Laughter to learning: How humor can build relationships and increase learning in the online classroom

Abstract

ABSTRACTinteractions and relationships with their instructors (Anderson, 2011;Micari & Pazos, 2012

The impact of COVID-19 triggered changes to instruction and assessment on university students’ self-reported motivation, engagement and perceptions

“…One way to facilitate emotional engagement is through the use of humor. With that in mind, we turn to the work of McCabe et al (2017), who discuss how humor can support the development of relationships with students and increase their learning. Nevertheless, future research is needed in this area to further explore additional course components to better understand the association between achievement goals and emotional engagement.…”

Perspectives of Students in Thailand on the Use of Humor in University Classroom

“…Houser, Cowan, and West (2007) contended that humorous teachers are perceived by students as sociable and credible (Poirier & Wilhelm, 2014), which make students develop positive regard towards them (Gorham & Christophel, 1990). In other words, teachers who use humor as a teaching method creates a conducive classroom (Deiter, 2000;Benjelloun, 2009) that significantly reduces the gap between teachers and students (Aboudan, 2009;McCabe, Sprute, & Underdown, 2017;Jeder, 2015). This theory also supports the notion that the social bond formed by students because of humorous classroom allows them to interact, participate and feel less intimidated by each other (Gunawan, 2016).…”

“…For Bandura, a learner cannot absorb any learning material if he does not pay attention to it, thus attentional processes is an important function in the social context of learning. As previously mentioned, humor in the classroom undoubtedly draws attention of the students (Jeder, 2015); it accordingly facilitates a more interactive and participatory learning approach as students feel less intimidated by the learning atmosphere (McCabe, Sprute & Underdown, 2017;Deiter, 2000). To borrow Bandura postulations about a socially interactive classroom, a humorous classroom certainly creates a more attention-driven class and in so doing, initiates better learning experiences for the students.…”

“…To deter these claims, numerous researches have proven that classes, which strategically use humor as a teaching technique facilitate better learning and class attention (Jeder, 2015). Humor helps in learning difficult materials (Aboudan, 2009), reduces anxiety (Zundel, 2018;Poirier & Wilhelm, 2014;Benjelloun, 2009) as it creates comfortable learning environment (McCabe, Sprute, & Underdown, 2017;Deiter, 2000) and increases students' motivation to come to class and study (Benjelloun, 2009;Zundel, 2018;Deiter, 2000). Humor also enhances retention and memory, improves problem solving skills (Poirier & Wilhelm, 2014) and increases concentration level (Aboudan, 2009).…”

“…Humorous teachers are also seen to be credible (Poirier & Wilhelm, 2014), approachable and not intimidating (Deiter;2000;Appleby, 2018). This helps reduce the barriers between teachers and students (Aboudan, 2009;McCabe, Sprute, & Underdown, 2017;Jeder, 2015) thereby creating a more conducive and enjoyable classroom environment (Deiter, 2000;Benjelloun, 2009).…”