Welcome to the portfolio of Charles Acheson, Ph.d.
Charles Acheson is an educator who teaches through strategic storytelling and comics.
Charles Acheson is an educator who teaches through strategic storytelling and comics.
Over the past eleven years, I have taught comics-focused university courses, researched comics for my dissertation as well as published, peer-reviewed articles, and made comics for various media formats. These pursuits led me to understand that the comics medium, as a form of strategic storytelling and narrativization, provides highly effective educational design principles for increasing knowledge acquisition and retention in learners. To wit, if you’ve read comics, you likely noticed the ease with which you consumed the narratives. That ease stems from comics from the medium’s core design principles foregrounding narrative pacing, verbal-visual hybridity, readerly engagement, and many more. By understanding these principles, educators can implement them in their teaching to better guide learners and succinctly convey critical information. Moreover, these principles can be applied across media formats to reach various audiences. Thus, as an educator, I build on my multivalent experience with comics to develop and execute memorable learning opportunities that resonate with learners.
Built using Storyline 360, and in conjunction with subject matter expert Matt Knieling, this learning module teaches learners how to create their comic book using simple materials. Employing extensive interactive elements, this module is a personal passion project as a current comics maker, researcher, and former college comics instructor.
Created as a personal learning exercise, this learning module explains how to play Knucklebones, a unique dice game originally from the video game Cult of the Lamb. Designed in Storyline 360, this guide teaches new players how to play the game and what they need to get started through guided instruction, videos, and activities.
Authored in Storyline 360, this is a personal professional development practice module. Using boiling line animation ("squiggle vision"), the learning module explains the odd nature, logic, and implementation of one of baseball/softball's most esoteric rules: the Infield Fly. Click the link below to view it for yourself!
"Neo-Springfield Is About to E*X*P*L*O*D*E" is a comics essay that examines the nuclear histories of The Simpsons and Akira through the lens of Bartkira, a transnational remix comic that mashes together the original texts. Using the comics medium, this essay introduces remix and transnational theories for readers unfamiliar with those theories, as well as the unique Bartkira production.
The "Project Concept Statement" is a learning course that I developed for University of Florida students as they created their critical-making projects to complement their learning in my courses. Authored using Rise 360, this course teaches students the purpose of writing a project concept statement, how to write one, and when to rewrite the document.
"Crafting Your Creator Statement" is a micro-learning opportunity authored in Rise 360 for University of Florida students. Based on the principles of an artist statement, this module encourages students to view themselves as creators and instructs them on how to craft one for personal and professional use.
A comics essay exploring adaptation theory, chiaroscuro, and affect through the lens of Two Brothers, Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá's adaptation of Milton Hatoum's The Brothers. Currently, a work-in-progress, Adapt-O-Tron's purpose is to introduce one valence of adaptation theory to audiences unfamiliar with the topic.
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