Data Comics for Education: Evaluating Effectiveness, Benefits, and the Ethics of AI-Assisted Creation

2026-07-02

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge that students often struggle to effectively interpret traditional data visualizations due to limited visual literacy, while high-quality data comics—though potentially more accessible—are costly to produce, hindering their educational adoption. To bridge this gap, the authors propose leveraging generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to support the creation of data comics and evaluate their pedagogical efficacy through a controlled experiment focused on information retrieval and insight comprehension tasks. Findings indicate that students using AI-generated data comics outperformed those using conventional visualizations and perceived the comics as more engaging and comprehensible. This work provides the first empirical evidence of the educational effectiveness of GenAI-assisted data comics and systematically examines associated ethical considerations, including accuracy, potential for misinterpretation, and copyright implications.

Abstract

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.

Problem

• data comics
• visualization literacy
• educational effectiveness
• AI-assisted creation
• data communication

Innovation

• Data Comics
• Generative AI
• Visualization Literacy
• AI-Assisted Education
• Ethics of AI