There are several ways to interject humor into instruction, and in this section, we offer suggestions for using pedagogical humor in online lectures and examinations.
The placement and duration of humor used in online lecture modules are critical to the flow of instruction. Short, simple jokes are most appropriate for the introduction and transitions while longer pieces are best placed at the end of a unit. Introductions can include a funny subtitle, a photograph or illustration with an added caption, a reformatted quoted, or exaggerated unit objectives. For example, an introduction to a research methods module could include an opening joke (e.g., “Today’s lecture will be an experiment–half of you will get real information while the other half will get a placebo.”) or a list of research questions yet to be answered with real and fictitious items (e.g., Is depression caused by drinking Pepsi Blue?).
Humor can allow students a brief “mental break” from an online lecture, and instructors can use transitions to illustrate a concept with topic-related tangents or self-deprecating stories. For example, the second author incorporates a running feature, called Frank’s Rants, into lecture modules as an opportunity to use humorous personal examples and commentary to expand on previously discussed lecture topics. By clearly identifying the tangent, students recognize that the rant is separate from the lecture. Nevertheless, because the rants tangentially reinforce course topics, the tangents continue to serve as teaching opportunities.
More elaborate humor, such as exaggeration (e.g., top ten lists, fictitious experiments) or links to related humor web sites, is best suited as unit closers. For example, the closers for a lecture module on abnormal psychology could be a series of “new” disorders, a collection of exaggerated quotes from famous therapists, or list of factitious abnormal psychology books. When using more elaborate humor, we often ask students to add their own contributions by posting ideas in a discussion board.
Although humor may not significantly reduce test anxiety or improve performance (McMorris Boothroyd, & Pietrangelo, 1997), we believe that the occasional use of humor in examinations is appropriate under certain conditions. First, students should be forewarned that humor will be incorporated into the examinations (e.g., choice “e” is always a joke and never the correct answer). Second, the addition of humor should not interfere with the students’ ability to complete the test in the allotted time. We recommend several approaches for incorporating humor into online examinations.
Practice quizzes and examinations offer an excellent opportunity to incorporate humor without adversely affecting students’ grades. For example, the second author uses a 10-item true-false practice quiz after each course module. Approximately two items on each quiz are reformatted by using word-play or exaggeration to “play off” the preceding item. For example, the follow-up item to “Evolutionary psychologists believe that nature is more important than nurture” is “Evolutionary psychologists believe that nature will beat nurture in 271,876 rounds of evolution.”
For instructors who are comfortable using humor in course examinations, there are several approaches for adding humor to multiple-choice tests. First, an additional distracter (e.g., choice “e”), such as a joke at the expense of the instructor, can be added to select items. Second, names that appear in items can be reformatted by inserting the instructor’s name or creating fictitious names. Third, a “final” item can be added with the setup “The test is over and you…” with funny distracters targeted to the students, instructor, or course. (See Berk, 2000 for additional strategies for infusing humor into multiple-choice examinations.)
Source: https://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue8_2/shatz.html
