Analogy-based Cartoons in Teaching: The Cartoon Creation Centre Erkan Demirbas and colleagues from the University of Lincoln

Hi everyone and welcome to Aston's Economics and International Business Departments Learning and Teaching podcast. I'm Krishma Patel, a senior lecturer in economics and in this podcast I invite various guests to discuss interesting topics in learning and teaching. So today on the podcast we are joined by several academics who are going to talk to us about the Cartoon Creation Centre. The Cartoon Creation Centre is an initiative that was launched by Erkan Demibass and has now grown into an international network of academics and students. The centre focuses on using analogy-based storytelling to make complex concepts more accessible. There was a previous episode on this podcast where we got into details about these analogies and talked about a couple of examples of these analogies. In this episode though we are going to dig a little bit deeper into how the Cartoon Creation Centre has developed since the last time we recorded the podcast episode and this time we're going to be joined by several academics who are also members of the Cartoon Creation Centre. So of course we've got with us the person who actually launched the initiative and is now leading the initiative which is Erkan Demibass, a senior lecturer at the University of Lincoln. We are also joined by several other academics which includes Be Jentou, a senior lecturer at Queen's University in Belfast, Salzu who is a lecturer at the Open University and Sonani Thenewara who is a lecturer at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka. So I'm really excited to have you all on the podcast today so we're going to be talking about a project that you've been working on focused on creating analogy-based storytelling to enhance teaching and learning in economic statistics and related fields. We've got lots of people, lots of guests here on the podcast today and all from kind of different fields but there is some links there so we'll be really interesting to hear your different perspectives on what you've been working on. We did have a previous episode with some similar guests on there talking about the cartoons and now we're basically going to be focusing on kind of development since we recorded that and I'm really excited to see how this project has progressed. I think the first thing that would be super useful for our listeners is basically just to hear a little bit of a summary of what kind of analogies you create and what purpose these are for. So basically I made you talk about management related subjects especially the finance, statistics, economics. So there are very complex concepts that technically students actually dislike by nature especially in my area I think says numbers. If you take a general crowd about now in my faculty we do have a crowd of about 700 in one batch so if you take more than 50 to 60 percent just hate numbers and they have a tendency of being really scared about the counter and see finance statistics because that's not the area of interest. But what I really realized in our journey here is we try to make it very kind of normal something that is very general by bringing something that you have been attached since you are a kid writer so cartoons are part of our lives. So I still can remember when Eric Khan introduced the project, he showcased two pictures to describe a very complex concept for standard deviation I suppose. Eric Khan with two pictures right today still I can remember the two pictures the colors of the t-shirts of I think you were probably one of those and one of your colleagues right so as an academic if I can recall that today after like nearly one years down the line so for kids to make it really interesting and because that memory goes in the pictorial format or in the form of a story is long lasting and it will make it very interesting. Yeah I agree I still remember that cartoon I've also remember the golden egg story. Yeah the golden egg story I remember from our discussion I think it was last year on this podcast as well so many of our listeners may also be able to think back to when we discussed that as well. I can do do you want to add anything to that? From my perspective why I create a fabulous so I remember when I was studying statistics at university long time ago and I didn't like statistics. When I joined the University of Lincoln and learned that some students had no background in math and statistic, didn't study A level clearly and they were having difficult times with the module I teach and I didn't want my students to hate my modules and I want them to be happy and understand what I teach so that was one of the motivation after facilitating the stories and collecting feedback and improving these stories in the coming seminars. So I ended up around 15 stories and of the first year and collecting very positive feedbacks and one of them was very motivated and it was the heart man story and of the lecture around 30, 35 minutes after I introduced the heart man, a group of students and spontaneous applaud it and clap their hand and to show their satisfaction in a large hall, they were around 150 students and about 220 to 12 of them with this and panoptorical it at that moment. So further I shared this one with a colleague from the University of Comprehensive and collected very positive feedbacks from him and their students. So it was the main motivation and then what we did is secured an internal front at the University of Lincoln and visualized them. So seven cartoons and one animation, the animation was the heart man animation. So from text to digitized version that we did and after finalizing this core project I didn't stop and I continued my journey and then we ended up with a cartoon creation centre around 35 members from including students and academics from around 15 universities. Fantastic, thanks for sharing that and while to get a round of applause from your students in the lecture must feel very very good and I'm not surprised to be fair, I've seen the cartoons that you're referring to and they're very very impressive so I'm not surprised at all. So yeah that's the kind of general idea behind your project and the analogies and I think a lot of people listening will relate to that. I definitely relate to it as somebody who teaches first year student statistics that idea that they don't necessarily love it and some of the concepts are quite hard to kind of get them to relate to. I think analogies is a great way to do that and I'm sure it's the same in different disciplines as well which is great. So one of the things we wanted to talk about today was about the developments and you kind of hinted at that in the last part of your discussion just now which is the formation of the cartoon creation centre. So last time we spoke I know you mentioned that there were several academics involved and you also had students involved in creating the analogies. Perhaps you could go now into a little bit more detail about how you went from where you were before with a couple of academics and students involved to now having kind of the numbers you've mentioned. How did that happen? How did you get people kind of interested and then we'll talk a little bit about what you've been up to as part of that centre. Yeah one of them is a failure of promotion. I wanted to become an associate professor and the feedback was a wider impact. That was the one of the first motivation, a wider impact. And the second one is I shared the heart man story with a professor in psychology from University of California Los Angeles. I knew professor from his studies and professor Keith Holier and he did a couple of publications of analogies. I found his email and I emailed him and I shared the story with him, the heart man and professor and this is what I created and I would love to get your feedback about this work, what would you say. And he said that normally analogies is used. One information is the base target is used to explain unknown but in your case you are creating something from scratch. and this construction process is very interesting. This is what he said. Then we had a Zoom meeting with the professor and he asked me if I could share my work with his colleagues. I was really motivated with this. I didn't have an opportunity, but later we invited professor to join the Cartoon Creation Center as an advisor. He joined, he is one of the members. This is another moment and motivated us. Later we submitted a proposal for Times Higher Education and I asked professor for his sport letter. He said that this is the first systematic approach to create analogies, this Cartoon Creation Center, this is what he said. Therefore, all were motivating, including then what I did to be able to make this wider and I organized some workshops and be attended them, senony attended them, and I attended them. And of this workshop, it happened around a year ago, and from all around the world, on my own started a journey, introduced the cartons. It was very effective cartons and relying on this feedback, and I wanted to share my own experience with a wider community. I asked him, I am planning to launch a network, would you like to join this? Some of them I write a direct email. This is how we started the Cartoon Creation Center. Last year we created two cartons and organized one workshop in collaboration with B.N. and as students from Lincoln Bishop University, and expanded network. This December with three colleagues, again, from the network, we organized, again, around 10 colleagues. They said that they are interested to join. So this is the launching a story of the Cartoon Creation for Santa. Very impressive. I think if anything, I mean, it's very motivating. The fact that you know, I know how you kind of started out and how it's developed since then is very, very impressive and very motivating just to see how you kind of managed to broaden that scope and widen that scope so much. That's really impressive and motivating. So then perhaps we could hear from some of the members from the centre who are joining us on the call, just to talk about the kind of things that they've been doing as part of the centre and maybe share your kind of general experiences of being part of the centre. What does it kind of entail or what has it entailed for you? Yeah. So I first came across a workshop which was advertised on the Advanced HE website back in 2024. As I have mentioned, I participated in a number of workshops to learn how to use analogies to make abstract concepts more accessible and memorable to learners. So I think so far I've collaborated with colleagues around the world and created two comic strips and I thoroughly enjoyed the creative process to make learning meaningful and more enjoyable. And another part of my passion and interest is to think about how we might use it and to apply to research because we talk about public engagement. So I think using analogies to share research can be also a very interesting part. And I would like to exploit more. Great. That sounds good. It sounds like you've had a really good experience so far with the centre. And you mentioned that creative process. Had you created any cartoons before? And if not, how did the centre kind of help you in that process? Because whenever I've kind of seen the sorts of things that you guys have created, I'm thinking this is amazing, the story, the images, I don't feel like I would be able to do that. You could do this because at the community, we are not being on our own. This is I remember everyone does a small contribution. So this is the entire work. So therefore, the cartoons, who owns the cartoons, the group owns the cartoons. So because the final board includes list of contributors and name of the sponsors. So we've got a sponsor from each cartoon. Therefore, everyone can contribute. Maybe on our own, we cannot create the entire work. But everyone has looked at different perspectives. Therefore, I am extremely happy with working students and colleagues from different disciplines. You were asking about what we found useful with this cartoon creation centre. I think for me, it's the realisation that analogies based teaching is really, really useful. It is encouraging me to use it more and more. And so with this group co-existing, it's probably kind of like, urging us to practise it more. And I think that's probably the most beneficial part of it. To know that what I believed in is good. And I should continue to think of ways to enhance my teaching with more analogy. Right, no, that sounds fantastic. It sounds like you've all been getting quite a lot out of kind of contributing to the centre. And it definitely sounds from what you've described like a really exciting thing to be a part of. So that's great. I guess the other thing to talk about as well is the way in which you've been using these analogies. So I think we briefly touched on in the previous episode. I think I was asking about when you kind of use these with your students at the moment, whether it's something which you've taught them, the concept, let's say a concept in statistics like you were talking about standard deviation. And then you show them the analogy or whether you actually show them the analogy fast and they kind of figure things out along the way. I'd just be interested to hear seeing as we've got a range of people on this call from different kind of disciplines as well about how you've been using the analogies in your teaching. I suppose I could give an example about myself. As I said, I teach both computer science and electronics engineering. And I have always believed in analogy. I recall how my children in primary school were taught with analogies and they absolutely loved it. And somehow this way of teaching is lost at university. And we tend to have-- we tend-- lecturers tend to go straight deep into the topic. So what I do with my analogy-based teaching is that I tend to use analogies to introduce the heavy technical topics. For example, in electronics communication, I teach about how mobile phone communication is being transmitted in the air. And I would have to teach about the selectivity, per selectivity, and per sensitivity. So what I tend to do is I have created a cartoon analogy to introduce the concept of what is selectivity, and then what is sensitivity. So I tend to do analogies like that before I go deep into the tutorial questions and solving numerical answers. Great. It sounds very effective. Now, I think it would be interesting to know about the kind of activity that you've been up to. And particularly for the people listening, I think they'll now be quite interested just as I am about how to get involved in this. So I know you mentioned that you've ran a couple of workshops and attended conferences and things like that. Perhaps you might want to talk a little bit about that. And then we can move on to talking about the toolkit that you're developing as well. Yeah. So apart from our kind of-- our kind of did a workshop at the end of 2024, and that was him great for him. He did it all by himself. So then in 2025, our kind has invited myself and Becky, a student bishop university. And we did this workshop where we sent out invitations to all people, anybody who's interested in analogy. And what we did at that time was to show them-- and Becky showed them the Blindate cartoon that we've created. Our kind talks about the network. And what I did was my part was to solicit more members, was to actually encourage more people from many disciplines to join us because up to that stage in May 2025, I think a lot of the academics who joined the group were mainly from finance and economics. And it would really be nice that we can have a group of different groups of like-minded people. For example, I would very much hope to get like-minded people from computing or electronics engineering so that we can form clusters. where we can then brainstorm and create more ideas and more analogies for the area that we teach. So that was the first international workshop in May 2025, which was very successful. As Erkhand said, we managed to recruit 13 more members from that. And then again, in December last year, Erkhand conducted two further international workshops this time round with different academics. And Erkhand, you can talk about that. And I prepared the first interactive exercise that is the part of the toolkit. So we have the core component of the toolkit. We have already prepared this. So I asked myself, because many people asked how I create these characters. So I asked myself, I use chat GPT to help me demystify these construction processes. Because I never follow anything. Sometimes spontaneously it comes. Sometimes during the last in a second. Then that was actually another paper. And a colleague from School of Education, a member of the Center. Because I need someone from pedagogy. And he published some papers on analogies for with his sport and my experience, planning to publish another paper. And we've got the draft version. And it was the first time we introduced this exercise sheet step by step from scratch. Then I left it feedback and very positive feedback. And published them on our blog, Carton Creation Centre. So even people can follow this process to create there on stories. Great. Yeah, I was sorry to have missed the December workshops. Actually, I saw the promotion for it. And then I was on and you'll leave. And I was actually, I went on holiday to India. So I really couldn't make it. But hopefully we'll be able to make the next one. Because it sounds great. And it's good to hear about this toolkit, which is basically designed to help academics to create their own analogies, which sounds fantastic. Because as you can probably tell, and by fascinated by the creation process. So at the moment, is there anything available to our listeners in terms of something like a repository that already has some cartoons for other people to use? Are you looking for more members to be joining you? How might they go about joining the centre and those sort of things? Yeah. And two cartoons from my LinkedIn account, some further cartoons. And I continued creating some further cartoons related to economics and finance on my own using AI. And while I do create along with members of Cartoon Creation Centre. So also university repository, some of the cartoons available. They are all publicly available as long as they include our name. It is part of it is work of Cartoon Creation Centre or initial projects output funded by the University of Lincoln. So our aim is not making money and making teaching fun and enjoyable for us and for students. This is my own experience. We can easily recognize low performing students and high performing students. And sometimes it is very difficult to make them both groups satisfied in a same class. Low performing and high performing. And I found these cartoons very interesting, very easy and impactful way for both groups, low performing and high performing. They were both smiling because they both understand in a different way. You are not excluding high performing students. Maybe it amplifies their understanding. From a different perspective, therefore I really enjoy it. And it helps the deliver of classes from my perspective. And therefore I strongly suggest colleagues who are interested in creating, they are welcome to join our network. We are planning to conduct two or three meetings and again minimum two cartoons in the new year and again organize at this one workshop to reach a wider society in this project. Great, that sounds absolutely fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. Hopefully our listeners now have a good idea of how they can get involved and we'll definitely be looking out for those workshops and hopefully you'll get some new members joining the Centre as well because I'm sure they'll get a lot out of doing that. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast and I'm looking forward to seeing all the new ways in which the Centre develops over the next couple of years. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.