A Systematic Approach to Manga Case Method

Abstract

The authors conducted an experiment regarding how best to construct and facilitate the manga case method (i.e. MCM), with the aim of demonstrating the impact various instructional factors made on student learning outcomes. MCM is a group learning method that the authors have developed. The experiment was conducted twice, with a total number of 51 test participants. In the experiment, the test participants would be asked, “Which panel you had focused on, and why,” before and after the study session, from which we measured the learning outcomes. Changes were made to the experiment conditions to understand the relationship between the learning outcomes and the factors. The following results were obtained from the learning outcomes in this paper. There were two important points to note in regards to the factor the combination of participants: (a) combining participants that focused on the same panels led to the same level of understanding throughout the group, and (b) combining participants that focused on panels of a significantly different nature led to the participants coming into contact with focus points they hadn’t thought of. Given that these two points contradict each other, it leads one to consider where an acceptable point of balance lies between the two.