Course Description

This class, offered jointly by professors at RISD and Brown, explores and develops the pedagogy of using visual media to convey scientific concepts. There is a growing library of online content but often times it is not well suited for seamless adoption into educational use. The goal of this course will be to assess examples of existing material and design new material that not only fills an educational need but makes science engaging and accessible. After an introduction to science teaching pedagogy and the basics of animation and visual design, small student teams with a balance of science and art backgrounds will collaborate on a series of short exercises leading to the creation of animations that explain scientific concepts. Concept selection will be based on filling an identified educational need, where a satisfactory example does not yet exist and where the topic benefits from a visual presentation. Student groups will be paired with faculty mentors from the life or physical sciences to design media that is appropriate for a particular audience. Projects will be evaluated on scientific accuracy, clarity of explanation, meeting the educational need, and originality of approach.