Linda Douglas

MEDT 7490
Project 3: Comics, Cartoons, & Graphic Novels
The 4 Ps of Marketing
Your target audience and grade level
The target audience for this project is middle school learners. I teach 7th, 8th, and 9th grade
marketing (8th graders take the 9th grade course for the high school Carnegie credit). I believe
the comic is an appropriate introduction to the 4 Ps of marketing for my 7th grade learners. In
addition, my 8th graders could develop a comic on advanced topics in marketing.
The instructional design process you followed to develop the assignment:
I chose Blooms Learning Taxonomy to develop the assignment. In their comics, students must:
Knowledge: Students must be able to define the elements of the marketing mix.
Comprehension: Students must be able to classify examples of each element of the marketing
mix. Students will complete a 4 Ps handout where they are asked to classify examples under
each column of the marketing mix. Then, students are called to the board to reveal examples in
front of the class.
Application: Students will be asked to demonstrate through pictures in their comic an example
of each element of the marketing mix.
Analysis: After classifying the elements of the marketing mix through comics, students will be
asked to compare and contrast products vs. services and needs vs. wants.
Synthesis: Students will assemble their storyboard comic into a logical sequence that readers
will be able to follow.
Evaluation: Students will be asked to evaluate comics of their peers and provide feedback and
constructive criticism.
The lesson you are trying to teach:
I am trying to teach students the 4 elements of the marketing mix, also known as the 4 Ps of
marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.
How your project can be used for teaching or supporting a classroom lesson (instructional
strategy), and the importance of using comics/cartoons/graphic novels in the classroom:
Creating a comic can be used to support literacy in my content area. I work in a school where
literacy has to be taught in each subject area. State testing has a large writing component,
especially in math where students must first know how to deconstruct the language in a math
word problem, teaching literacy in all content areas is necessary.
The principles and elements of visual/media literacy and/or Mayers multimedia principles
that you employed for the assignment:
Mayers Principles that I employed in this project are:
Spatial Contiguity Principle People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are
presented near rather than far from each other on the page or screen. For example, we often see
figures on a page or even the next page of reading material. When presented this way, the reader

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has to break away from the text to see an example. With comics, the graphic is embedded with
the text in a single frame.
Multimedia Principle People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
Personalization Principle People learn better from multimedia lessons when words are in
conversational style rather than formal style.
Voice Principle People learn better when the narration in multimedia lessons is spoken in a
friendly human voice rather than a machine voice. This can be true when using Voki in the
classroom.
Your own definition of comics, cartoons, and graphic novels, the differences between them
and their unique educational affordances:
My definition of a comic are words and images used to tell a story using animation. Cartoons can
be a comic, but it can also be a digital story which uses video, such as the cartoon show The
Simpsons. Graphic novels are novels that use animation. These are not short stories. Each of
them are excellent tools for ESOL students and as a differentiation assignment for varying
learner modalities.
Reflection about challenges completing the assignment:
I dont feel as if there were any challenges with this assignment. It was enjoyable to try different
comic creation Websites to see which site would be more suitable for my students. After trying
three different sites, I settled with Pixton. Now that Ive used Pixton, I can model a lesson for my
students with ease.