About
Supertroupers is an open access series of educational webcomics
Science, comics and theatre come together on screen to teach Life and Earth Sciences and Physics and Chemistry through the lens of scientific fiction. The series depicts the major scientific issues that students learn about in secondary school science classes in Europe: biodiversity, the theory of evolution, the ocean, climate, energy, etc.
An Erasmus+ project to develop the series on a European scale.
From 2022 to 2025, the Stimuli association benefited from the support of the European Union and piloted the Cooperative Partnerships in School Education project called ECoSCOMiCS*.
Thanks to the support of the European Union, Stimuli's expertise in educational comics and that of a ten scientific teaching institutions and European research groups has been brought together. At the end of the ECoSCOMiCS project, 7 episodes of the webcomics series Supertroupers will be available freely to teachers and students in France, Germany, Spain, Poland and Portugal.
* European Co-construction of a Science Webcomics Series - Projet Erasmus+ KA220-SCH n°2021-1-FR01-KA220-SCH-000030110.
Project funded by European Union. Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or Agence Erasmus+ France / Education Formation. Neither the European Union nor the grating authority can be held responsible for them.
Supertroupers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International Licence.
Backstage
Les Grandiloquents is the fruit of collaboration between an artistic team and a research team.
The artistic team :
Lau Bergey - scriptwriter and series designer
Barbara Govin - illustrator
Gauthier Mesnil-Blanc - webdesigner.
The research team is made up of researchers in science education from one of the ten European institutions:
- UNIVERSITE PARIS CITE, France
- UNIVERSITY OF TOULOUSE II - JEAN JAURES, France
- UNIVERSITAET LEIPZIG, Germany
- UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA, Portugal
- INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DE LISBOA, Portugal
- IESF-INSTITUTO DE ESTUDOS SUPERIORES DE FAFE, LDA, Portugal
- UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA BARCELONA, Spain
- ZESPOL SZKOL URSZULANSKICH w POZNANIU, Poland
- FCIENCIAS.ID - ASSOCIACAO PARA A INVESTIGACAO E DESENVOLVIMENTO, Portugal
- OCE, FONDATION POUR L'EDUCATION A LA SCIENCE DANS LE SILLAGE DE LA MAIN A LA PATE, France
The ECoSCOMiCS project would not have been possible without the help of :
Aline Rollin (illustrations for the episodes)
Clément Partiot (development)
Nicolas Mantran (viewer tests)
Edith de Cornulier (script-doctor gold)
Margaret Rigaud (translation into English)
Maria Enguix (translation into Spanish)
Anna Lamparska (translation into Polish)
Sabine Krause and Heinke Wagner (translation into German)
Valério Romero (translation into Portuguese)
Camille Aubry and Marie Jamon (communication graphic design)
Sébastien Cornuaud (legal counsel)
Didier Michel (administrative management)
Bernadette Hainault (accounts)
The objectives
Supertroupers offers the possibility of using comics to teach science. The webcomics stories are designed to follow an educational pathway adapted to the learning challenges of the scientific concepts presented. Turnkey teaching ideas are provided, as well as additional resources for exploiting all the dimensions of the webcomics episodes.
-> Reading a webcomic episode helps to bring out pupils' initial conceptions and stimulate debate in class.
-> By identifying with the characters in the series, students are invited to question their own ideas about scientific discoveries, and to take part in discussions about the controversies and concepts associated with each episode.
-> Fiction facilitates the thought experiments often required to mentally experience scientific situations and phenomena.
-> The graphic narrative serves as a catalyst for setting up learning sequences tested by the research team, as well as a common thread for sequences that teachers may wish to develop.
Research and Supertroupers
Our partnership with educational research teams enables us to work together on several areas of research. Here are a few bibliographical references relating to the series:
Cláudia Faria, Bianor Valente, Joana Torres, Laurence Bordenave, “THE SUPERTROUPERS”: A series of co-created scientific comicsfor secondary school, XX Encontro Nacional de Educação em Ciências, VI International Seminar on Science Education, Janeiro de 2024.
Valentin Maron, Laurence Bordenave et Barbara Govin, « Les Grandiloquents » : co-construction d’une bande dessinée numérique pour la classe. Seconde expérimentation de l’épisode sur la gravitation. Colloque intenational Telling Science, Drawing Sciences, juin 2022, Angoulême, France.
Valentin Maron, Laurence Bordenave et Barbara Govin, « Co-construction et expérimentation d’une bande dessinée numérique pour la classe : les Grandiloquents, épisode sur la gravitation », Tréma [En ligne], 51 | 2019, mis en ligne le 01 avril 2019, consulté le 28 août 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/trema/5215 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/trema.5215
Laurence Bordenave, Patricia Crépin-Obert et Maud Pelé, "Conception et analyse didactique d’une bande dessinée numérique sur l’histoire des sciences pour le collège : Les Grandiloquents", Colloque international Telling Science, Drawing Sciences, novembre 2016, Angoulême, France.
Stimuli and the partners in the ECoSCOMiCS project would like to extend their warmest thanks to the teachers and students who took part in the development of the series, and in particular :
Paula Serra, Ana Margarida, Vicêncio Andreia Luz, Carmo Nunes, Sandra Baptista, Miguel Silva, Isabel Pacheco, Diana Santos, Daniela Soares, Ana Fernandes and their students in Portugal.
Mickaël Martin, Marie-Ghislaine Gasnet and their students in France.