The social-media news website "Reddit" boasts a huge readership with over 35 million unique visitors for December 2011 alone. Content is generated by users, who submit links from other websites to the various sub-forums. Users also have the ability to comment on links, providing the means for a community to be developed. Both content and…

This document presents the proceedings of the 23nd Annual Research Forum held June 28, 2018, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following 12 action research papers: (1) Standards-Based Grading in a Secondary Mathematics Classroom (Michelle Anderson); (2) How the Use of Graphic Novels in Shakespeare…

This dissertation focuses on examining the use of mathematical cartoons as a teaching tool in middle school mathematics classroom. A mixed methods research design was used to answer how the use of cartoon activities affects teacher and student perceptions of teaching and learning and student intrinsic motivation, interest, and mathematics anxiety…

Children's media comprehension was compared for material presented on television, computer, or touchscreen tablet. One hundred and thirty-two children were equally distributed across 12 groups defined by age (4- or 6-years-olds), gender, and the three media platforms. Executive functioning as measured by attentional control, cognitive…

Graphic novels are the perfect meeting place of words and pictures and as such offer an excellent way of getting visually-oriented students to read. Teacher-librarians picked up on this a long time ago and have been adding graphic novels to their collection in ever increasing numbers. In this article, the author discusses how teachers and…

Few studies have investigated children's responses to television alcohol advertising. Two separate studies evaluated the appeal of alcohol advertisements on children aged 7-10. An exploratory interview study (N=17) was carried out to assess children's verbal responses to both alcohol and non-alcohol advertisements and to elicit vocabulary to be…

The graphic novel provides an attractive medium to communicate business concepts with a number of characteristics that may aid student learning in a more effective manner than traditional textbooks. The authors provide an overview of the graphic novel format and use McLuhan's research on "hot" versus "cool" media as a theoretical base that…

It's no secret that children and YAs are clued in to graphic novels (GNs) and that comics-loving adults are positively giddy that this format is getting the recognition it deserves. Still, there is a whole swath of library card-carrying grown-up readers out there with no idea where to start. Splashy movies such as "300" and "Spider-Man" and their…

Graphic novels are "hot." They show up everywhere from book stores to TV shows. Educators, too, are discovering the possibilities for graphic novels across the curriculum. Among the possibilities, educators can explore the graphic novel as a bildungsroman, a coming of age story--an old genre in the literary canon appearing in a new medium. The…

Two experiments examined 4- to 11-year-olds' and adults' performance (N = 350) on two variants of a Stroop-like card task: the "day-night task" (say "day" when shown a moon and "night" when shown a sun) and a new "happy-sad task" (say "happy" for a sad face and "sad" for a happy face). Experiment 1 featured colored cartoon drawings. In Experiment…

This study examines the extent to which ARL academic libraries collect graphic novels. Using a core list of 176 titles developed from winners of major comics industry awards and a library-focused "best of" list, the holdings of 111 ARL academic libraries were searched using the libraries' online catalogs. Results suggest that most of the…

This definitive book presents the newest research linking graphic narratives and literacy learning, as well as the tools teachers will need to make comic book projects a success in their classrooms. The Comic Book Project (www.comicbookproject.org) is an internationally celebrated initiative where children plan, write, design, and publish original…

Steve Kolowich's article, "No Laughing Matter" (2010), highlights the disconnect between information found on university and college websites and information relevant to students. Using a carton by Randall Munroe, Kolowich points out that website designers and college marketing officials really do not understand what is important to prospective…

"Using Comic Art to Improve Speaking, Reading and Writing" uses children's interest in pictures, comics and graphic novels as a way of developing their creative writing abilities, reading skills and oracy. The book's underpinning strategy is the use of comic art images as a visual analogue to help children generate, organise and refine their ideas…

This study investigated the cognitive abilities needed to succeed at incidental word learning, specifically by examining the role of phonological memory and phonological sensitivity in novel word learning by 4-year-olds who were typically developing. Forty 4-year-olds were administered a test of nonword repetition (to investigate phonological…