E-Learning practice: Adding Humor to your Online Class

Abstract

Abstract: There will always be instructors who use humor in their classes. While these practitioners have never numbered in the majority and often have been scorned by their peers, there has been a resilient insistence that humor has a place in education. As education moves more and more into online modalities, we find ourselves at a crossroad of opportunities. It has never been easier to find humorous content about any topic using technology. Simply searching Google for “humor in instruction” lists page after page of ideas, research and content designed for the classroom. At the same time, many of us are teaching in classes where we never see the people we teach. This can rob instructors of important feedback about whether their content (whether humorous or not) is connecting with the students. This literature review explores these crossroads, looking at the effectiveness of humor in teaching, theories that can guide humor in the classroom, types of humor to use in education, how to add humor to your online class and resources for implementing humor in your online class.