Innovative New Cartoon-Based Business and Management Pedagogic Resource Launched

As cartoons enjoy a resurgence globally – not least due to the rising popularity of anime – a new framework for "Transforming Sustainability Pedagogy using Cartoon-Based Real-Life Case Studies" has been launched. 

In 2022-2023, Dr Anupam Mehta and Dr Ann-Christine Frandsen of Birmingham Business School at the University of Birmingham were awarded funding as part of the PRME Chapter UK & Ireland Innovative Pedagogy Competition. 

Dr Frandsen and Dr Mehta identified challenges in making sustainable education engaging and effective across various cultures and wanted to use a cartoon format to address this in teaching. They found that cartoon-based case studies were an under-researched pedagogy format for students’ engagement that could provide an inclusive and collaborative learning environment while engaging, analysing, making sense of and deciding complex ethical and sustainability-related real-life business problems. Dr Frandsen and Dr Mehta used a UK based real-life company to consider the non-financial and financial challenges of sustainability, and created a framework translating real-life sustainable, responsible business cases into a cartoon-based format.

Dr Mehta said of the resource, "Working with a diverse set of students, this cartoon-based approach truly brought sustainability challenges to life. It sparked curiosity, broke down barriers, and made engaging with complex real-world business dilemmas not just accessible but genuinely ‘Fun’". 

Dr Frandsen added, "This resource offers new and fun ways of engaging with sustainable and complex issues. After all, it is one of the hottest topics our next generation of decision makers can learn and understand. It has been a pleasure to be part of such innovative project and to see how the students have enjoyed it". 

Dr Claire May (University of Lincoln), who, along with Dr Laura Steele (Queen's University Belfast), Co-Leads the Competition said, "We are thrilled to be able to share the resources by Dr Frandsen and Dr Mehta. Their report offers a comprehensive guide to educators across various disciplines interested in embedding sustainability competencies and the cartoon-based pedagogy format." 

To download the resource, please click here.