The Comic Construction Kit: An Activity for Students to Learn and Explain Data Visualizations

As visualization literacy and its implications gain prominence, we need effective methods to prepare students for the variety of visualizations in an increasingly data-driven world. Recently, the potential of comics has been recognized in various data visualization contexts, including educational settings. We describe the development of a workshop in which we use our "comic construction kit" as a tool for students to understand various data visualization techniques through an interactive creative approach of creating explanatory comics. We report on our insights from holding eight workshops with high school students and teachers, university students, and lecturers, aiming to enhance the landscape of handson visualization activities that can enrich the visualization classroom. The comic construction kit and all supplemental materials are open source under a CC-BY license and available at https://fhstp.github.io/comixplain/vis4schools.html.