Date
Publisher
arXiv
In today's data-driven world, students often struggle with interpreting visualisations due to limited visualisation literacy. Data comics have emerged as a promising medium to enhance engagement and understanding, but their educational value has seen little empirical examination, partly due to the effort required to create them. Recent advances in Generative AI (GenAI) offer a scalable solution to this challenge. We conducted a within-subjects study with 60 university students, comparing conventional visualisations with data comics, created with assistance from GenAI tools, across information retrieval and comprehension tasks. Students consistently performed better with data comics, particularly in insight comprehension tasks, independent of prior visualisation literacy. Students also commented data comics as more engaging and easier to understand, though concerns were raised about GenAI-driven misinformation and ownership. Our findings highlight the potential of data comics as a potentially effective tool for data communication in education, while underscoring the need to address ethical concerns related to AI-assisted creation.
Study at a glance
- Question: Do data comics created with generative AI improve student performance and engagement compared to conventional visualisations?
- Setting and data: 60 university students; location and year not stated in the abstract.
- Method: Within-subjects experiment comparing information retrieval and comprehension tasks.
Why it matters
Students often struggle to interpret visualisations due to limited visualisation literacy, yet the educational value of data comics has seen little empirical examination partly because creating them requires significant effort.
Key findings
- Students consistently performed better with data comics than with conventional visualisations across tasks, particularly in insight comprehension tasks.
- The performance advantage of data comics was independent of students' prior visualisation literacy.
- Students found data comics more engaging and easier to understand, though they raised concerns about generative AI-driven misinformation and ownership.
Summary drafted with AI from the paper’s abstract and may contain errors. See the full paper for details.
What is the application?
Who is the user?
Who age?
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Study design
