Humor and learning styles: toward a deeper understanding of learning effectiveness in the virtual environment

Abstract

PurposeThis study explores how virtual learners perceive the use of humor in instructor-developed videos and their other factors for learning effectiveness in an online course.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted a set of qualitative methods flowing from lesson study, to pilot study, to self-declaration of a learning style, to semi-structured interviews. Through the process, 142 undergraduate business students from the same online course, of different learning styles, discussed their perspectives on the instructor's use of humor and their learning preferences in online situations. Thematic analysis was performed.FindingsFirst, humor is deemed harmless, but its value is perceived at different degrees among the four styles of adult learners for their benefit of learning motivation toward an online course. Second, four common themes that respond to learning effectiveness online are addressed.Research limitations/implicationsSimilar studies with additional samples, including students in other countries, in different age groups and/or on different online courses, are encouraged to strengthen the current findings.Practical implicationsThe results provide evidence to school administrators, course developers and instructors on the importance of using a diverse pedagogy in online education. To motivate virtual learners, being humorous from instructors proves insufficient but developing the course with all respective features for different learners' styles is a clue.Originality/valueIt is among the first studies contextualizing a differential relationship between humor and learners' styles as well as evaluating the effectiveness of an online course from the learning-style standpoint.

“His lectures were like watching a show on Netflix”: A success story of laugh tracks in prerecorded undergraduate lessons

“…Although there is an abundance of studies about the use of humor in classroom and online environments, not much has been published specifically on the effectiveness of humor embedded in prerecorded lectures. Tam (2022) aimed to collect student responses to humor edited in instructor‐developed videos, categorizing participants according to the four learning styles described by Honey & Mumford (1992): activists , appreciative of hands‐on experiential learning supported by doing; reflectors , appreciative of big‐picture discussions and learning supported by listening and observing; theorists , appreciative of logic procedures and learning based on facts; and pragmatists , who prefer practical solutions tested by experts and established through time. The study found that appreciation of humor varied across these learning style categories, with activists and reflectors reassuring its relevance, whereas theorists and pragmatists rated it mainly as unimportant.…”

“…The authors also recognized that unfavorable views of the importance of humor may be because of computer screens “washing away the magic,” which suggests that achieving high‐quality funny instances in digital media is challenging. Tam (2022) did not describe the specific techniques used to incorporate humor in videos, and references in the scientific literature to the particular technique of laugh tracks in recorded teaching material have not been found. The following section thus provides a description of how this was achieved.…”