Enhancing students’ writing competence and 21st-century skills simultaneously via infographics

Abstract

The accelerating pace of technological trends has numerous reflections in education. Accordingly, various tools have been utilized to reap their benefits in English classes. Among others, infographics, which combine text with visually stimulating images, stand out thanks to their advantages, such as being concise and academically rewarding. Although their effects have been studied worldwide, a gap in the literature has been observed in measuring infographics’ effects on developing students’ writing and certain other 21st-century skills simultaneously in Iraq. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to gauge the role of infographics in improving university students’ writing competence and 21st-century skills. Having chosen 30 freshman students through convenience sampling from a private university in Erbil, Iraq, in the spring semester of the 2023–2024 academic year, they underwent a treatment spanning 10 weeks on writing essays. Data collection encompassed writing exams, questionnaires, and interviews in this mixed-method research design. The data were analyzed using either SPSS 29 or NVivo. The control group received writing instruction based on the common curriculum, whereas the experimental group’s lessons were expanded with infographics. The findings revealed that infographic-enriched writing education yielded better results in terms of writing exams with a p-value of .002. Complementary findings also showed that certain 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking and taking initiative, were promoted. On the other hand, the achievement of the control group students was far from noticeable. The findings of this study may have various implications for interested parties who plan to integrate infographics into English classes harmoniously.