Potential use of memes in teaching and learning processes: the students perceptions

Memes thanks to their communicative power, with an image and a few lines of text summarizes a concept in an ironic way, have spread in school and university as innovative mediator in teaching/learning processes. The meme conveys a concentration of meaning and to be decoded correctly requires a considerable cognitive effort which involves the knowledge of a set of key elements in a specific disciplinary domain, for example math or literature. Precisely this semiotic characteristic reveals its potential in teaching as a tool for cognitive activation and support for formative assessment: the teacher can in fact propose memes himself or have them made by students: in both cases he will have to verify their correct interpretation by providing immediate feedback about the meanings associated with the meme. This research conducted on 35 university students confirms the popularity of memes both as a tool for summarizing the concepts covered in lessons and as an interesting new formative assessment tool that can be used by teachers. However, memes must be used with care since they can also generate cognitive overload and convey cognitive or cultural stereotypes and are to be considered not substitutes but a useful complement to traditional active teaching strategies.