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Educators Voice

Vol 8, Issue 3
May 9, 2007

Using humor in online classes

“Humor is also a way of saying something serious.” (T.S. Eliot)

In our work with you, through these articles, professional development courses and in-person trainings, we spend a lot of time talking about instructor presence and immediacy. These are the things we do as instructors to personalize ourselves to our students, help us connect with our students, and create a welcoming learning community for our students.

In a traditional classroom, one way that faculty presence is achieved is through the use of humor. Based on student surveys, humor use is consistently ranked as one of the top five characteristics of effective teachers. Humor use in the classroom contributes to a supportive learning environment, and enhances student attention, recall of information, pleasure in learning, and interest in the subject matter (James). Finally, humor use on exams can help alleviate student tension and can function as a stress-reducing tool (Berk).

However, while there is a wide body of research identifying the benefits of using humor in the traditional classroom, the use of humor in online classes is largely ignored as a pedagogical tool. Many online instructors do not go out of their way to find and use humorous material in their courses. Why is that? A primary reason is that it takes extra planning and effort to make humor happen in online classes (James). Instructors who are pressed for time (and who isn’t?) find that it takes more time to be humorous than it takes to just get the job done. Additionally, online classes do not easily lend themselves to the auditory or spontaneous aspects of humor that are available in a traditional classroom setting. For these reasons, humor use in online classes is a largely untapped resource for building a positive learning community.

A recently published study examined the intentional use of humor in two otherwise identical sections of an online psychology class (LoSchaivo and Shatz). Material was presented traditionally in one section (without consciously adding humor), while the other section presented the same material with the following humorous additions: two or three content-relevant jokes to each lecture, cartoons to each quiz, and witty remarks to all electronic announcements. Statistical comparisons at the end of the semester showed no difference in final grades between sections, but did show that students in the “humor-enhanced” section earned more participation points by more frequent participation in online discussions. Students in the “humor-enhanced” section used the interactive class features more (including email and discussions), and were more likely to reply to other student’s questions in the discussions.

Resources for finding and using humor

So, do you want to use humor to increase your instructor presence in your class and help create a positive learning environment? If so, help is on the way. There are several good resources for crafting humor for online classes. Shatz and LoSchaivo provide detailed information on locating or creating humor for online classes, as well as guidelines for incorporating humor into online lectures and exams. The authors suggest that visual humor (such as cartoons, illustrations and photographs) and funny quotes, jokes, examples, word-play, forms of exaggeration, top-10 lists, and so on, can easily be incorporated into online courses. Shatz and LoSchaivo also recommend doing an internet search for your topic and “humor” to find humorous material specific to your discipline. Berk gives guidelines for print and non-print humor forms that can be incorporated into online classes, and also gives numerous examples and web resources. His suggested print forms include humorous course components, course disclaimers, announcements, warnings or cautions, lists, word derivations, foreign word expressions, acronyms and emoticons. Non-print forms include visual and sound effects.

If you want to get students involved in your search for new humorous material, Shatz and LoSchaivo suggest an activity called “The Contributing Editor” where students locate course-related humor and then write a report (extra-credit or for-credit) detailing the source of the material and how the topic relates to the course. Alternately, this material could be shared in a discussion area, such as the Class Lounge. Shatz and LoSchaivo stress the importance of giving guidelines for the student so they know what humor is appropriate for the assignment.

Cautions for online humor use

To go along with these suggested ways that humorous material can be located or developed, Shatz and LoSchaivo also provide some guidelines and cautions regarding the use of humor in online classes (see also Shatz, and LoSchaivo and Shatz). When selecting humorous material to include in your online classes, you will want to keep the following in mind:

Humor must have an educational or instructional objective. The effectiveness of classroom humor should be gauged by how well it promotes learning and by how it contributes to the learning community.
Less is more. It is not necessary to use over-the-top humor since students have low humor expectations in the classroom (versus, say, at a comedy club). Humor enhances, but is not a substitute for, the educational material. Going for big laughs in a classroom setting can distract the students and result in them remembering the humor and not the material.

Instructors need to know their audience, and stay away from potentially offensive types of humor. Students are not acceptable targets for humor, while the instructor is a potential target since self-depreciating humor humanizes the teacher and allows their personality to come through. Instructors should be especially cautious about incorporating “risky” humor in online classes, as the humor cannot be softened by aspects of delivery (voice, timing, gestures), instructors have no immediate feedback from students, and (gulp!) the humor cannot be easily retracted or forgotten because it lingers in the course shell.

I hope that this information has convinced you to think of some ways to incorporate humorous material into your online classes. The resources discussed above provide a good place to start with your search for relevant pedagogical humor, and it is worth some time with your favorite search engine to find what’s out there for your subject matter. My own search for humorous material for my discipline had me laughing out loud, and I hope this material provides me with new ways to connect with students in my own classes.

Good luck and good teaching!

– Gail E. Krovitz, Ph.D.

Berk, R.A. (2002). Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator.
     Stylus: Virginia.
James, D. (2004). A need for humor in online classes.
     College Teaching 52(3), 93-94.
LoSchaivo, F.M. & Shatz, M.A. (2005).
     Enhancing online instruction with humor. Teaching of Psychology 32, 247-250.
Shatz, M.A. & LoSchaivo, F.M. (2006).
     Bringing life to online instruction with humor. Radical Pedagogy. Accessed at:      http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue8_2/shatz.html
Shatz, M.A. (2006). Using humor to enhance traditional and online instruction.
     A Magna Online Seminar presented September 21, 2006

TIP

Using the Exam Statistics feature to facilitate comparative and anonymous essay grading

One thing (and about the only thing) I miss about grading paper exams is the ability to easily compare essay answers in order to be sure that my grading is fair across class members. If asked to give a cold, hard assessment of my “grading style,” I must admit that, even with a rubric in place, I tend to grade the essays of the first students in my stack of tests harder than the last ones. Then I spend a fair amount of time adjusting those first grades and last grades to be in line with each other and the rubric. Now that my physical stack is gone, and has been for several years, I have put in a lot of extra time clicking around the Gradebook, in and out of student tests, in an effort to compare the grades I give to each of my students.

With the recent addition of the Exam Statistics feature, accessible either through the Exam Builder (fig. 1) or through the Gradebook (fig. 2), I no longer have to do all of this clicking. Through the Question Level Statistics tab, I can choose to see a Student Response Summary (fig. 3) for the short essay or essay question that I wish to grade. I will then see all responses from all students in one view. What’s more, I can choose to view these responses anonymously (fig. 4), eliminating the possibility of favoritism that my subconscious could inject into the process. I can also print this view and grade offline-- great for when you have to be somewhere without an Internet connection!

—Vicki Galloway Harsh, M.A.

 

Fig. 1: Entering Exam Statistics through the Exam Builder Interface

Fig. 2: Entering Exam Statistics through the Gradebook Interface

Fig. 3: Entering Student Response Summary Interface from the Question Level Statistics Page

Fig. 4: Choosing Anonymous Student Response Summary View