Conversation with a Purpose — Helen Kara and Sophie Jackson

Written by Helen Kara and art by Sophie Jackson, Conversation with a Purpose is a pedagogical comic about research interviews. Helen says:

This came about because I’m a Visiting Fellow at the UK National Centre for Research Methods and colleagues there have been doing some work on research methods pedagogy. One problem they found was the massive chasm between classroom and practice, and difficulty bridging that — you can do lots of good teaching in the classroom, but at some point you have to shove the
student out of the door and say ‘go do an interview’ or ‘go analyse some
data’ and let them get on with it. I realised straight away that comics
could have a role to play here.

Helen wrote the text and commissioned Sophie Jackson, who was a third year undergraduate student on the Cartoon and Comic Arts degree at Staffordshire University at the time, to draw it. The narrative focuses on the often messy/imperfect real-life situations students/researchers may find themselves in, and comes with discussion questions at the end.

You can read Helen’s account of creating the comic and download a free pdf here.