Engineering
Bringing mechanical engineering to life with comics
EPIC Engineering Comic
Dr. Hua Qian Vivian Ang
Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering
Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering
EPIC Engineering Comic is a digital comic platform founded by Dr Hua Qian Ang in 2023, with a mission to impart authentic engineering knowledge and inspire people around the world into engineering through imaginative storytelling with visual arts. It aims to solve two immediate problems faced by the engineering community: skills gap in future engineering jobs in Industry 5.0 and skills shortage in engineering sector. Firstly, EPIC Engineering Comic provides a virtual internship opportunity for RMIT engineering students to gain authentic engineering experience and build students’ transferable skills for future careers in Industry 5.0, improving graduate employability. Secondly, engineering storytelling with cartoon characters through comics and animations allows the public, especially young generation to grasp and retain complex engineering knowledge easily, inspiring people into engineering.
Resources
> Teacher resource including flow chart
> Assessment item
> Student instructions
Problem Statement
EPIC stands for: Experiential, Paired, Inquiry-based, and Collective learning. This is a modern teaching approach Dr Ang developed for engineering curriculum. This Engineering Comic idea was derived from EPIC, to communicate complex engineering concepts, topics, research in an easy-to-understand language, aiming to inspire and engage people into engineering.
Project Overview
In MIET1071, students spend the first half of semester 1 developing their engineering knowledge on Solid Mechanics, then spend the second half of semester explaining an engineering topic they learned in MIET1071 using comics (individual assessment) or animation (group assessment). This assessment builds students‛ digital literacy with Adobe tools, and fosters students‛ critical thinking, creativity and communication skills by letting students tell their own engineering stories. This assessment will build students‛ Industry 5.0 competencies. Some of student works (comics and animation) will be published on EPIC Engineering Comic to promote engineering to the public.
Emergent Outcomes
Activity is tied to an assessment in a 3rd year engineering course. But, students build their skills progressively through in-class activities.
Digital Capability Building
This assessment utilises modern teaching pedagogy, EPIC principles developed by Dr Hua Qian Ang in 2018. Experiential Learning: EPIC Engineering Comic provides a virtual internship opportunity to the students throughout this assessment (Work-integrated Learning with authentic engineering experience) Paired Learning: Students teach each other by addressing misunderstandings and clarifying misconceptions Inquiry-based Learning: Students constantly research, analyse and explain complex engineering topics in simple language. This is high level of questioning, critical thinking. Collective/Cumulative Learning: Students learn progressively throughout the semester to build their Industry 5.0 competencies.
Assessment life-cycle
Below is an example of the Engineering Comic. You can find more information about this and other fun topics here: https://www.epicengineeringcomic.com/comics
Example of the comic book. Go here for more info: https://www.epicengineeringcomic.com/comics
