HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT the instructional designer who walks into a bar? No? Perhaps that’s because there’s not enough humor in our field. Humor can be an effective aid in education, however, if used properly.

Statistics show that people who rely too much on statistics lead boring, mundane lives with no purpose. Those with a more open mind about instructional techniques, meanwhile, are likely to have spouses who adore them, children who worship them, and employers who look for every opportunity to praise and promote them. Among other benefits, framing instructional material in a humorous way and joking with and about yourself, your profession, and your learners is an excellent way to relieve tension and alleviate stress in the classroom, establish a more human relationship between teachers and students, and potentially increase retention of instructional material. These positive results have been shown in both formal and anecdotal studies (Steele, 1998; Tatum, 1999). While there have also certainly been studies countering these findings, pointing them out to you would be self defeating, so finding them is left as an exercise for the reader (haven’t you been looking forward to spending some time in the library anyway?) (Fisher, 1997).

Basic to the use of humor in instruction is, obviously, possession of a sense of humor. If you haven’t got one handy, check your mental attic and inner child’s room for remnants. At one time or another, you found certain things funny, and those things can help you teach. 

Silly jokes can be effective catalysts for learning concepts such as homonyms, synonyms, and other language arts lessons.

Methods as simple as nursery rhymes, puns and other word games, and elementary school riddles can be surprisingly effective educational tools. Think about the classic schoolyard stumper, “Why was the elephant late getting on Noah’s Ark?” The answer, “He was busy packing his trunk,” can assist in illustrating a larger language arts lesson on the concept of words with multiple definitions. For more ideas, see this exhaustive collection of elephant jokes, including some that can’t be included in a family publication such as this.

Cartoon featured here with special permission from Randy Glasbergen.

If you’re more ambitious, you can create cartoons or humorous anecdotes to illustrate your material. Better yet, help maintain a vibrant economy and hire someone to create and write for you—after all, what are all those unemployed cartoonists and comedians good for? Randy Glasbergen has drawn thousands of cartoons about topics ranging from parenting and adolescence to education and office/cubicle life. In other words, he gets paid for sitting around and doodling.

Satire, too, can be a powerful instructional aid. Take for example Chase’s (1998) “The Other Intelligences (Oy Vey!),” an empirical study conducted by a middle school teacher that suggests Howard Gardner might have forgotten a few things. She suggests, among others, the intelligences of antigravity (balancing on two chair legs) and inter-Origami (intricate note-folding).

Humor can innervate a lesson regardless of the subject matter being taught. It’s important to remember that the humor need not be specifically relevant to the subject (as, say, puns to a language arts lesson), but that attracting and maintaining the learners’ attention and interest, and transferring the material in a creative way, makes the educational process more engaging and thus more likely to succeed. It’s usually also helpful to use intellectual-sounding words and repeat and reiterate your ideas and concepts time and time again, just to make sure they make their way deep into those crevasses in your students’ brains.

David Wesselhoff (No, he’s not the star of “Baywatch”) mentions the use of humor in his EET article on Keller’s ARCS model of instructional design.
To find out more, search the ERIC database from home or at the library for terms like “effect of humor” or “humor AND instruction.”
Most important, don’t take yourself or your work so seriously. Learning should be a pleasant experience for both the instructor and the students!

Yiftach Levy
SDSU Educational Technology