic
- Example: Gender Disparity in the Classroom complements an op-ed using a primary research source.
- Example: the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Risks: 1.5°C vs 2°C Global Warming compares varying environmental impacts projected with an increasingly warming planet.
A summary or explanation of primary research
- Example: The LinkVan Project described in the case study below.
- Example: Canada's Quality of Life Framework produces infographics using survey data from Statistics Canada; see recent infographics on Hopefulness in Canada and how Local Environments Lift Life Satisfaction.
A summary or explanation of key players, concepts, and/or plot points of a fictional or non-fictional narrative, movement, or event
- Example: The Whizzpopping World of Roald Dahl follows the life and career of author Roald Dahl.
- Example: Britannica's Navajo Code Talkers Infographic complements the encyclopedic entry on the Navajo Code Talkers describing their crucial role in WWII.

A Case Study: ASTU 100

“Writing a plain language summary and creating an infographic teaches genre-based writing concepts and students see themselves as knowledge brokers. They’re negotiating the meaning of a piece in two directions and are aware of two audience members – the lead author and researchers, as well as the community and their needs. Pedagogically, this allows us as instructors to become more like informed collaborators, rather than evaluators. We do see that our students exhibit pre-existing digital nativity and digital talent, so they really surprise us with their graphic intuition and how to use digital content – and that is always a welcome surprise.” - Dr. Kirby Manià (“Infographics as Public Scholarship”)

The efficacy of using infographics as a teaching tool is demonstrated by the multi-year partnership between the Making Research Accessible Initiative (MRAi) and ASTU 100, a first-year communications course that “combines the study of literature with the study of academic research and writing.” This partnership provides students with the opportunity to create infographics for the Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal (DTES RAP), a place-based portal that works to make research (and other materials) about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside more accessible to community members, community organizations, faculty, and students.

This on-going partnership provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to work collaboratively with their classmates to develop their scholarly communication skills through the writing of plain language summaries, designing infographics that are representative of an original research article, and getting direct feedback from researchers whose work they are translating. Incorporating the infographic-creation process into the course provides students with the opportunity to get hands-on experience translating knowledge in the form of a tangible research output.

“Students told us that doing the [infographic] project feels meaningful to them and that they feel that they are contributing to a project of social change and that they are agents of change in the process. They come out of the [course] with a politics around the necessity to make research findings as accessible as possible.” - Dr. Evan Mauro (“Infographics as Public Scholarship”)

LinkVanProject.pdf

One of the infographics created by students through the ASTU 100 / MRAi collaboration. This infographic is currently hosted on cIRcle and findable through the DTES RAP.

Selected students’ infographics are uploaded to UBC’s open access university repository, cIRcle. cIRcle has a reach beyond the university and can assist community members or community organizations in finding relevant and important research to assist them with their own projects and initiatives. After being uploaded to cIRcle, the infographic is then shared via the DTES RAP. This step is key, as the portal is place–based and community-orientated – meaning it was developed in consultation with the community and prioritizes the inclusion of DTES-specific material. Providing the DTES community, a community who has been over-researched and under-represented, with accessible formats of scholarly work in an easy to navigate portal, is a necessary step in knowledge mobilization and engaging in reciprocal, community-engaged, research.

COVID-19 and Society, a sociology course taught by Dr. Katherine Lyon, similarly demonstrates the way in which infographics can be used in the classroom to develop students’ knowledge translation skills and to provide an opportunity for students to collaborate with a community organization. Students engaged “in collaborative, rapid, and responsive knowledge mobilization based on how each community partner aimed to target and share information with specific groups.” One student wrote about the experience, highlighting how the course allowed them to “apply theory […] into something meaningful for the community.”

Infographics as Pedagogy

Table of Contents

Using infographics in the classroom (and community)

A Case Study: ASTU 100

Further Reading and Resources

Courses by UBC Scholars

Courses by Non-UBC Scholars

Guides

Articles

Books